Category: Microsoft Office

OnlyOffice: the office suite for collaborators who like flexibility

Posted on by anadmitc in File formats, LibreOffice, Microsoft formats, Microsoft Office, Office for Mac, OnlyOffice, presentations, spreadsheets, word processors

Visit the Office category on any Linux distro that organizes software into categories, such as ones with the XFCE or Cinnamon interfaces, and the applications that compose LibreOffice will be found. The suite is the most popular for Linux users, and many Mac and Windows users also have installed it on their systems.

LibreOffice is not the only alternative to Microsoft Office for Windows and Mac that is available to Linux users, however. There is another that has several capabilities that LibreOffice and Microsoft Office 365 don’t have.

OnlyOffice has had desktop applications, packaged as an integrated suite, for most Linux distros, as well as Windows and Mac OS that is free to download and install. Users also can access the same applications through any Web browser on any computer, as long as they or the organization they work for has a cloud service account. The price for an account is free, and there are business and vip tiers that organizations can subscribe to on a monthly or annual basis.

OnlyOffice doesn’t have as many settings and features as the well-known office suites, but it is more flexible than they are. This article will compare it with LibreOffice and Microsoft Office, as well as give an overview of its user interface and the file formats it can handle.

Continue reading “OnlyOffice: the office suite for collaborators who like flexibility” →

Graphic design apps extend LibreOffice

Posted on by timcdana in File formats, LibreOffice, Microsoft formats, Microsoft Office, OpenDocument Formats

Office applications are not closed entities that do not interact with other applications. Various elements created by other applications can be imported into an office document, such as a graphic or image. Other applications, such as financial software, can import office documents as well.

The focus of this article how applications outside an office suite can extend the capabilities of that suite. LibreOffice and Microsoft Office can import documents native formats of other applications.

Continue reading “Graphic design apps extend LibreOffice” →

Portability makes LibreOffice more flexible than Microsoft Office

Posted on by timcdana in LibreOffice, Microsoft Office, user interface

Tom graduated from university with a degree in graphics design, and finding a full-time job was difficult. He had to take a job creating technical manuals for an appliance manufacturer. This job was through a temp agency.

His cubicle was in the basement of the office, and he was given a 10-year old computer, running Windows XP with the standard Microsoft apps minus a copy of Office. The IT department sees Tom as a low priority, so they have taken there time upgrading his computer.

Tom cannot use his own computer because he is required to save documents to the in-house servers that the XP machine is connected to. This problem would have frustrated most workers adapting to the professional world for the first time.

Continue reading “Portability makes LibreOffice more flexible than Microsoft Office” →

Open formats give LibreOffice advantages over Microsoft Office

Posted on by timcdana in File formats, Google Drive, legacy documents, LibreOffice, Microsoft formats, Microsoft Office, OpenDocument Formats

During the 1980s, software companies were started, developing application types that are popular today. During this time there were several popular operating systems and computer manufacturers. When Microsoft started to dominate the market in the 1990s and early 2000s, many of the companies went out of business, or they were bought out.

For example, when the first Macintosh was released in 1984, its word processor MacWrite was one of the most popular on the market. However, in the 1990s, like many word processors it took a backseat to Microsoft Word.

Many applications were discontinued due to Microsoft Office’s market share, and many people and organizations did not migrate their old documents to active applications and formats.

As technology evolved, and they acquired new technology, many old documents could no longer be opened. This is one aspect of data rot, when data can no longer be accessed. A YouTube video gives more details.

Now there is much less concern over data rot.

Continue reading “Open formats give LibreOffice advantages over Microsoft Office” →

Clipboard managers extend LibreOffice, Microsoft Office

Posted on by timcdana in LibreOffice, Microsoft Office, word processors

A college student in 1981 is sitting in front of a typewriter working on a term paper for a course in Western Civilization realizes that a lengthy quote he just typed would work great in the paper he is writing for a philosophy course. At this point in history, he has to retype it.

Four years later that student is working in the computer lab on his senior thesis. The Macintosh he is sitting in front of allows him to copy and paste quotes and other passages from one document to another.

The clipboard built into modern operating system and applications has become common place. People use the feature billions of times per day. Typically they copy one passage of text, graphic, or other object at a time. Then they paste it immediately.

More advanced users like to paste several different items in a clipboard, so they can paste different ones later.

The clipboard is an advantage Microsoft Office has over LibreOffice. It comes with a feature that allows up to 24 items to be copied and pasted when the user desires. LibreOffice’s clipboard only allows one item to be pasted at a time.

Continue reading “Clipboard managers extend LibreOffice, Microsoft Office” →

LibreOffice, Microsoft Office can share package graphics

Posted on by timcdana in LibreOffice, Microsoft Office, Office for Mac, presentations, spreadsheets, word processors

Modern office suites allow you to add graphics to any type of document. This includes pre-packaged graphics that comes with the suite.

LibreOffice and Microsoft Office have a series of graphics that are available to any document, regardless of whether it is a text document, spreadsheet, or presentation. Both suites have dialogs that allow for easy insertion of a desired graphic.

LibreOffice has 13 categories by default, and it allows you to create new categories as well as add more graphics. The section is called the Gallery.

In Microsoft Office, the dialog is called Icons. The graphics in this collection are all black and divided into 26 categories. No more can be added to the library, however. The icons are available in the Windows and Mac versions of Office.

Continue reading “LibreOffice, Microsoft Office can share package graphics” →

StartCenter makes LibreOffice great tool for multiple documents

Posted on by timcdana in File formats, Google Drive, LibreOffice, Microsoft Office

LibreOffice has an element and feature that Microsoft Office doesn’t have. The feature is document centralization.

Users can open any recently created and opened documents from any of the applications. A spreadsheet that you created last week can be opened from Writer. You can open the Draw document that you worked on yesterday from Impress.

These documents are listed when you click the arrow next to the Open icon in the Standard toolbar and the Recent Documents sub-menu in the File menu of any of the six applications.

Continue reading “StartCenter makes LibreOffice great tool for multiple documents” →

If you have Visio documents, you need LibreOffice

Posted on by timcdana in File formats, LibreOffice, Microsoft formats, Microsoft Office

One interesting advantage LibreOffice has over Microsoft Office is that it works with some Microsoft products and formats that Office does not. One of those products is Visio.

LibreOffice Draw can open standard Visio documents, which are in VSD and VSDX formats. These formats cannot be opened by Word, Excel, or PowerPoint, even though Visio is considered to be an Office application.

There are several other vector-drawing applications that can directly open and edit Visio documents. These include Inkscape and CorelDraw.

Visio is a vector application, but it is different than Adobe Illustrator and those just mentioned. Visio’s purpose is mainly to create diagrams, flowcharts, and similar types of drawings. The other applications are for graphic artists. While they have shapes and flowchart symbols, they also have free-drawing tools that are not present in Visio.

Continue reading “If you have Visio documents, you need LibreOffice” →

LibreOffice has many PDF export features Microsoft Office doesn’t

Posted on by timcdana in LibreOffice, Microsoft Office, word processors

One of the most downloaded and shared file formats is PDF. The format that was developed by Adobe in the 1990s and released as ISO 32000 in 2008, is the key format to share reports, books, and many other types of documents. It looks the same regardless of the operating system and application that it is being viewed with. The documents also cannot easily be edited.

Most office suite applications have the ability to save a document or export it as a PDF. This includes Microsoft Office and LibreOffice. Both suites allow users to control the over the exportation that is more than just low or high quality.

For Microsoft Office, the conversion options differ from application to application. Word’s options differ from Excel’s and PowerPoint’s.

For LibreOffice’s applications, the same dialog with the same settings will appear when Export as PDF is clicked in Writer, Calc, Impress, or Draw. There is one setting that is unique to Impress.

Due to the differences from Microsoft application to application, this article will compare Word’s PDF option dialog to LibreOffice’s dialog. Microsoft Office has a PDFMaker add in that enhances its PDF-making capabilities. If you purchase Acrobat Standard or Pro, you will have PDFMaker.

Without PDFMaker, Microsoft Office does not have as many PDF export features as LibreOffice. This article compares the out-of-box versions.

Continue reading “LibreOffice has many PDF export features Microsoft Office doesn’t” →

LibreOffice makes Linux distros viable alternatives to Windows

Posted on by timcdana in File formats, legacy documents, LibreOffice, Microsoft formats, Microsoft Office

You leave work for a short lunch break. You don’t have time to sit and eat at a fast food restaurant or cafe, so you use the app for of one of those establishments to place an order that will be ready for you when you arrive.

It is highly likely that you interacted with a server running a Linux operating system when you placed the order. These flexible operating systems are widely used on servers, smart devices, and many other computers that people use every day. They typically use them without knowing the operating system.

However, if you had more time to spend in a restaurant and observe people sitting in it and working on their laptops, one thing that would be rare to find is one of those computers running a Linux distro and the person editing a document in LibreOffice. This would be a rare sight at any restaurant, office, or even home around the world.

Linux distros run on about 2 percent of the desktop computers worldwide. Microsoft continues to dominate the work world with its operating systems and office suite.

Continue reading “LibreOffice makes Linux distros viable alternatives to Windows” →