Category: Office for Mac

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.

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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.

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LibreOffice makes it easy for programmers by allowing macros to be written in four languages

Posted on by timcdana in LibreOffice, Microsoft Office, Office for Mac

The best macros are not recorded through the user interface of an application. They are hard coded through the application’s coding interface.

In the last blog, I compared recording macros in LibreOffice to doing the same in Microsoft Office. In this article we will compare how each one handles macros in general.

Most Microsoft power users are familiar with macros in Office. The famous office suite uses Visual Basic for Applications (VBA). It has been part of it for two decades, being based on Visual Basic 6.0.

LibreOffice, by default, uses LibreOffice Basic, an open-source scripting language that was taken from OpenOffice.org. Most programmers are not familiar with this language, so LibreOffice uses other languages that are familiar to many programmers.

The open-source suite uses JavaScript, Python, and BeanShell to create macros in addition to LibreOffice Basic.

This article will focus on creating new macros in LibreOffice and the Windows and Mac versions of Microsoft Office.

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LibreOffice more flexible than Microsoft Office for macros

Posted on by timcdana in LibreOffice, Microsoft Office, Office for Mac

A macro is an instruction into a set of instructions to perform a particular task. There are actually two ways to create macros in both office suites.

Macros allow you to perform and automate various functions in a document. Those functions can either be natively performed through a feature built into the application or they can introduce a new feature.

The simple way is to record a macro with an icon in the ribbon or by clicking the record item in one of the menus. The more complex way is to write code.

Many Microsoft Office power users are familiar with Visual Basic for Applications (VBA). This is the language Office records macros in. VBA is also the only language you can use to manually write macros with.

LibreOffice supports LibreOffice Basic, JavaScript, BeanShell and Python for creating macros. When you click the record button, LibreOffice writes the macro in LibreOffice Basic. To use the other languages, you need to write the code yourself.

This article compares recording macros in Microsoft Office applications and LibreOffice. For Microsoft, it will explain how macros are recorded for the Windows and Mac versions of Word, Excel, and PowerPoint.

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LibreOffice can compete with Microsoft Office’s new collaborative features

Posted on by timcdana in Google Drive, LibreOffice, Microsoft Office, Office for Mac

People have been working together on documents generated by office suite applications for decades now. One person would create the document and write his part before sending it to his colleagues, so she could create her part and make comments on his.

In the past 10 years, this collaboration has happened in real-time. Google’s office suite made it popular and easy for students, colleagues, and others to log in to their Google accounts to work on a document. A group of people work on a document, and they can see each other’s changes almost as soon as they are made. This is known as real-time collaboration.

LibreOffice and Microsoft Office have made strides to catch up to the new kid on the block. Both have taken slightly different directions. They allow for multiple people to collaborate on a document.

However, with its past two versions of its office suite, Microsoft has given users the ability to collaborate in real-time, like Google Drive users can do, through its desktop applications. With the 2013 and 2016 versions, users could work with others at the same time from the applications installed on their computers.

The latest versions of LibreOffice still don’t allow for real-time collaboration through its desktop applications, but they now have applications that can be installed on a server. These allow for real-time collaboration.

This article will mainly compare the collaborative features of LibreOffice and three of the applications from Office 2016: Word, Excel, and PowerPoint. Comparisons will be made with Google Drive as well since it is the office suite that is best known for real-time collaboration, and like the other two, is used by millions of people.

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Consistency helps LibreOffice Writer power users more than Word’s ribbon helps its users

Posted on by timcdana in Office for Mac, user interface, word processors

User interfaces for office applications have evolved over the past few decades. Microsoft has transitioned its popular office applications from drop-down menus to a ribbon user interface. The Document Foundation, on the other hand, has added to LibreOffice’s toolbars and menus over the years.

This article will compare the two word processors: Word 2016 and Writer.The Mac and Windows versions of Word will be discussed separately because there are differences in their menus and ribbons. LibreOffice has the same menus and toolbars, regardless of the operating system it is installed on. Therefore, it can be presented in one section.

All three applications have similar user interfaces as the other applications in their suites. However, each word processor has unique menus and ribbons, so it is important to discuss each one individually.

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Easily make LibreOffice, Office 2016 more worldly by adding languages

Posted on by timcdana in Office for Mac, Office Suite Overview

The desktop computer was an American invention, but four decades after the first ones graced offices and households, they are now in just about every office and home in the world.

This means that people who speak many different languages use one, and most likely use office applications to create documents in a myriad of languages.

This article compares the language support for Microsoft Office and LibreOffice. Both office suites support many languages.It also explains how to install language interfaces.

In general, LibreOffice supports 150 languages, while the Windows version of Office 2016 supports 92. The Mac version of Office 2016 supports 58. Support for languages means built in dictionaries and thesauri, as well as the ability to change menus, toolbars, help resources, and dialogs to another language.

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Insert and play video in Office, LibreOffice apps

Posted on by timcdana in Office for Mac, Video

Creating videos has become easier for the average person with smartphones and inexpensive digital cameras. There are also many free an inexpensive software applications that can help you edit and view those videos.

Recent versions of office suites have joined the group of applications. Microsoft Word and LibreOffice can both import videos into documents.

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