Is LibreOffice Calc decent to use as my primary spreadsheet tool? What are your worst experiences with it?
I've reached the next stage in the process of reclaiming control over my tech and that entails switching my spreadsheets away from Google. Stage one was about turning off notifications, removing bloatware and changing settings to be more privacy-oriented whenever I got a new device, etc. Second stage: replacing numerous different software with Obsidian, a huge productivity and convenience win. So these days I use Obsidian for almost everything but it doesn't do spreadsheets yet (if ever).
So I did some research and it looks like LibreOffice is the only option that doesn't come with some sort of AI stuff and makes the .xls(x) file format I can display in Obsidian. This conversation is not about why I'm choosing to avoid AI features and companies that won't allow me to turn them off, but that's what I aim to do, as much as possible. Edit: I also want a local installation that works offline and doesn't send anything to some cloud.
I searched Tildes for LibreOffice and found some damning comments but they were all fairly vague and I'm unsure how much the disappointment applies to LibreOffice Calc specifically, so I thought I'd ask about people's experiences.
My use case is primarily for personal finance calculations, as well as costing sheets for work. Not super complex high level math but there are some more complicated formulas and I do like to have conditional formatting options too. Mainly I'm interested in reliability, even if the thing isn't as feature-packed as Google Sheets. I'm on MacOS if that matters.
I'm not a heavy spreadsheet user, so take this with a pinch of salt, but I've used Libre office (and it's predecessor) as my primary spreadsheet for over 15 years.
I've not used Microsoft office for over 20 years, but obviously have to use files created in it. For the most part it just works. In years past it was "it works well enough" with occasional formatting issues and minor irritations, but these days I don't really need to think about it.
Same here. Pretty much the only pain points come if you work with Excel files. If purely for personal use that becomes a non-issue.
This is great news then!
I can always convert Excel files in the Numbers app if ever I need to access or edit one. I do sometimes receive them from the odd subcontractor but most companies in my field haven't been using Microsoft products since.. forever? So definitely not an issue for me.
That's great, thanks for sharing!
I work with Excel and Google Sheets, I have libreoffice installed on my PC but I don’t use it as much, so I can’t speak about the finer details.
It’s… Rough. The UI experience is bad compared to others, and some design decisions make me scratch my head (why clearing a cell makes a dialogue box pop up and you have to confirm - simply boggles my mind)
They seriously need some kind of review of their UI and UX.
As is, I wouldn’t use it in any serious capacity. I’m thinking about trying only office
I have been an Excel user for over 30 years (and Lotus 1-2-3 before that !) I made a full switch to desktop Linux over a year ago, and Excel replacement was one of the last pieces holding me back. I found that LibreOffice Calc essentially reached a state then where functionally it does everything I need at a satisfactory level. It has only improved in the year since then, with frequent updates and bug fixes.
Yes, it is not perfect. But people seem to ignore just how terrible Excel has been for most of its existence. The Excel UX/UI was never user friendly. It also kept changing, and when you learned how to do something in one version of Excel, you often had to re-learn it in the latest version, which was always annoying. It also always had serious bugs, performance issues, crashes, etc. VBA was always really frustrating to use. I feel like LibreOffice Calc is now in better state than Excel was for most of its existence (I can't comment on latest Excel as the last version I used was from office 2016.)
In general, Calc was able to open all my Excel spreadsheets, and things like formulas and styles work just fine, including conditional formatting. I had a ton of VBA code I wrote for fairly complex spreadsheets, and while basic VBA works in LibreOffice Basic, some of my more complicated stuff, especially where I used Windows specific calls did break, and required porting. Some of my spreadsheets use fairly extensive web scraping to collect various data from the web, and I had to rewrite that in Calc, but I was able to get everything to work, and it works better than it ever did in Excel now.
I actually find the current version of LibreOffice Calc fairly polished in terms of UI and pleasant to use - better than most open source software honestly. For basic spreadsheet functions it's perfectly adequate, no worse than Excel. It can do more sophisticated and complex things too, although things can get out of hand and you can experience crashes or corrupted files - but I ran into similar issues in the years of using Excel as well.
The one thing I wish improved was scripting. I still don't like writing code in Basic, even LibreOffice Basic. There are ways to write functions in Python, but the interaction between the code and the spreadsheet and the whole setup is still kind of cumbersome and needlessly complex, and documentation is kind of lacking. Basic is still easier and more straight forward, so I still end up using it for everything...
Anyway, I definitely recommend considering Calc and trying it out.
I'll take a bad UI that I can customize and never changes than one the company fiddles with every third release every single time.
I remember fine tuning the last pre-ribbon Excel toolbar to precisely how I like it. Then they threw that in the trash and my disdain for Microsoft grew three sizes.
Same here. I had extensively customized toolbars in Excel 2003.. then bam!, everything changed...
I can't vouch for LibreOffice Calc never changing - I have only been using it for a little over a year. But so far so good... :) I do afford them a bit more leeway, it being an open source project that I can use for free.
What about OnlyOffice? Their website does have AI buzzwords like most things nowadays, but it's not pushed in the app itself (I never even knew it's there before looking at the website now) and one of the screenshots on the site specifically shows a toggle to turn off AI functionality.
Cryptpad is also an encrypted and private web-based Google Sheets-style service based on OnlyOffice
(Don't have any comparison with LibreOffice as I don't use it because I much prefer OnlyOffice's UI, but it works well for me)
As someone who uses OnlyOffice, I can confirm that it exists and that even when it was on, all the AI tab did was provide fields to fill in API keys to hook into external LLMs. It being on by itself didn't seem to do anything.
Said buzzwords made me turn away. Even if you can turn it off for now, I'd rather not risk migrating my things into a system that may become fully AI-pilled in the future, or may focus most of their development efforts to AI at the expense of what I consider important. As well, whenever possible, I will avoid being counted as a user for an app that is marketing itself this way (fluffy buzzwords of any kind that is - right now they're most often related to AI).
Web apps are another thing I don't like and one of the reasons I'm migrating away from Google. I want better control of when and how I access my files - and better security wrt others not being able to access them.
FYI, Cryptpad is now based on EuroOffice, which is a fork of OnlyOffice.
OP, I selfhost Cryptpad and its spreadsheet is pretty capable. I've converted some complex-ish excel sheets and they mostly food dinner, although I had created some expressions in excel that I had to recreate differently in Cryptpad because some of the functions were either excel-specific or the syntax changed slightly. That was years ago, though, so perhaps the current version is more capable, more on par with excel's syntax.
Another option to consider is the up and coming GridCraft project. I don't know if you consider an optional CLI interface designed for agents to be "AI stuff" but its designed to mimic Excel closely so you might be able to reuse tutorials for excel when learning it.
Boy that is an ambitious project. I'll have to download that and try a few of those apps. I'm skeptical of a project trying to make 16 different unique apps out of the gate, but if they end up being polished and easy to use then hats off to them. Seems like an AI focused company so it's undoubtedly vibe coded, but that's still a REALLY big project.
I mean, CLI spreadsheet has a lot of potential for us human agents too.
I agree. Its nice to be able to script without relying on in document macros or third party Python libraries.