If Zorin is going to become my "daily drive", then I need an office suite that is compatible with Windows. Mainly, I need to be able to use and share:
. Word documents
. Excel spreadsheets
. PowerPoint - everything (by that I mean: PPP, PPS, edit and create)
I was under the impression that Libre Office WAS fully compatible, but something that @swarfendor437 mentioned in another post (have searched, can't find) made me realise my misapprehension.
A few years back, there was a horrible situation at work where two members of the team used Mac's and everyone else was on Windows, then a Mac user was replaced by someone using Open Office. I do not want a repeat of that situation, especially as I think quite a few of my colleagues will end up making the jump to Linux (almost everyone, including the boss, is using dodgy Office installations).
Anyway, in my unofficial role as "Zorin Ambassador", I'd love to be able to demonstrate and share some alternatives - or even one solid option.
SoftMaker Office 2024 Professional. You could always try the free version FreeOffice but it won't have all the benefits of the paid for version. It is what I used during lockdown as my role as a Vision Support Technician, modifying documents for students with low-vision. It is also GDPR compliant.
The nx version is a monthly subscription, advantages are ChatGPT, and DeepL language translator - but I believe there is a limit as to how many words can be translated in a year, something like half-a-million. I prefer the fully one-off licence fee. Upgrades to existing versions are cheaper to buy than first time purchase. It gets upgraded every three years.
Please be aware that their Flexi PDF software is not up to Adobe standards, only Master PDF Editor and pdf Studio Pro can beat Acrobat hands down.
Just to add, SoftMaker Office 2024 Professional was used in the creation of the Unofficial Manual for Zorin 17 Core, formats in .odt (LibreOffice), .pdf, .tmdx (Native text maker format), and .docx (MS Word format). Additionally, TextMaker allows you to export to pdf and also .epub.
What you don't get is the built in MathType which comes in the Windows version of SoftMaker Office. This is due to how Windows and Linux differ. If you need an equation editor then you would have to use LibreOffice Math and copy and paste into TextMaker document. Some time ago when they issued a survey about whether users would like to see a MathType plugin for TextMaker for Linux and I said yes, of course!
with libre office you can save the document as any ms office document
just go to save as , then see bottom left file types click the drop down arrow...
I followed a thread like this on another forum some time ago.
To cut a long story short there Is not a fully compatible MS office prog alternative for Linux that is known of as of now.
I mean fully compatible. Doubt there ever will be.
I have to disagree on that one. During lockdown I started modifying documents in LibreOffice and e-mailed them to base. When they opened them they did not show up properly in Word. On using TextMaker Office 2018 and later, 2021, the documents viewed perfectly in MS Word 19 and Word 365. If you are talking functionality, yes that was true, such as no availability to compress images to reduce size of document but that is now present in the 2024 rendition. And like LibreOffice Writer it can export to .epub which I used successfully when creating English reading books for students just before I retired using TextMaker 2021.
I appreciate what you say swarf, I'm not an office user so my knowledge is only gained from family and forums and that isn't much.
I don't specifically remember what only MS office and no others could do but will certainly give you feedback when I find out.
i won't argue lol as i don't send documents to ms office, so i wouldn't know if it shows correct.
i just saw the option to convert it to a ms office compatible document, and thought it should work otherwise why bother giving the option.
anyhows, sorry if i was misleading OP.
always better to take advice from users who have actual experience in an issue i guess
@Freeway , @swarfendor437 , @14nd and @Ponce-De-Leon , I really appreciate ALL your thoughts and input. I'm conducting some experiments at the moment, and I've been reading up on everything suggested so far.
The new Office Libre 24.8, updated this month - I believe says:
The free and private office suite
LibreOffice is a powerful, free and private office suite - the successor project to OpenOffice - used by millions of people around the world. It's compatible with Microsoft Office (365) and is backed by a non-profit organisation, The Document Foundation. LibreOffice includes Writer (word processing), Calc (spreadsheets), Impress (presentations), Draw (vector graphics and flowcharts), Base (databases), and Math (formula editing).
As we mostly use Word, Excel and PPP/S I'm sending examples to myself, editing them, sending them back, editing them again and then looking at the results. No one in the team pays for Adobe, so people use different free PDF software. Libre Office seems to be well up to the job that we need it to do. I can "save as PDF", which is all I need for reports. Another very important feature: can change to British English
I'll feed back with how things go - or don't! I start back in the classroom 9th September, but there will be a LOT of work done before then!
A Tipp when You are using LibreOffice with Microsoft. By default LibreOffice don't support the Microsoft Fonts. So, when You open a MS Document for example it could be looking weird. I would suggest to install MS Fonts. Zorin has a Help Page for that with Instructions:
After this whole Process I recommend to do a Reboot of the System.
Interestingly, SoftMaker comes with Arial and you can use British English. In terms of fonts I cheated as I have Windows on another drive I just extracted the fonts I needed and used Font Manager in Plasma to install. My experience of how to install ms-core fonts leaves lots of MS flotsom and jetsam which has proved hard to remove in the past. I had to modify a presentation for a music lesson using SoftMaker Presentations. I was extremely delighted that links to audio in the original PowerPoint worked in the Presentations file saved as .pptx. I had to ask my supervisor on another occasion for the Religious Studies department to update their format to .pptx. Nobody should be using .ppt or .doc or .xls these days. If importing a .ppt into a SoftMaker Presentation file for .pptx the whole presentation becomes garbled.
What I can report so far is that I've not had any font issues. PowerPoint Presentation was perfect too. However the Excel spreadsheet we ise to keep track of test and exam results was a complete failure. Admin sends us the sheets already prepared with the formulae, we add the student's names and their results, the percentage for individual scores and the termly and annual percentages are generated. When I opened the spreadsheet in Libre Office and input the score, as usual, it produced a date.
I've got a back up of last year's results on a USB flash drive, I'll see what happens with that tomorrow - I'm too tired now.
An interesting Point on Softmaker Office is, that they have her own Repository what You can add. When You add it you get so automatically the Updates over the Software Updater or the Terminal.
I was getting worried reading through this thread and seeing no mention of spreadsheets, which in my experience are the least compatible part of any Office package. I don't use linux at work, our IT team would never consider it, but at home I have a Windows VM almost entirely for Excel because nothing else comes close.
Simple mathematical formulae are fine, of course, but a lot of named functions are missing or work differently (RIP in peaces SUMPRODUCT my beloved) and none of the linux office packages are anywhere near parity with VBA. SoftMaker seems to have some sort of VBA environment but it's only on Windows, not included in their linux software.
You / your organisation would essentially need to completely rewrite any spreadsheets that involved more than plain maths and basic functions like SUM or AVERAGE if you move away from MS Office. It's not worth trying to convert them and risking all the weird edge-cases and ongoing bug-fighting as people run into more and more things that don't work properly / the same outside of Excel.
I have always found spreadsheets in Libre Office, particularly spreadsheet graphics i.e. graphs etc, to be my red line. So I still have to use excel for correct rendering of graphs.
Office installations).
