LibreOffice vs Microsoft Office

LibreOffice all the way. 99.999% of users don't use more than 10% of their office suite you could even make due with Abiword or Google Docs. Don't pay for a glorified text editor!

I use Google Docs but if I need to I'll use LibreOffice. I never use Microsoft office.

Hello, I am currently a student, and I often have different essays and so forth that I must write. Every so often, I look for an alternative to write my essays, whether by speech or typing. LibreOffice works with everything I do, I sync to Dropbox, then if I really need it, I'll sync it with Google Docs so I can go on any computer and download it. I dual boot Linux Ubuntu 11.10 with Windows 7, and Dropbox syncs from 7 and Ubuntu. I use Docs as a final, so I can get to my school and print it without a problem. But all in all, LibreOffice is, in my opinion, better then word because it can read multiple file types, and comes with a suite of applications, not only for word processing, but also for spreadsheets, charts, and is ready off the bat for power point presentations. To top it all off, it's free. If you have a computer that comes with word, power point, excel, etc. then use them. But if not, and you need one, download the LibreOffice suite. It closely resembles word in nearly every aspect.

LibreOffice.

Corporations suck.

I use both. What I find lacking in LibreOffice are:

In Writer, I'm not able to use the Styles feature properly. If I define a format style, I find I'm unable to apply the style to a portion of the text. I have to repeat the entire formatting sequence to the portion of text.

In Calc, a lot of the short cut keys available in Excel are not available. I'm yet to learn how to assign short cuts to keys.

I work for a company that has a product that links to MS Office and WordPerfect through macros. I have been unable to get either to work through LibreOffice. So I would have to say that the interaction with a wide variety of office products is a bonus for the MS Office camp.

I love OneNote. If it had come out a few years earlier it would be the Evernote that EVERYONE uses. Evernote beat them to the punch.

I have a laptop with MS Office 2007 and just got Ubuntu 11.04 64-bit and was wondering to carry on using word or to use Libre Office and also which is more user friendly. Also which is more reliable, MSO always crashes and stops responding, does this occur in Libre Office.

Thanks.

To me the features I'd miss most by not having MS Office is multiple selection. You can select five separate words from a sentence and copy and paste and it will paste the five words in the order you selected them. It's not a feature you use much but it sure is nice when you need it. The other thing is Word Art. You can make really nice signs or headings with very little effort. I don't know if libre office has that but Apple's Pages doesn't. I've used Inkscape (free) to do it too but it is a lot more work.

Only issue I sometimes run across is formatting. As a test, I did a word-wrap around a photo in a Microsoft Office Word document. Open/(Libre) Office screwed it up...I imagine the reverse would also be the same result (create in LO & open in MS Office).

No issues at all if the content is created to be played/printed on the host computer.

Imho...