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I am not an MS Office user, but I have seen the effect of format lock-in with Google Sheets. A few months back I began a project to de-Google my life, which went pretty smoothly until I tried to download my spouse's accounting spreadsheet from Google Sheets to Excel format. Both LibreOffice and Excel could open it, but nothing worked correctly. So for several months, I kept that one Google Sheet live until I could come up with an alternative. When I created the original file in Sheets, I was blindly using all sorts of features and capabilities (including Google Forms) that simply have no direct analog in other products.

A couple of days ago I bit the bullet and dug into the Excel file and figured out how to redesign everything and get it going again. Yay me. I'll admit I don't like the UI in LibreOffice, but I didn't like it very much when I first tried using it (as Star Office) back in the 90s either. Yet I keep coming back to it.

If I'm going to be locked into a format or app, I'd rather it be something like LibreOffice.

Your use case (specifically with Forms) seems aligned with Grist, which is also open source and has been adopted by the French government.

In my experience, it’s much stricter than a standard spreadsheet though. It feels a bit like moving from Python to Java.

Did you try exporting it in the OpenDocument (.ods) format?
I wish the excel clones were better. LibreOffice’s UI is extremely dated imo, to the point it doesn’t even let you make a damn table, but at least what’s there works correctly. OnlyOffice is not only missing some pretty basic functionality such as preferences (???), it also inexplicably deleted a single spreadsheet out of a multi-sheet file on two occasions on macOS and generally has some peculiar functionality and ux here and there.
I'm only a light user of office programs, both at work and at home. I have access to M365, but for my personal usage I prefer LibreOffice over MS Office, especially when it comes to spreadsheets. I generally don't mind the UI of the MS suite, but I find it's getting increasingly bloated and slow, and sometimes updates move UI elements around for no benefit that I can perceive. I haven't experienced the same with LibreOffice; it's lighter than MS Office I find it easier to find the options I'm looking for, which I know exist but don't always remember _where_ they live, because of the low frequency with which I use them.

With Excel in particular, there is something I can't put my finger on that I just don't get along with. It's unintuitive in a way that I can't describe, but which I notice about half the time I use it. Sometimes clicking doesn't do what I expect it to do, clipboard contents are lost all the time, scrolling resets or jumps around for reasons I don't understand. I don't have the same issues with LibreOffice Calc, which is why I choose it for my personal work. In fact, I think Google Sheets is the most pleasant to use of the options I've tried, which is something I thought I'd never say about a web-based alternative to a native app...

Regarding Excel's weird warts... Microsoft knows all about them but they're stuck with it for backwards compatibility. The business world has a billion Excel scripts and macros done by barely technical users that all inadvertently depend on the details of things like the scrolling and clipboard behavior. Trying to improve that would break all of that. Same as all the weirdness in JavaScript, Microsoft has to just call it a feature and live with it.
I'm surprised at all the comments deriding LibreOffice's interface on here. It's never given me any trouble (even when making tables) and I've been using it preferentially for 20 years over MSOffice, even when schools or employers are actively paying for my Microsoft subscription. In fact, LibreOffice does something very important a lot better than MSOffice: importing CSV files correctly across locales.
IronCalc to the rescue?

https://www.ironcalc.com/

Yeah. This is the curse on any legacy software that doesn't enforce strict separation of logic and UI. Any larger change to the UI requires an awful lot of manpower that open source projects usually don't have.

I wonder if it would be possible to extract the spreadsheet data model and logic into a library completely separate from the UI. This would enable a diversity of UIs, and also interoperability between different tools.

each time someone sends me an xls or xlsx file, i am scared to open it in libresoft to mess up its formatting or miss something important. I always then rever to gsheet.
> LibreOffice’s UI is extremely dated imo

It feels so bland and hard to read. Maybe that's because of java. How did Excel 5.0 look so good?

I think I've tried every spreadsheet program still being maintained at this point. Try gnumeric, it's a clear cut above everything else.

Mandatory Excel rant: Excel can't be trusted with data destined for publication. It's bloated, buggy as hell, user hostile, and has set genetics research back with its utterly braindead autocorrect. The default plot options are the exact polar opposite of how data are presented in science, and almost impossible to make serviceable. Everything Excel touches ends up looking like a hastily thrown together 6th grade science project. Libreoffice is also riddled with serious bugs and also loses data, but hey it's free and not a decades old flagship product from a multi billion dollar tech company.

Link to the actual source: https://blog.documentfoundation.org/blog/2026/02/16/why-odf-...
I don't like any of the libreoffice/openoffice behemoths. I only ever used them because there wasn't anything better/comperable, so I will stay away from that discussion.

I like OnlyOffice. Their desktop apps are much lighter and better looking. They work fine for my light needs. They also do have a LOT more than just desktop apps.

The last time I mentioned them I was informed they are Russian. If that matters to you. It is actual open source software though. Perhaps the EU should fork it. :) (By the way I hadn't checked last time but, wikipedia says Latvian with Russian origin, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OnlyOffice. This page does say they are Russian, https://www.en-zdv.uni-mainz.de/2023/05/30/software-onlyoffi... and that they are switching to the open-source version.)

https://github.com/ONLYOFFICE/desktop-apps

EDIT: Some more context. A cryptpad developer says

> we consider the OnlyOffice code upstream as "untrusted".

https://forum.cryptpad.org/d/232-onlyoffice-concerns-vendor-...

> The last time I mentioned them I was informed they are Russian.

Here's the company info on a Latvian org registry: https://company.lursoft.lv/en/ascensio-system/40103265308

I logged in to the platform, not sharing the names myself, but basically:

  * company was registered in Latvia in 2010 (e.g. included in VAT register over here)
  * board has 1 member since 2009, registered in Russia (Russian passport)
  * has 1 shareholder, Ascensio System Limited in the UK (05718967)
  * has one beneficial owner, in 2023 updated data from Russia to Turkey (passport issued in Istanbul)
In 2024 their turnover was short of 3 million EUR, seems like profit wise in 2024 they're 1 million EUR in the red. Also not sure if the site is busted, but shows the number of employees as 1.

So yeah, the company is registered over here, seems like they're trying to distance themselves from Russia for obvious reasons. Not sure why the downvotes for the parent comment, that's probably nice to mention.

>They also do have a LOT more than just desktop apps.

Please explain what you mean by this...

Whatever you think of their origin, this shows we need better sandboxing of desktop apps. An office tool does not need access to the internet, and it does not need to access any files other than office files.
does them being Russian matter ?

I think - we need to have software - not subject to political gimmicks - since countries can get into wars with each other & sanction each other etc

remember when Venezuela was sanctioned and they couldn't access Adobe 360 or whatever it's called.

How does LibreOffice handle ODF standardization? If they want to add a new feature that result in changes how things are formatted visually, write they papers to update the ISO standard for ODF, working with other office suite implementers to achieve interoperability, wait a couple of years for the new standard with the changes getting published, and finally turn on the feature for users?

My impression is that this is more or less how ISO standards are supposed to work. Personally, I don't want to work in such an environment.

Well, that's almost how it work but of course without the waiting bits. The change would be added to LOExt namespace and would be written to the document and read on load. Then the change is proposed for inclusion into the next ODF version. Once the ODF version is released, LO would add support for that as well and changed if needed. On next save the feature would use the ODF version instead of LOExt.

The process has its issues and could cause problems, but in practice I don't remember anyone reporting issues.

Pretty much, and yes, this is not a desirable path for progress.

But communists have an absurd love for bureaucracy, and their need to control is unlimited, so they'll argue to the death about stupid shit instead of, you know, actually competing.

The only clean solution would be to force ISO to admit their mistake (or malicious intent) and rescind the "Open" Office XML format for good.
What's wrong with the format?
The 'fake open-source' debate is interesting, but OnlyOffice is still the best free alternative for anyone coming from MS Office. LibreOffice has a great mission, but their UI feels dated and the formatting issues with DOCX/XLSX files are still a deal-breaker for me.
"...their UI feels dated"

How do you define dated in this context?

Personally, I quite like being able to use the CUA keyboard shortcuts to access menu items. I like consistency over decades but I appreciate that there are other ways of looking at this.

> their UI feels dated

A big selling point for me. Needless reworking of familiar interfaces plagues MS Windows ecosystem and I'm glad LibreOffice is displaying healthy conservatism by not fixing what isn't broken.

LibreOffice constantly works on improving the import of the DOC/DOCX/XLS/XLSX/etc formats, thus if something doesn't work for you, it's better to file a bug in their bugtracker[1].

[1] https://bugs.documentfoundation.org/enter_bug.cgi?format=gui...

Also free and great at MSOffice file compatibility is FreeOffice from SoftMaker:

https://www.freeoffice.com/

Does Microsoft Office exist now? Looked like they've entirely rebranded it to Microsoft 365 Copilot App (according to office.com)
Openoffice had afaik not an big change in years and Libreoffice had quite a lot of changes that improved Msoffice support.
Keep blasting, I do not care. I like OnyOffice. It feels very light and fast and handles my very limited and light usage with grace. LibreOffece in my opinion does not come close by feel.
I also use it, but I would not call it light and fast.
And yet it was OnlyOffice that enabled me to get rid of MS Office and finally switch to Linux fully.
I thought PDF won this, why do we care? If I send a document to someone, it is PDF. If I'm working on a project with someone, we can agree on our tools together.
Another big issue is that Apache Software Foundation should admit that the OpenOffice is dead and just redirect the site to the LibreOffice instead. Currently, they just damage the open source by allowing downloading effectively abandonware that doesn't represent the quality of the open source office software: people download OpenOffice, find many problems (that long gone in LibreOffice), decide that open source office is bad, and go to the proprietary alternatives.
Honestly? Office automation suites have had their day, along with the people who use them. It's high time people learned to produce documents of typographic quality by writing in markup languages, it doesn't really matter if it's raw LaTeX or some DSL, and it's time the majority learned "the power of text": full-text searchable, easily manipulated, versionable, and manageable, compared to those monsters born in another era with the sole intent of letting untrained secretarial staff use a desktop computer.

Anyone who doesn't get that simply doesn't have enough IT skills to work in this day and age; it's time to say it loud and clear.

> the sole intent of letting untrained secretarial staff use a desktop computer.

I dont like this "skill issue" rhetoric. The barrier of entry being lower is good for everyone, if you dont directly use simple tools, then you will still benefit from others in society using it to produce information and what not. Also how do you propose spreadsheets work with markup?

Office provides far more than just typographic quality. They provide spell check and grammar check which is what most people care about. Many people creating latex, as far as I know, are using text editors which are missing those features or are quite limited.
LOL, have you tried to maintain any sort of huge table using markup?
Eh, I think as an open source solution you definitely want to grab as many users as possible by using the most popular office file format. And then maybe you can do something different.

TBH I don't think de-big-tech will ever succeed in a capitalistic world.

LibreOffice, descendent of OpenOffice, descendent of StarOffice, has a project leadership that believes OpenDocument is the best and most open format. That's very convenient for them, considering that OpenDocument is a standardisation of the native file format of that lineage of office suites.

Microsoft Office has a project leadership that believes that Office Open XML is the best and most open office format. That's very convenient for them, considering that Office Open XML is a standardisation of the native file format of that lineage of office suites.

Now, OnlyOffice is presumably something written from scratch, unrelated to those two lineages. They chose to prioritise compatibility with the market leader's standard, and the second place in the market is upset that a competitor isn't favouring them instead.

I think this is a bit silly.

I think this is an unfair take. ODF is an actual file format, while OOXML is a serialization format for Microsoft Office specifics, as debated here 6 months ago. [0]

Beyond marketing fluff, I don't think anybody at Microsoft genuinely believes they have an "open office format" or an actual "standardization". Even Apple back in the day had to reverse-engineer the Microsoft formats. [1]

Whether you'd like to denounce OnlyOffice taking part in this masquerade or not is a political issue. But giving Microsoft any form of benefit of the doubt on this matter is historically wrong and, I believe, ethically evil.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45144758

[1] https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/06/adversarial-interopera...

I do see your point but i think your giving Microsoft to much credit. I wouldn't trust their commitment to their own open format. I think Onlyoffice supporting it is unfortunate, but necessary
OnlyOffice isn’t a „rival“ to LibreOffice as TFA says, because the former has been dead for a long time.

Edit: Further, the ooxml format was heavily criticised ~20 years ago, back when it was introduced. This is old news.

Are you thinking of OpenOffice instead of OnlyOffice?
The last release was only 3 months ago and they have 30 git repos with commits in the last 24 hours.
> dead

Surprisingly moving a lot for something dead

https://helpcenter.onlyoffice.com/docs/docs-changelog.aspx