Non-Microsoft software to edit Excel spread sheets, are any of them good? There are a few open source free programs that ostensibly will do the trick, but are they all Chinese malware? Would I be better off springing for Microsoft Office? I ask because I "updated" to newer operating system and I need to be able to do spread sheets with something. Fairly computer illiterate, but I can manage to download stuff. When I try to open the Excel files, it redirects me to the microsoft app store, which lists several free programs, aside from Office, which is less than $100. I don't know why Microsoft would have free stuff listed alongside Office, which is not free. Seems like it would detract from sales.
LibreOffice and Google Docs both work pretty well.
Microsoft likes to maintain their control and user base with lots of custom controls, etc within their docs, so outside of full Office you may notice some features don't work.
If you have an existing copy of Office you own, you can move that license to the new computer as long as you remove it (or can validate that the data on the drive has been wiped).
I think you can sign up for a onedrive account and utilize Word and Excel for free online (kinda like Google's sheets and docs).
Might be worth looking in to.
https://products.office.com/en-us/free-office-online-for-the-web
-Rob
moxnix
HalfDork
4/15/20 2:55 p.m.
There is also Open Office. But I haven't used it.
z31maniac said:
There is also Open Office. But I haven't used it.
Open Office grew into LibreOffice (in a round about sort of way and Open Office is sorta dead now)
Currently I use Google Sheets for my personal Excel stuff and it's been decent enough. Makes being able to edit whatever spreadsheet I have on any computer or my phone pretty easy.
Depends what you need to do. For basic stuff Google Sheets is good. Libre Office is also good but the interface is not as user friendly.
When you get into the heavier stuff, MS Office is better than both and much more widely used so it just makes sense to get a copy.
If you are sharing files with others, just get MS Office. Too many translation issues with other software. Data Validation, conditional formatting, etc. etc. can be problematic.
I'll chip in and say that Google Sheets does work, but if you use the filtering features of Excel, attempting to do the equivalent in a shared file in Google Sheets has about reduced me to tears.
Stefan (Forum Supporter) said:
z31maniac said:
There is also Open Office. But I haven't used it.
Open Office grew into LibreOffice (in a round about sort of way and Open Office is sorta dead now)
Ahh gotcha. I've almost always had something with Office on it, so I haven't needed the other solutions.
I use LibreOffice on my mac. You might have to learn some new syntax if you'd doing some real data crunching, but it's been able to do everything I've needed to do so far and I haven't run into any compatibility problems with the rest of the company that runs Office on their windows machines.. If I really need to dig into data manipulation, I tend to go to a database :)
Keith Tanner said:
I use LibreOffice on my mac. You might have to learn some new syntax if you'd doing some real data crunching, but it's been able to do everything I've needed to do so far and I haven't run into any compatibility problems with the rest of the company that runs Office on their windows machines.. If I really need to dig into data manipulation, I tend to go to a database :)
I recall last time I used LibreOffice it didn't support Polynomial trend lines the way Office did and I had to "manually" calculate them. I know google sheets still sucks for this.
ProDarwin said:
Depends what you need to do. For basic stuff Google Sheets is good. Libre Office is also good but the interface is not as user friendly.
When you get into the heavier stuff, MS Office is better than both and much more widely used so it just makes sense to get a copy.
If you are sharing files with others, just get MS Office. Too many translation issues with other software. Data Validation, conditional formatting, etc. etc. can be problematic.
Exactly what I was going to post- so I just need to quote it.
ProDarwin said:
Keith Tanner said:
I use LibreOffice on my mac. You might have to learn some new syntax if you'd doing some real data crunching, but it's been able to do everything I've needed to do so far and I haven't run into any compatibility problems with the rest of the company that runs Office on their windows machines.. If I really need to dig into data manipulation, I tend to go to a database :)
I recall last time I used LibreOffice it didn't support Polynomial trend lines the way Office did and I had to "manually" calculate them. I know google sheets still sucks for this.
That's not a feature I've ever looked for so I have no idea if it's supported now.
LibreOffice is all I use on my home computers, although I've heard some complaints about it from accountants who work the sheets at high speed or build ultra-complicated Excel sheets that approach or meet the qualifications for an Office-Powered Clusterberkeley.
My cousin worked on the programming team for Excel in the early days. He says they taught it to play chess. There were two levels, Fast Like Tree or Smart Like Truck.
Toebra
Dork
4/15/20 10:51 p.m.
Does that mean that Excel programs can play chess? That is pretty cool.
Sounds like Libre is the droid I seek, thanks guys
Toebra said:
Does that mean that Excel programs can play chess? That is pretty cool.
You can do some crazy stuff in excel
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QnjmJKMtB7g
ProDarwin said:
Toebra said:
Does that mean that Excel programs can play chess? That is pretty cool.
You can do some crazy stuff in excel
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QnjmJKMtB7g
Even though the screen resolution is crap (because I'm guessing the pixels are Excel cells), the level of detail is way beyond Doom 1/2...more similar to Quake.
GameboyRMH said:
ProDarwin said:
Toebra said:
Does that mean that Excel programs can play chess? That is pretty cool.
You can do some crazy stuff in excel
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QnjmJKMtB7g
Even though the screen resolution is crap (because I'm guessing the pixels are Excel cells), the level of detail is way beyond Doom 1/2...more similar to Quake.
I don't think you've played Doom in a while :) To me its a weird cross between Wolf3d/Blakestone and Quake. Wolf 3d because singe floor plane, most (all?) stuff at 90 deg angles, single wall height, etc. Quake because everything seems to be 3d (except possibly the enemies?)
The level design is very Wolf3D/Blakestone-like, and so are the simple sprite enemies, but then it has plenty of 3D and textured objects including pickups and damage effects, where in Doom the only 3D thing was the level itself and every enemy and object was a sprite.
I last played Doom in December 
Ok, yeah that's what I meant about Quake. Lots of 3d textured stuff. But the actual level design is far more constrained than Doom (which is admittedly fairly constrained).
