HELP -- need excel compatible spreadsheet, openoffice gone

Moriah

I have used openoffice for years, and I still have it on at least one machine, but I am working on a new machine now, and I need a microsoft excel compatible spreadsheet tool, and a word compatible tool. What do I use now that openoffice is no longer an available ebuild?
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fedeliallalinea · Moderator Joined: 08 Mar 2003 Posts: 25485 Location: here

libreoffice?
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pjp · Administrator Joined: 16 Apr 2002 Posts: 18838

If you prefer OpenOffice, you can put the last ebuild into a local overlay.

Apparently OpenOffice 4.1.8 released in November, so I'll have to see if the 4.1.7 ebuild works with a revision bump.
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Tony0945 · Posted: Fri Jan 15, 2021 7:03 pm Post subject:

I am not happy with libreoffice's treatment of excel spreadsheets and am going back to real Excel on an XP VM.
I may try Wine 5.x Wine is doing fine with games and Windows Calc.

I also prefer Vuescan, a pay product with a Linux version, to hp-scan. Maybe because I used the Windows version for many years and the Linux version (closed source) has exactly the same interface and feel.

Moriah · Posted: Fri Jan 15, 2021 7:20 pm Post subject:

I'll take whatever works. I just need to view excel and word docs and do minor touch-up editing.

If I have real computations to do, I'll write a real program,

If I have a real document to produce, I'll use LaTeX. :mrgreen:

So I'm emergeing libreoffice now...
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The MyWord KJV Bible tool is at http://www.elilabs.com/~myword

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Tony0945 · Posted: Sat Jan 16, 2021 12:00 am Post subject:

My problem is with the charts and with libreoffice-bin having such small default cells.

Moriah · Posted: Sat Jan 16, 2021 1:40 am Post subject:

I just have to edit a status report for my project manager, and he is keeping that information in excel. Libreoffice is working fine for what I need it for... so far.
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The MyWord KJV Bible tool is at http://www.elilabs.com/~myword

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figueroa · Posted: Sat Jan 16, 2021 4:41 am Post subject:

I recommend libreoffice-bin, or libreoffice if you'd rather compile it. The LibreOffice binaries will handle your files a bit better, and much faster than OpenOffice did. You will find them functionally identical with LibreOffice being significantly improved over OpenOffice sine it was forked.

I am a long-time very heavy user of LibreOffice, especially spreadsheet where I creating very large, integrated across multiple tabs and files sheets for payroll and student enrollment and registration by multiple persons. I find it much more satisfactory than Excel.

I recently changed from using libreoffice-bin to libreoffice. I'm not sure it was worth the chase. I can't tell ANY difference. It takes me a little over an hour to compile libreoffice, so that's in the same range as firefox and thunderbird. The binary versions of all of those emerge almost at the wink of an eye.
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Moriah · Posted: Sat Jan 16, 2021 11:12 am Post subject:

I am a very lightweight user of M$ office and its Linux clones. I almost never use those tools my self. I only need them because I get files from other people in those formats, and I have to read them, and sometimes update them. I find most engineers use excel as a columnar word processor rather than as a calculator. Either that, or as a poor man's database. I hate passing around files via email because you get unmergable out of sync versions. Using a version control system, such as git or subversion, solves that problem for flat ascii text files, but using vc with bloated word and excel files is a waste of time and storage. Spreadsheets, when used as calculators, make it very difficult to debug, as the logic is deliberately hidden from view. If I need a document, especially a large and complex document, then I use latex. If I need a database, then I use postgresql if I have a choice, or a bunch of flat ascii text files and shell scripts if I have a small database. If I need a program, then I write one in a language suitable for the problem at hand.
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The MyWord KJV Bible tool is at http://www.elilabs.com/~myword

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figueroa · Posted: Sat Jan 16, 2021 4:27 pm Post subject:

Regardless, LibreOffice is the FOSS replacement for OpenOffice.
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andy@andyfigueroa.net Working with Unix since 1983.
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