Today I did my first advanced spreadsheet on LibreOffice after switching to Linux, and it handled itself pretty well. I had to search for some features on the web at first, but after I got it down, I felt comfortable using it. Also, LibreOffice’s default menu layout is not pretty, but I can find all of the functions with just a click, unlike MS Office’s ribbon menu where I had to click around to find what I was looking for. Sorry for bad English.
Honest question: who would use a non-collaborative standalone spreadsheet in 2025? I don’t get it.
There’s only a small set of spreadsheets in my work life that need multiuser access, most of those are admin shit.
There are more in my home life, planning holidays, household tracking.
Buy most things at home and work have no need to be shared during update
Me. The work I’m using them for doesn’t need collaboration or sharing. But it’s important to also have collaborative ones up my sleeve.
I’m using formula calculations and visual graphs, so a CLI-managed CSV just won’t work for me.
Privacy.
Not you obviously
I don’t need to share everything, everytime. Do you ?
Context is important:
“in August 2023, OnlyOffice announced a restructuring, placing Ascensio System SIA under the ownership of a British company, which is in turn owned by a Singapore-based holding company”
Its also open source and can be audited still.
I might uninstall because of this though as didnt even know.
My single personal spreadsheet is (uh) a CSV that I edit with
vim. I don’t want to have to fire up a monstrous GUI app just to view a table. But sure, count me as eccentric in this way.Most of the spreadsheets I deal with are for work. For what I consider obvious reasons, they’ve been cloud-hosted for literally decades now.
Your initial response got peoples’ backs up because of its dismissive tone and (it seemed to me, as you hadn’t provided context) apparent advocacy for web-based tools like O365 or GSheets.
Many office application users wouldn’t consider vim as an “office application”, as they have their word processing app, their spreadsheet app, their email app, their chat app, their file explorer/manager, maybe something other than Notepad as a text editor, etc, and don’t really know much beyond some of what each of them can do.
The fact that vim (or Emacs or vim/nvim with plugins, or LazyVim or Doom Emacs) can do all of those things would blow many minds.
But the setup effort and learning curve is still there, and also requires that they have sufficient permissions/policy to be able to install things.
The pernicious side of social media in microcosm. To say “it’s not collaborative” is somehow understood as shilling for big tech. Always the worst possible interpretation of every remark.
Agreed as to vim.
Yeah, so you do use them, so you get it. Just most people use spreadsheets cause they know it and seem simple to them ! For me, I try to not use online spreadsheets for personal financial stuff. I only use online spreadsheets if the project has meaning in being shared. I quite like grist for this, really handful tool
There is a difference between “cloud-hosting” (= storing your documents on other people’s computers) and “collaborative editing” (= working on the same file at the same time).
Yes yes. The issue here being that in the real world nobody much is doing the latter. But we’re getting off topic, LibreOffice is neither.
LibreOffice can perfectly work with files stored on other people’s computers.
Yes, in theory, although tricky to set up. What it cannot do, at least not without fiddly modules, and even then nowhere near as well as the cloud competition, is any kind of collaborative document editing. Which is where the world is at today.
You said “in the real world nobody much is doing the latter”.
Indeed, confusing terminology. I consider that collaborative document editing is the activity, cloud hosting vs P2P is the technical implementation.
Like it or not, nobody much is doing the latter because it’s much harder to set up and the available cloud solutions provide a much (much) better user experience. I don’t say this a better situation but it’s the way things are.
Honest answer: People who would create spreadsheets for themselves.
Not sure why you got downvoted, it is a fair question. Real time multiuser editing is a powerful feature. That said it is really only needed a small fraction of the time for specific types of collaboration. Also, it can cause problems as well. Libreoffice Calc meets most of my home spreadsheet needs: calculating mortgage rates and future value of investments and such.
You can absolutely collaborate with Collabora Office
Yes, true.
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Me, i hate “collaborative” internet connected spying stuff
While libreoffice seems to me like a gazillion features held together by duct tape, it does what I need it to do