LibreOffice Calc Learning Tools?

August 16, 2022 7:07 PM

I dual-boot Linux and Windows 10 on my computer, pretty much Linux these days. The main thing I go back to Windows for is Excel, where I am pretty proficient, because I am stymied by lots of what LibreOffice Calc wants me to do to achieve the same results. I am perfectly fine with the rest of LibreOffice, but just haven't found the great tutorial for moving from Excel to Calc. Can you help me out? t
posted by Scarf Joint to Computers & Internet (3 answers total)

I've been 100% desktop Linux at home for going on 18 years, and *mostly* Linux at work for a long while. I've been fine with workable equivalents for everything else, but replacing Photishop or Excel (for advanced users) is TBD. LibreOffice/OpenOffice's spreadsheet tools are arcane at best. OnlyOffice at least feels familiar and looks nice, but it doesn't have things like pivot tables and lookup. All of the spreadsheet options are fine for making budgets or basic tables but I've not been happy beyond that.

Sorry to rain on the parade, maybe others have had more success!
posted by quarterframer at 5:02 PM on August 17, 2022 [1 favorite]

I don't think there is a substitute for Excel. Google Sheets is slowly adding features, such as pivot tables, that come close. LibreOffice is well behind the curve.

Have you considered running a Windows virtual machine to use Office, or running Wine to run the actual Microsoft Office version of Excel? I've heard that Microsoft Office apps work well under Wine, and I see from the WinHQ website that Excel (at least from Office 2016) has a Gold rating for compatibility.
posted by lhauser at 7:27 PM on August 17, 2022

You might want to give WPS Office 11 for Linux a spin. I had a tough PowerPoint PPTX from work that was giving me trouble on Linux, and it helped me. FWIW.
posted by forthright at 5:33 PM on August 18, 2022