The breaking point for me was when I was showered with Copilot+ pop-ups on every single hover. Let me fucking copy/cut/paste/format in peace. I never asked for any of this, and neither did any user of any level of expertise.
Switched to OnlyOffice as it felt to perfectly answer my needs. There are still some quirks with non-UTF-8 documents, but you know what, I’d rather iron those issues out than be shoved a product I didn’t request nor need at every single interaction I have.
I highly encourage anyone that hasn’t done already to explore alternatives to the M*crosoft Suite, if they haven’t done it by now. Every update is just the worst form of enshittification known to humankind. Can’t wait to have an intrusive slop AI agent tell me how to do my Maths in the Calculator app next.
Let apps be just apps again 🗣️🗣️📢
This made my blood boil, and then I remembered I switched to Linux a month ago… all good.
Why I use libreoffice.
Jesus christ. So glad I ditched MS. It’s like getting out of a cult - once you see it looking in from the outside, you finally realize how terrible it is.
I would love to switch to LibreOffice (or similar) but I haven’t been able to find a way to get tables to work in the same way they do in Excel, and that’s a deal breaker for me. None of the suggested approaches come close to being able to select a range, press ctrl+t and immediately be able to filter/sort/lookup using column names from anywhere in the document. I use that feature dozens of times a day, and so does everyone in my circles that deals with financial data.
Some executive noticed that they can’t sell you larger cloud storage if you haven’t used it up.
Then someone on the office copilot team said they wished they had access to more comprehensive data about what people write with office apps and the rest is history.
GUYS BUT NOW I CAN WORK EVEN FASTER AND EFFICIENT! I DON’T HAVE TO WORRY ABOUT SAVING BECAUSE EVERYTHING IS IN CLOUD! IT’S ALWAYS AVAILABLE! WINDOWS IS MOST USED SOFTWARE ON MARKET!
See ya Ms Products! I hope you all like that cloud of yours!
https://www.libreoffice.org/ for anyone who wants microsoft to stop messing with their office apps.
There is also only office which has better compatibility with MSOffice file types
Downside is ties to Russia and performance is really bad, as I understand it’s an Electron web app, not a native application. It also won’t save to network shares properly and will lose your file if you do.
This here.
I wish Only Office got as much fanfare as LibreOffice. The UI is much closer to Microsoft Office and it tends to have better compatibility.
I have both installed though and use them both lol.
OnlyOffice is Russian-owned, via a holding company in Singapore. When Russia invaded Ukraine and sanctions threatened the business, they obfuscated this, but it’s still Lev Bannov’s product.
The importance you attach to this is up to you, but they try quite hard to hide it.
Mm knowing that makes me never want to go anywhere near OnlyOffice now, oof.
LibreOffice has a ribbon UI too.
TIL! Thank you, kind stranger!
Gerne!
That it does :)
LibreOffice is awesome too. No complaints really.
I tried it years ago and it was pretty garbage. Took forever to load. Looked like shit. Has this changed?
Libreoffice their latest blogpost is from the 20th of August 2025. There have been a few releases in the past few months as well.
Openoffice their latest ( Apache Openoffice 4.1.15 ) was released almost 2 years ago ( December 2023 ).
Libreoffice seems like a more recent, better supported tool over Openoffice which hasn’t seen any updates since 2023 according to their own website.
I’m on my phone, so I didn’t search extensively. But I think that also plays a role in why there’s a much larger fanbase for libreoffice rather than Openoffice.
I’ve no recent experience with either so I can’t comment on how well either works.
Edit: I looked up the wrong one. My statement remains correct w.r.t. Openoffice, but they mentioned Onlyoffice which is a different product.
I believe Open Office and Only Office are different products.
Only Office had a major release in June, 2025.
And you are correct that Open Office last update was back in December 2023.
openoffice is an apache project, created when oracle gave them the code and rights to the openoffice project. ibm later donated symphony to them. anyone familiar with apache knows they do things their own way, and usually slowly.
libreoffice originated from a fork when openoffice’s status under oracle was in doubt. it progresses faster than apache, as most developers also switched.
onlyoffice is an entirely different application. decent enough, but with its own quirks. it can also be slow on lower-spec systems due to the heavy reliance on js. originally a latvian-russian project, it was reorganized (via new corporate entities in uk and sg) to hide the russian ties for ‘reasons’.
Ah I see. Thanks for the information. I use both LibreOffice and OnlyOffice and generally am happy with both. I kind of just bounce around back and forth.
Man, wouldn’t it be nice if both of our counties didn’t have ridiculous propaganda and fascism so that we could just cooperate on shit like this without having to worry as much about maliciousness on a state level?
You are correct. I misread ( or my brain farted ) and looked up the wrong one.
Don’t ever save your files directly on a samba share with only office. Lost hours of work twice . It doesn’t keep recovery files.
I second this. There’s a little bit of a learning curve on some of the functionality, but it’s not bad at all. And most of the functionality is very easy to find. I moved over to Libre Office several years ago and it’s been great.
Office would have a learning curve too if you hadn’t been using it since you were a child.
Tbf it was simplier back when people first used it
When people were first using it they were coming from DOS or older machines. Many were using a mouse for the first time. It wasn’t simpler to them.
This is very true. I hadn’t used Microsoft Office since 2007 and at my new workplace everyone’s using it. It’s really hard and I don’t find anything. Yesterday I was working with tables but I gave up and had IT install libreoffice instead.
You can now enable a tabbed interface similar to Microsoft Office
I suppose this means Microsoft will not count Word doc file sizes against users’ cloud storage quotas, right? Right??
🤣
It’ll be like Google: everything goes in, nothing comes out unless you jump through difficult hoops, price continually goes up.
Getting anything out is already almost impossible. I moved sway from 3rd party cloud storage a couple years back. I had to get 500gb from onedrive and it was refusing to download at anything more than 50kb/s (my internet was significantly better than that)
Where do you think Google learned it?
? Google invented it.
If you’re in the EU, you can apply for a GDPR request to get sent a copy of all your data in their cloud, same for iCloud. Takes about 48 hours in my experience.
How is this served? Do they send a usb drive? Or a download link of some sort?
It’s a download link, on their respective dashboard you can select between the catagories you want. Like on Google you can select if you want youtube, drive, gmail, or everything at once.
With GDPR they have 7 days to comply, and it should be available to any EU citizen even when outside of EU territory. So I’m assuming you can just change your region. Either way, takeout.google.com is where I’d go.
Yeah, i ised take out before, it took 2 weeks to download my photos, i think 8 60gb downloads. It was painful, I got hopeful that youbhad discovered a workaround.
Ah, that’s unfortunate. Tbh I’ve been downloading 200GB there frequently and haven’t had any issues.
GDPR can also be called upon using a registered letter and they are required to deliver as well. I’m not sure but that might be a way to recieve a physical copy.
Mario_Kart8_deluxe.iso.docx
No, they upload your file, delete the local file, then oopsie, you ran out of cloud storage, please pay $99/month to access your files.
Anakinsmirk.jpg
This is certainly about making sure your files are safe and definitely not about stealing your data for training AI. /s
Don’t let Murdersoft steal your data. Don’t contribute to their corruption or genocide assistance.
Step 1: https://fedoraproject.org/
Step 2: https://www.libreoffice.org/Thanks, going to try out LibreOffice. Does it has same (or similar) functions as Word itself?
It’s designed to be very similar. If you are already familiar with Word, you should feel right at home.
I’m not exactly s power user in Microsoft office, but I found using libre office to be very similar. Never had issues using it for school back in the day and I’m sure it’s better now.
My only problem is how Libre Office handles their style system. It’s forced use for things like Footers, and very hard to manipulate and turn off unlike Word.
My own way to bypass it was to replace a new document text into an old converted word text that had the correct footer pages from Word.
I really hate page and Style guides because they always want to propagate everything through entire documents, instead of only changing things on a page by page basis. Adding things to previous pages when you change something isn’t helpful.
I’ve been using it for over a decade now and have only rarely come across broken documents due to proprietary features. If you’re making docs for yourself, I’d say it’s pretty much a 100% replacement. Things can get a bit more fucky if you’re having exchanges where you edit with Libre and someone else edits with Word. But other than that, they’re pretty darn close.
It doesn’t make it flawless (at all), but installing the microsoft fonts helps. Most distros have a package or helper tool for that.
Pretty much. It was OpenOffice years ago, but then Oracle got involved and so all the devs left and put a new name on it.
No. That’s the point. LibreOffice does not send your data to Microsoft.
LibreOffice is what Microsoft Office WAS without the bugs. If Word and Excel worked for you before the cloud, Libre is golden.
I’m 99% of the way on LibreOffice. Gave it a solid go, but the main thing I use in excel is too cumbersome in Libre. I think it’s a great option for many people though.
As a clueless individual, how are they assisting genocide?
For today, you can call me Jeeves. To learn more, a quick search for “microsoft genocide” or “microsoft gaza” will give you the answers.
- https://www.newarab.com/features/ex-microsoft-employees-expose-companys-role-gaza-genocide
- https://edition.cnn.com/2025/08/21/tech/microsoft-employee-protests-israel-intl
- https://gizmodo.com/microsoft-israel-protests-2000648637
- https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cger582weplo
- https://www.seattletimes.com/business/microsoft-asked-fbi-for-help-tracking-palestinian-protests/
Wow thanks for the resources! I appreciate you dropping links I had no idea this was going on. Of course Google and Amazon are involved too, could have figured as much. Appears the only way do avoid the military industrial complex is to cease using anything provided from our oligarch overlords. What an age we live in.
Working hand in hand with the Israeli government in mass surveillance and (likely) AI-generated targeting data.
Another user just linked some resources. Incredible the bullshit going on these days. So much going on it’s hard for me to keep up with it all but I’m glad to be enlightened.
Let’s say this huge breach of security and privacy is okay.
How are Microsoft ensuring these sensitive documents are not being transferred via or stored on servers located in hostile countries with lax data laws (such as foreign nations like the USA?).
Microsoft has already said it doesn’t matter where your data is stored, it isn’t safe from the United States.
But you can change this behaviour in settings, it’s just the default for now.
So, if you don’t trust Microsoft to handle your documents, but still somehow use MS Word and OneDrive, for the moment you can still stop it from saving your Word documents to their servers.
Ms office 2016 install still going strong with zero cloud function. That day I lose it is the day LibreOffice copies itself from the laptop to the desktop. Aint paying for O365
You can change it for now.
Yes, that’s what I meant with my “for now” and “for the moment”.
wdym, that’s the point
tell your friends.
OnlyOffice gang https://www.onlyoffice.com/download-desktop.aspx
I like the idea of it, but it is Russian.
I think it they are based in Latvia now which is in Europe. They did originally start in Russia and still supply the Russian government. Though it is free and open source. So where it is based does not really matter.
OnlyOffice is one of the few open source applications which actually puts effort into its UI. LibreOffice looks straight from 1990. I really would not recommend LibreOffice to anyone who is not technical, whereas OnlyOffice provides a great UI experience.
With the entire West supporting a livestreamed genocide the whole moral highground schtick does not really land for me anymore either.
tip: do not write about the revolution, short stories, hatred of capitalism, your suicide plans, or your teenage angst and erotic anthropomorphic horse fan fiction.
tip: Only write about the revolution, short stories about your hatred of capitalism, your suicide plans, your teenage angst, and erotic anthropomorphic horse fan fiction.
For everything else, use LibreOffice.
directions unclear, now I’m directing a netflix special on sexy horse guerrillas.
Ugh, the ai spellcheck is broken and I’m writing a Netflix special in six hearse gorillas.
Season one was excellent, it ended on a cliff hanger though. Netflix did not renew for a second season.
would watch
Isn’t that… Just a bulky centaur?
bingo
So just bpmb threats and realistic beastiality. Got it.
Tina Belcher?
Ha! Exactly where I was going with that.
I’ve just binged the entire series twice in a row. I’m on S10 in round 2. Dunno why I like it so much.
Tina is definitely one of my favourites
Marshmallow and Rudy for me. :)
Ensure to make sure every doc has 17 giant sized images saying FU MS
I love to kill cops in GTA
