Apache OpenOffice vs. LibreOffice

In my opinion, Apache OpenOffice is best suited for writing, editing and proofreading texts in any language. You can also download additional language packages that really take up little space in your PC's storage. Of course, Apache OpenOffice is comprehensive of spreadsheet-/drawing-/database-related softwares and so on, but I primarily use it for writing and editing my own texts. I don't see any scenarios where it is less appropriate, at least so far.

Incentivized

LibreOffice is well-suited for just about anyone who has used MS Office or Google Docs. I find it to be more powerful and feature-rich than both, and its ease of use and intuitiveness are far better. I've primarily used Writer and Calc, but also have some experience with Impress, Draw, and Base, and find them top-notch as well. On the other side of things, I find collaboration to be more difficult than with Google Docs, and to a degree, even MS Office. LibreOffice does have a fairly robust Tools > Share Spreadsheet… feature, but I've never been able to find one for Writer. I have little need for collaboration, but when I once did, I found it somewhat convoluted.

Incentivized

• The number one strength of OpenOffice is the flexibility it gives. We can open any file type, save any file type - it's pretty much invincible. Even if we're going to work on this in a different program, just being able to open some of these ancient files that we get from local city governments is a huge win for us.
• It's also administrator friendly - I'll use it a lot on the road because the licensing is so much easier to deal with than trying to check out a license from a server or make sure that everybody has internet connectivity.
• It just looks pretty! It's legitimately a quality product, the layout looks good, it's not nearly as pushy as "other suites," and for the money it's the best!

Incentivized

• The text word processing (Writer) has come a long way and, if you are able to install your corporate fonts, there is basically nothing LibreOffice cannot handle. It works very well with document reviews and comments, and it can save in a variety of formats, making it compatible with the likes of Microsoft Word or Google Docs.
• The spreadsheet software (Calc) can also handle most of the common tasks you may need, link various sheets, and perform some automated functions quite well. It is, I must say, somewhat less complete than the word processing side (Writer).
• The Draw program allows you to do organizational charts and basic publications very well. It was a deficit in the past, but not anymore.

Incentivized

• Some people used to Microsoft products can feel it's a little bit old in its style
• I saves documents in its native format, which is incompatible with MS Word or Excel, unless you change that in the preferences tab
• The UI is not very pretty

Incentivized

• It doesn't provide all the functions it should with a paid subscription.
• There are features that are only available with Premium and I have premium and they are still not available.
• Paying for the premium version doesn't provide additional services than free version
• Customer service is nonresponsive and has been nonresponsive for years even prior to COVID.

It is a cheap alternative; however, with Microsoft 365 licenses also dropping significantly, we might opt to go in that direction to maintain uniformity.

Incentivized

We use it consistently and have a lot of documents in the OpenDocument format so it will be necessary to use LibreOffice or a compatible product such as Openoffice in the future to be able to open these files. Because the license fee for Libreoffice is zero it is not very costly to keep using it - the costs are mostly for keeping it installed on the office PCs and regularly updated, and solving employee issues with the user support.

Incentivized

It's good overall, just the UI it's not the prettiest, feels like an older version of MS office, but gets the job done. Once get the hang of it it's easy to use, besides it has great documentation on how to use it and there are many forums that discuss many related topics.

Incentivized

Its user interface is easy to navigate. Its right-click menus couldn't be more intuitive, at least for me. And, I find it has all the features I need for my business and for several of my clients' businesses, provided in a format that even non-savvy computer users can use with ease. Creating things like tables or forms is quite easy. And, every day business documents are inherently user-friendly.

Incentivized

Libreoffice is a desktop app not requiring any server part so it is always available when the PC is working normally. Installing it on another machine if one PC fails is very quick and easy. This is a non-issue.

Incentivized

For big/imported tables or text documents with images loaded from the internet it is sometimes getting very slow, RAM and CPU intensive, and sometimes even hangs due to some memory leaks or other bugs. This is a long-term problem and is still not resolved perfectly.

Incentivized

Is there really support? There is a user forum but I do not see much developer input. Support options are limited. The most recent (Sept 2019) version of the product seems to have issues operating under Windows 10, yet there are few recent comments in the community forum, most comments are regarding older versions.

Incentivized

Support is not officially offered. However, you can find answers to any usage questions or trouble-shooting online easily, typically starting with a Google search. (I believe that all forums / tips for OpenOffice apply equally to LibreOffice, and vice versa.) While Microsoft Office, for example, officially includes support, I find that typically you end up going to a Google search in any case. So, this is not really a downside. However, in all these cases, you end up doing a lot of figuring things out for yourself.

Incentivized

We found that it is possible to use Open Office to accomplish everything we need. Some tasks required searching for steps on Google.

Incentivized

Generally easy to perform, issues are how to ensure regular automatic updates on Mac OS X. Fortunatly we have only a few machines with OS X run by management and we can do these updates manually occasionally. Windows updates are quite easy with the support of third party software such as Ninite or Chocolatey, and Linux updates are super-easy thanks to the package manager (apt-get).

Incentivized

Apache OpenOffice is less intense on our computer systems and saves us a ton of financial resources. Since our document creation and editing needs are typical of a small business and not very complex, Apache OpenOffice is sufficient for us. We think that almost any smaller to medium sized business would feel the same way if they don't have a need to make or edit complex documents.

Incentivized

As noted previously, LibreOffice blows Google Docs (G Suite) out of the water in terms of singular application quality, and comes close but misses the mark as a drop-in replacement to Microsoft Office. We currently are evaluating the latest release of LibreOffice to see if we can replace Microsoft Office with it entirely as we've had more time to fill in the holes that were left when losing out on Outlook and OneNote and all of the integrations that come with Microsoft Office.

Incentivized

With more users using it in the company there are more cases when a simultaneous editing of the same document is needed and this feature is lacking in Libreoffice even though the files concerned are shared and synced by some solution (we use ownCloud). Google Docs or MS Office365 via Sharepoint/Onedrive offer a better function for this.

Incentivized

• Moving to OpenOffice will save the company the cost of 500+ of Microsoft Office licenses in our company.
• Because it is cross-platform, we could also save 500+ of Microsoft Windows licenses if we move everyone to Linux.
• On the negative side, the lack of online collaboration and browser support may be an issue when you use clouds like Box, Workboard etc.

Incentivized

• I am able to quickly create and edit word processing documents and spreadsheets which are for all intents and purposes equivalent to documents I could create and edit in other tools such as Microsoft Office and Google Docs/Sheets.
• Lack of an online portal for sharing documents necessitates the use of Google Sheets for automation/integration. Ideal would be an all-in-one solution.
• Having open-source software that provides common functionality eliminates the need for expensive licenses.
• Lack of dedicated support is negligible. Most issues can be resolved using online search.

Incentivized