Libre Office instead of Microsoft Office 365

Write, calculate or present without Microsoft looking over your shoulder? You can do that with the free, open-source LibreOffice package. There you will find, among other things, word processing and spreadsheets. But it is also possible to create presentations and drawings without any problems.

LibreOffice

libreoffice.org – is “open source” software developed and maintained by a global community. The aim of the project is to give everyone access to powerful, open and free office software.

Similar to Microsoft Office, Libre Office consists of Writer – word processor, Calc – spreadsheet, Impress – presentations, Draw – drawings, Base – databases, Math – formula editor and a chart editor. A few features of LibreOffice:

• it is free and open source
• it is available in 110 languages
• it comes with most Linux distributions
• and is also available for Windows and macOS
• it is compatible with Microsoft Office
• Supports file formats including Open Document Format, MS Office formats, PDF.

A few more words about my background

As a former consultant I’m a die-hard MS Office professional. Ever since I wrote my first thesis with Microsoft Word for Windows Version 1.1 in 1992, Microsoft applications have been loyal and reliable companions. For a long time, I couldn’t imagine my day-to-day consulting work without Word, Powerpoint and Excel.

However, since it became known through the Edward Snowden publications that Microsoft collects generous user data for product improvement 😉 in all products and possibly passes it on to the NSA, the penny has dropped for me too.

I now use the LibreOffice suite and I’m not missing anything. And if something gets stuck, I always have to smile. I know that I

• pay no license fees
• not having to check the security settings after each update (so that nothing flows into the Microsoft cloud, for example)
• am completely private and can work easily