That is not possible in LibreOffice. Therefore on import the table is put into a frame. But a frame cannot split about several pages. Or another example: LibreOffice Writer has the ability to vary the vertical position of an image anchored as character, that is not possible in Word.
Microsoft Office remains to be a powerful platform among the office suits, however, with the rise of free alternative office suites like LibreOffice and Apache’s OpenOffice to Microsoft Office, the question arises if you have to switch from Microsoft Office to the open source Office suites. Both the Microsoft Office and Open source Office suits have their pros and cons, and one of the biggest decision you may have to face is to pick one among them.
Are you planning to upgrade from your old Office suite or looking out for a changeover to new Office suites? Well, choosing between a commercially licensed Microsoft Office suite and an open-source platform like LibreOffice or an OpenOffice purely depends on how it fits your needs.
Commercial Productivity Suite vs Open Source Productivity Suite
Commercial Softwares is developed by a for-profit corporation which requires funding to keep the company operating. The commercial software like the Microsoft Office suite, in this case, requires you to purchase a license as opposed to Open source software which is developed by a dedicated group of developer, with the main motto for helping the community and is available for free or almost fewer prices to keep the company operating.
One good thing about Open Source Office suites is that the productivity platform and its updates cost absolutely nothing. Since it doesn’t have any licenses tagged to it, you can have multiple suits installed on your various devices. However, Microsoft Office suite, on the other hand, requires you to purchase a software license whose cost depends on the edition. Unlike LibreOffice or OpenOffice, Microsoft Office suite doesn’t provide the flexibility of installing multiple copies of Office suits on various devices for free as you need to buy a licensed copy and install it only on a specific number of devices depending on the copies of licenses you have purchased.
One feature that makes Microsoft Office suite stand out is that it has an excellent cross-platform collaboration which lets you save documents on the cloud that can be opened and edited anywhere you would like. On the Contrary, the Open Source office suite has certain cloud limitations and may allow you only to view files.
OpenOffice vs LibreOffice
A brief about Open Source tool, both LibreOffice and Apache OpenOffice being derived from the same source code, you may not find any differences in the attributes between these two tools. Both the LibreOffice and Open Office share almost similar features. It offers tools like the word processor, spreadsheets and slide presentation that are equivalent to both the platforms. However, LibreOffice is popular than OpenOffice for its extra features and is faster compared to Open Office suites.
That being said, picking the best Office suites among the three platforms is a daunting task, and you may have to consider many factors before you choose one for your organization. In this article, we will have a closer look at the three Office suites and help you decide which among the productivity platform fits best for your organizations.
Microsoft Office vs OpenOffice vs LibreOffice
Features
Microsoft Office suite has a tab-based interface with the ribbon toolbar as opposed to Open Source Office suites which have the traditional style interface. When it comes to spelling and grammar checking, Microsoft Office suite has an inbuilt spell check tool whereas open source office suites like OpenOffice and LibreOffice need you to install an additional extension for spelling and grammar check. Both the Libre Office and Open Office have similar productivity tools with the same tool names.
The Office suites contain tools like Calc used as spreadsheet software, Impress used as presentation software, and Writer used as word processing software. Additionally, it has tools like Draw, Math, and Base. Microsoft Office suite, on the other hand, has similar tools like Microsoft Word, PowerPoint, Microsoft Visio, Microsoft Access equivalent and Mathematical formula software.
LibreOffice 6.2, released in early February, includes a new “NotebookBar” user interface as an alternative to the traditional one.
System Requirements and Compatibility
All three Office suites work on most of the systems. Microsoft Office works on all devices like Windows, Mac, Linux, Android, iOS, etc. On the other hand, LibreOffice and OpenOffice work well with Linux, Windows, and Mac. The Open source office suites are best suited if your using older systems as it doesn’t require much hard disk space as opposed to Microsoft Office which requires a minimum of 3GB of hard-disk space.
Cost
Unlike Microsoft Office Suite, LibreOffice and OpenOffice are free which includes a complete package of the word processor, database, spreadsheets and presentations programs.
Security
All three office suites are almost secured to a certain degree if you follow the standard security guidelines. The Libre Office and Open Office suites being open source platform are released with the patches and updates by volunteers without any permission in case of security issues. On the other hand, Microsoft Office keeps their code secret to protect from hackers. Upgrades to the new version in Microsoft Office aren’t always free though some of the smaller updates cost nothing.
Conclusion
All three Office suites offer a solid platform supporting the Office productivity tools. One of the main factors that help in choosing software is the cost of licensing the software. If cost is not a constraint then, Microsoft Office or Office 365 wins hand down. However, Open Source Office suites like LibreOffice and OpenOffice are impressive than Microsoft Office suites if you are looking for a good value for money – as they are free.
However, it is not worth the time for a complete changeover if the budget for licensing is not a matter of concern and if you are satisfied with the existing suite features. On the other hand, Microsoft Office always continues to play a solid platform and offers robust features than the open source Office suites. Microsoft Office is definitely an ideal choice if your organization uses a platform that matches well with the Microsoft based technologies.
Your views?
TIP: SoftMaker FreeOffice, ThinkFree Office, and Kingsoft WPS Office are other free Office alternative software you can take a look at.
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The Document Foundation LibreOffice 4
If you're feeling like an overtaxed and unappreciated serf in Microsoft's kingdom, LibreOffice 4 might just offer the freedom you seek. An extremely capable office suite, LibreOffice 4 is also highly configurable, extensible, and cross-platform. It supports OS X and Linux in addition to all flavors of Windows. It's also free—not an insignificant attribute for most of us.
LibreOffice Writer
I'm writing this article using Writer and enjoying every moment of the process. For pure writing and editing, it's simply more in tune with my methods than anything else I've tried. I don't miss Microsoft Word's pitiable grammar checking one bit. Writer's grammar checker is better, and the spell checker and other tools are also top-notch.
Writer is enough like Word that the transitional learning curve is minimal, and I've yet to find an important feature missing. Indeed, it has some of its own, such as the predictive word assistance similar to the one Microsoft has on its phone software, but has never bothered to implement it in Word. It offers only one word—not a choice of several, as Microsoft's does—but it is handy on occasion.
The one thing that's truly held me back from Office alternatives over the years was lack of support for Word's Track Changes feature, which is a mainstay for many writers and editors. Writer fully supports revisions and presents them in more tasteful default colors. One feature I do miss is the Word's formatting paintbrush, but I don't miss it enough to go back.
Bloggers and website writers take note: Writer supports HTML, and if your content management system supports the CMIS interoperability standard, you can user Writer to edit your CMS entries and articles as well.
LibreOffice Calc
Calc proved a very pleasant surprise by loading every Excel spreadsheet I have and mimicking the formatting perfectly. I'm heavy on the conditional formatting and Calc does it better than Excel, extending it and recalculating automatically when I copy in another row. Excel requires manual intervention.
The one disappointing area of Calc is macros. Calc has its own capable macro and programming language, but it's largely incompatible with Office's VBA, so I had to redo the range names and macros for my hardware ratings sheets. But from there it was easy to attach them to the button objects I employ for sorts and the like.
Note: Calc retains VBA macros when it saves files in Excel format, unless you tell it not to.
LibreOffice Base
Base is capable enough that I'm seriously considering moving my invoicing system over to it from Access. It has all the basic features, including forms, reports, SQL, and relational multiple table support.
It can connect to external databases, including those from Microsoft Access. Base doesn't import Access forms and reports, but its form design wizard and editor are good enough that recreating them is a not an unduly tedious task. Subforms are supported so you can display multiple tables in a single form.
Base requires Java for its own databases. However, as a front end for external databases such as the Access database I used in my hands-on, Java is not required.
My test database had only about a thousand records, so I can't say how well Base scales. Feature-wise, it's strictly an end-user database. There are no means to make a database run as a standalone.
LibreOffice Impress
Impress didn't display some portions of PowerPoint presentations imported, so in that regard it was one of the less successful modules in LibreOffice.
However, Impress is quite facile at creating presentations, and it exports to PDF, which is the format I see most often these days. PDFs don't require proprietary software, namely PowerPoint, to render. A design wizard and a decent collection of nice-looking templates help to get you started.
LibreOffice Math and Draw
Both the Math (formula rendering and shaping) and Draw applications are capable. I found the Draw program and its myriad shapes and objects particularly useful and easy. You can also use the Draw app to create presentations.
Interface and Compatibility
LibreOffice's interface is enough like Microsoft Office's that few users will have trouble adjusting to it. It also give you complete control over the contents of menus and toolbars, as well as the actions invoked by keyboard shortcuts. This makes it easy to emulate a program you might be more familiar with, or to streamline your workflow by hiding features you don't use. Personally, I decidedly do not miss Office 2010's window-obscuring menu, poor organization of options, and too-many-clicks interface.
As much as I like LibreOffice, I do have some minor gripes. I do not like the mixing of document types in the recent files list in all the modules. When I'm in Writer, I want to see Writer documents, not the database files and spreadsheets I've been working with. At the very least, they should be divided by type. On the other hand, I like it that LibreOffice provides other types of documents under the “New File” heading. Yes, some reviewers are just hard to please.
Libreoffice Writer Ms Word
Note that the inline help is a separate download. There are also a lot of very nice guides available for download as well as extensions that add capabilities to all the modules.
Conclusion: Try it
Where Microsoft seems focused on changing the look of its products and optimizing them for tablets, LibreOffice is improving basic functionality and efficiency with an eye for the desktop. It's not perfect, but neither is the competition. Document compatibility with Office and just about every other standard is so good that the average user can make the switch without qualms in that regard.
On the downside, macro and programming incompatibilities in Base and Calc will be a problem for some, and there will undoubtedly be a feature missing here or there that some user just won't be able to live without.
Unless you are playing against a total newbie who loves to mash combo breakers and get himself locked out, combo breakers happen all the time. For example, while the combo/counter break system seems like it would be fun and fair, really it just makes the game feel sloppy.
But put aside those years of disappointing alternatives to Office and take a look at LibreOffice 4. Really. I mean really as in click on the download button and install it. I think you'll be pleasantly surprised.
Note: The Download button takes you to the vendor's site, where you can download the latest version of the software.
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The Document Foundation LibreOffice 4
If your needs don't include macro and programming compatibility, this office suite might just wean you away from Microsoft.Pros
- Super-capable
- Supports revisions
- Compatible with Microsoft's Office file formats