Do people even bother pirating this shit? Surely they just use one of the many free alternatives that do exactly the same job?
this post was submitted on 16 Jun 2026
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If I ever get a Mac I'm tempted to just for the hell of it.
I use LibreOffice and LibreOffice only. It does not do exactly the same job.
~~Isn't that a Firefox fork, not a productivity suite?~~
Edit: realized you meant FOSS software that didn't retain mainstream telemetry/ads
Oof. Those were typos. I meant LibreOffice ☠️ brainfart
Librewolf does everything any other browsers would do, and more!
Disclaimer: I wrote "idiot" to describe someone who paid for the product not because they're actually idiots, but it's because Microsoft is treating them like that: their official solution on the website is "simply subscribe to the latest and greatest or buy a new "perpetual" license to office 2024 to continue using what you paid for"
Nah I think you summed it up pretty well. People who bought an overpriced machine, and then decided they'd run overpriced software on it. Two companies I wouldn't touch with a galaxy sized pole. If they didn't learn anything from them before this, they will be as described.
Where do you buy a galaxy sized pole?
Costco
while I'm generally in support of paying for the product you get value from, this just goes to show that you should never purchase a Microsoft license. ever. they do not respect you, their agreement with you, or basic ethics. do not feel bad about pirating Microsoft products.
but even better, just use something else.
Yup. Libreoffice is epic af.
But 90% of my Excel usage is data transformation using VBA...
Time to learn python or javascript. You will learn a real language and get away from a Microsoft product.
I wouldn't even want to pirate it. I like LibreOffice a lot better.
I do some work for an org that is MS office centric. They provide me with an office license, and space in one drive. I essentially use office to check final output to share with them, but do the actual work in LO. The only thing that goes in onedrive is their stuff.
Honestly, excel is such overkill for the average user. Loding a csv in calc would probably be good enough for the majority.
I was actually taught how to use spreadsheets in Microsoft Works. Which was the cheaper home alternative to the Office suite, that was good enough to run a small business out of.
The usual lot says Excel is better. Haven't found a difference yet.
I used excel daily in a corporate environment for the last 10 years of my working life lots of VBA etc. I was the person people came to for excel help. I'm now retired and treasurer for a small non-profit and I use LibreOffice. It's good, but not as good. My needs are pretty basic now, so I'm not pushing the capabilities, but my main gripe for now is formatting pivot tables.
Your needs are pretty basic? Heh, pretty Visual BASIC!?
VISUAL BASIC FOR APPLICATIONS!?!
I understand for home use calc, especially, works just fine, but I have to deal with editing excel files at work daily... I can't even run VBA's. And if I save the file in calc it gets messed up.
The issue is the same as always, that some guy used excel first, and now I have to use it too otherwise I need to redo the entire excel file. I can't be bothered.
The company I work for pays horrors for the full MS suite. That alone should be enough to force some thinking.
But I digress.
I'm not a desk jokey but I have to fill a sheet daily and occasionally a few other documents. I only use LibreOffice.
When I first received the models, they were filled with errors and bad formatting. And printing the sheet always put out shrunk versions of the document, hard to read. I got printed copies along with the digital files, "in case I couldn't open the files".
My spreadsheet jailbroke the document, allowing me to rectify the errors and the prints come out using the entire sheet, with better end results than the official version.
Someone, very well paid, is wasting a lot of money.
What's most interesting and baffling to me is that most people think libreoffice "breaks" things. But so far, every time I looked into it, libreoffice "breaking something" usually flows like this:
- Excel implements some functionality in non-standard ways.
- Calc / libreoffice goes to apply the functionality using the correct, standard way.
- Sheet is now "broken", aka not with the expected data.
- I get yelled at for having dared to use Calc to copy paste some data in a file without even touching scrips or pivot tables or whatever the hell.
Every. Single. Fucking time.
I got to a point where I tell them to wank off if they ask me to do something and I don't have easy access to Windows.
"implementing things in non-standard ways", have been their modus operandi for about 3 decades now
Agreed, except I'd argue 4. I feel like it started with DOS
It's by design.
Calc will do nearly everything Exel will: but MS wants to lock people into their ecosystem. Hence why VBA is the way it is.
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Probably the most easiest software to replace: LibreOffice, OnlyOffice, Collabora...
Softmaker office...
Hows about you don’t even worry about pirating it and just move to opensource?
I’m far from a spreadsheet super user, but Excel really is in a class by itself. The rest of the office suite, however, is easily replaced by open source.
As someone who uses Excel on a daily basis: Excel is a bloated, unstable, bug-ridden pile of crap
Indeed a class of its own, at least since the fall of Lotus.
Try LibreOffice calc.
I think Word is harder to replace because formatting issues assuming documents are in word format
I use Calc, and it does just fine for my use case. But I know people in finance whose work relies on the powerful advanced features excel has and LO just doesn’t yet.
Funny enough, I haven’t touched a word processor or slide deck program in years.
But python is more of a first class citizen in libreCalc.
You can use Numpy, Pandas, matplotlib, etc... In both excel and librecalc since recently and excel has a hacky runtime inside of it that often has to be restarted if leaving it idle for too long.
You can do 10x what you can do in excel + VBS with python packages. Dataframes alone for data analysis is night and day compared to VBS hacks.
Sorry, but no. It's awful. Tried it out when I was doing my taxes. Basic shit is just hidden and convoluted it just not possible.
I find it even more convoluted in Excel. But it is subjective. In any case, I agree it is convoluted. I think (no proof) the old style Excel menus were used as basis for libreoffice.
But, just like with any software, search it once and you learn how. Takes a while but it's great when you get the hang and get everything set up for your use case.
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Good job Microsoft!
Meanwhile, in the few cases I need Excel, I just install Office 2013 in Wine. ~~Dunno if any later version works correctly, don't even really care tbh~~
That's a quality headline rewrite.
Microsoft is treating these losers the way they are asking to be treated.
Spank me, daddy.
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