this post was submitted on 18 Jan 2026
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Fortunately it takes only around 5 minutes of customizing the appearance of libreoffice to have it exactly how you want it
I haven't used spreadsheet software in decades, but I have helped some convert to Windows to Linux. Some of them did use Excel, and therefore had to learn to use LibreOffice Calc, and while they had some expected difficulties during the initial learning curve, they did say a few months later to me that they were eventually satisfied with the software.
Nevertheless, I'm sure much like the GIMP/Photoshop comparison, Excel simply has features that Calc doesn't.
I am mildly curious. Could you give an example of a feature that its likely many businesses and/or individuals use in Excel that simply doesn't exist in, or is too difficult to implement in Calc?
My bet is that there’s some weirdly complex things that become too niche edge cases that are difficult to transfer.
My opinion is when your logic becomes too complicated, maybe you want to have some sort of custom software. But, on the other hand, I understand that if it works already, there’s no need to break it either.
There are several types of basic Excel formulaes that don't work on web Excel, and are ofc not in Calc either. Same with VBA integrations (within Excel and other Office/Windows services) that are used as core data transformation infrastructure to run entire companies, lmao.
I was not aware of these. Thank you for making me aware of them.
I use excel for my daily work. I have no idea what Power Query is. I have never used a pivot table. I use xlookup maybe once a year. My co-workers immediately zone out when I try to explain that function to them. Most of them use + - * / sum and maybe an average from time to time. They think I'm a hacker because I wrote a custom function for a calculation I frequently need.
From my experience with people in offices I'm pretty sure I'm on the tech savvier side of the user base and the vast majority of users will never actually see the difference in functionality between excel and calc.
I would imagine the vast majority of Excel written everywhere uses very basic features.
Not necessarily. It's often less Calc's capability that is at issue, and moreso its compatibility with imported sheets. Calc tends to have every feature I need when I make a spreadsheet.
As if any amount of customisation is going to make LibreOffice not look like a janky mess on anything except the exact desktop environment and DPI settings one developer had...
Not that appearance is the most important thing in the app but whenever I open up Calc and half the UI is in dark mode, the other in light mode, half the UI is scaled to one DPI half to another, all the icons look like the best an unpaid software developer could do with 5 minutes in The GIMP circa 1995, it makes me cry a little bit.