[dba-Tech] Alternatives to MS Office

[Arthur Fuller]

There are several, the most notable being OpenOffice and LibreOffice. The
latter stemmed from a fork in the open-souce former, and has introduced
some new features, such as file-compatibility with MS Office, while still
embracing the Open Document format.

I personally have not upgraded MS Office since the patches to 2007. I tried
a couple of the evaluation copies, and saw no significant reason to
upgrade. And now that LibreOffice has in version 6.x document-compatibility
with MS Office, I think I'm almost free of MS Office.

On the other hand, and I recognize that this reason to stay appeals to a
select few, you included, the biggest thing is Visual Basic for
Applications (VBA). Not to inflate my tent too much, but thanks to VBA I
have written some spectacular code that combines Word, Access, and Excel,
and reduced in one case (Franklin Templeton) reduced what used to take two
persons two weeks apiece to one single button-click; the sequence of ops.
That's the single piece of Office that's missing from Libre and Open, and
sadly, it's essential.

-- 
Arthur