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this post was submitted on 18 Sep 2025
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Yeah, I've dumped all mikroshite from my devices for FOSS software. Only my work laptop has it and I never do anything personal with that. Libre Office, Thunderbird, Notesnook. Also considering Obsidian and Joplin.
Which one is the Excel replacement and how does it compare? We all know companies buy office mostly just for excel...
LibreOffice Calc. I think it still has some performance issues vs Excel with extremely large files, and it can only do 1024 columns. Also LibreOffice Basic can do a lot of what VBA could but the syntax is different and I don’t think it integrates well with the rest of the system like VBA’s COM integration (as unsafe as that was)
If you aren’t pushing Excel to its absolute limits then it’s more than enough.
What about tables, pivot tables, power query, grouping of rows and columns , and how is formula/function parity (xlookup, index, match, sumproduct, etc)?
I've made some truly Frankenstein sheets that I'm not sure could be stitched together elsewhere.
I don't have any issues. It's free to download to any operating system. So give it a try. See if it can open your existing Excel spreadsheets
Why excel for super complex computations? At some point, just code your solution instead... It's easier than troubleshooting Excel
I am having vague nightmares of the Momte Carlo and Black Scholes sheets we would have to compile for financial engineering classes in college...
You could try SoftMaker office for 30 days to see if their version of Excel is better.
Yearly subscription: https://www.softmaker.com/en/products/softmaker-office/download Perpetual license: https://www.softmaker.com/en/products/softmaker-office/download-permanent-version Comparing the different versions: https://www.softmaker.com/en/products/softmaker-office/order-all
Bonus is that the license will work regardless if you use Linux, Mac or Windows. And the 2024 version is GDPR compliant.
Obsidian is sadly not FOSS, but aside of that, it's amazing (and entirely user-supported, not relying on VC profit-seeking).