Free office applications: edit it!
A certain amount of the text part of my diploma was written on the Nokia E63 - it was urgent and late, so I had to work on the road, on transfers, at conferences, and the poor student had no laptop. Comfortable QWERTY-keyboard and affordable Internet allowed to type and edit text, even with a certain comfort. In general, I have some experience of perversions in typing.
Whether modern students - laptops, tablets, editors online and offline, collaborate on documents. It seems that problems are in the distant past.
However, even business manages today to face the difficulties of choosing an editor for working with documents, spreadsheets and presentations. Tension in the economy is now rising again, and many small and medium-sized businesses are striving to optimize costs as much as possible. Of course, they can not abandon automation, but try to save on software. Many managers transfer their employees to free analogues of well-known systems. First of all, this applies to the office suite, especially if the company does not conduct any supercomplicated calculations and does not work with colossal data sets (however, this does not have to be saved). And the problem here is not in the choice of a set of editors (there are a great many of them), namely, in the choice of an accessible and at the same time meeting the requirements of office tools package.
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To help such sufferers, I created a small cheat sheet onfree cheese to free document editors, online and offline. The basis of the function, which, as experience shows, is most often in demand in office work. Of course, we are talking about ordinary employees, not developers and project managers of development, although they would not hurt to look at the possibilities of these solutions. Such reviews are occasionally found on Habré, but rather quickly lose their relevance. The purpose of the post - to orient all afflicted office workers in the world of popular free office packages. This time, the test objects are the most current and constantly updated tools: LibreOffice , OpenOffice , ONLYOFFICE and Google Docs . The number of desktop: cloud - 2: 2, what is needed for a fair fight.
For those who are too lazy to read, a summary table of the main features of the editors:
The object of endless jokes, presentations, remain and will remain the most important business tool. This is not only the usual presentation slides for study, training or annual reporting to management and shareholders, it is also a good mechanism for creating demonstration and training videos that are so popular on Youtube.
Of course, leadership in this category belongs to almost identical in functionality LibreOffice and OpenOffice: they have everything that was familiar to see in PowerPoint. This is a variety of fine-tuning animation, and macros, and fields for notes, and spectacular transitions of slides. Plus, in desktop editors there are a lot of built-in galleries of media files : buttons, clip art , templates, switches. However, a question arises for users: do you often use clip art galleries or macros when creating presentations? And one more question: how often do you chase a presentation on an office file sharing or electronic office, preparing an important project for protection? Similarly, more often.
Then attention should be paid to cloud solutions, the main advantage of which is the ability to work together on the presentation . Both editors do not have a rich clip art, unique fonts like WordArt or FontWork (and it’s good that they don’t - their use is bad taste in presentations). In Google Docs, the animation of individual shapes is quite difficult to install and, in my opinion, looks very weak compared to the effects of desktop solutions. In turn, Google Docs loses in the interface - ONLYOFFICE looks more familiar, buttons and panels are expanded and accessible. In ONLYOFFICE, it is convenient to create tables in a presentation (highly demanded in reporting slideshows) - here the functionality is as close as possible to the desktop. The table is initially created formatted, with the necessary results highlighted - it remains to enter the data and, if necessary, change the style of the table in a couple of clicks. Google Docs creates a faceless sign, which has to be formatted for a long time, making unnecessary clicks and spending time, which, according to the law of office meanness, is usually not enough during the preparation of the presentation.
It is hard to believe, but in office work sometimes important things like trifles, which, as a rule, are not enough. For me personally, it was nice to find in ONLYOFFICE the possibility of replacing the type of autoshapes with just one click of the mouse. For example, the inscriptions are in rectangles, and suddenly it took to redo everything into circles. To do this, there is a replacement function type autoshapes. Naturally, the text has to be formatted a bit, but the task is much easier.
Conclusion: if you plan to prepare a corporate video based on beautifully moving figures and images, then you will definitely be offline. However, if your tasks are standard, and the discussion of each presentation exhausts your nerves from you and your colleagues, you should still turn to the possibility to create a presentation online - it will save great time and energy due to the possibilities of co-editing. In addition, you do not need to upload large presentations hundreds of times - it’s enough to send a link to the document to interested parties.
Tables are an essential tool in office work. Budget, business plan, reports, charts, comparisons, lists - everything is done in them. In my opinion, the most stringent requirements should be made specifically for the table editor - these are the specifics of working with numbers, lists, and data groups.
Is it a lot - 41,000 rows in a table? For most - a lot. However, hundreds of organizations have the need to work with data arrays that significantly exceed 41,000 values ​​in terms of volume - for example, bell sets, customer lists, product names of a retail store, and so on ... If you need to work with such data in a table or at least view them, you will have to abandon Google Docs - the tables set the limit on the number of rows to 41,000. In offline LibreOffice and OpenOffice, as well as in the online ONLYOFFICE there are no restrictions on the number of rows in the table.
If we are talking about data arrays, it is worth discussing sorting, filters, functions (formulas), macros, and pivot tables.
1. Sorting is good for all review participants; you can customize the main sorting column, take into account or ignore the first row. There are also no problems with setting filters and selecting data through filtering.
2. At the stage of building pivot tables, ONLYOFFICE drops out of the discussion - there is no such possibility in it. However, Google Docs can not boast of convenient pivot tables - their construction requires access to help even from an experienced user. In desktop solutions, summary tables are built as usual for an advanced user, but, of course, they are far from MS Excel - they are not so convenient and intuitive.
3. Formulas and functions
Of course, the palm of excellence in the number of functions belongs to desktop editors - the user receives the maximum set of rules of all types. Cloud participants are seriously lagging behind in this parameter, and their lag is multidirectional. So, Google Docs in its tables gives only five of the most primitive functions, suggests choosing the necessary functions from the extended list and redirecting in a new window to the list of functions of Google tables, from where the user can take the operators he needs. The advantage of these tables is that each function and its arguments are clearly described, each has a separate explanation page; the disadvantage is that the user is unlikely to want to dive into this exciting adventure in the process of doing work - the study of functions.
In ONLYOFFICE, functions appeared relatively recently, at least, in TeamLab of old versions (formerly Onlyoffice), I don’t remember them for sure. They are not less than in Google Docs, but, unlike Google, they are grouped in the usual Excel list. This is important - and here's why: firstly, the familiar interface, and secondly, each user works with a limited list of formulas needed to solve his tasks and gets used to choosing operators from the list in a couple of mouse clicks. However, an advanced user, who knows the functions he needs by heart, can put an equal sign in both cloud editors and start typing in the name of the operator - both editors will helpfully suggest a drop-down list of functions matching in pattern.
4. Macros
Needless to say that both cloud competitors suffer a crushing fiasco in part of the macros - they are not. Google Docs offers Google Apps Script - a programming language based on JavaScript and allowing you to extend the functionality of tables. But this post is about the needs of the main users of documents - managers, of which the vast majority have not heard, not only about JavaScript, but also about macros. In fact, I know a class of users who are extremely in demand for macros, but these people will not use open source editors and will be satisfied with the familiar and familiar Visual Basic.
Conclusion: if you need to simply and quickly create charts for presentations, a beautiful report, calculate basic values ​​and build statistics, then you can turn to cloud solutions. If your data is exorbitant, require macros, pivot tables and careful processing, then perhaps you should completely abandon the solutions considered open source and use MS Excel or MS Access.
Perhaps it is during the discussion of text editors that we should talk about real tough competition among the free solutions under consideration. And from my subjective point of view, desktop solutions in the context of the tendency to work quickly and conveniently lose - at least, in the eye-friendly display of text and in convenient toolbars. Well and, of course, they lose in the speed of opening a file - sometimes this process takes up to several minutes.
Both ONLYOFFICE and Google Docs do an excellent job with font and paragraph formatting, spell checking, and insertion of images and tables. Google Docs conquers with the ease of inserting formulas into the text (many people remember how much anguish this brings technical college students), ONLYOFFICE is surprised at the speed of processing large documents . The editors were fed a voluminous document as a guinea pig - a 120-page diploma with tables, pictures, formulas. So, Google Docs cheerfully drove away before the eyes the progress bar of loading the document, thought about it and gave an error, without having “eaten” this document. ONLYOFFICE, the online text editor, drove the progress bar literally a few seconds slower, but opened the document unchanged and allowed to start editing it. Considering that it is the coursework, diplomas, business plans and massive annual reports that need to work together on documents, this is a very significant fact that you will learn about only when using the editors
Of course, open source LibreOffice and OpenOffice throughout their history have incorporated many functions, such as frames, envelope printing, the calculation of formulas in the text, macros, autotext. Now admit - do you often use all this functionality? But working in a browser, chat inside a document, co-editing and the ability to share a document with one link with any number of people today are becoming a direct office need.
Free software, no matter how controversial it is, exists, develops and allows small companies to save on software. The importance of such savings is difficult to overestimate - many small and microbusiness enterprises, start-ups and individual entrepreneurs tend to reduce costs as much as possible not only at the beginning of their path, but also after the start.
Which product to choose is a matter of taste for everyone. Desktop applications are reliable, like a Kalashnikov machine gun, familiar, do not depend on the speed and stability of the Internet connection. Cloud systems are simple, functional, continuously evolving, but dependent on the Internet. Choosing a cloud solution, you can look at the infrastructure surrounding this solution - for example, working with Google Docs, you get simple integration with the entire world of Google, including Gmail. As a tiny firm and working with ONLYOFFICE editors, you get free cloud project management solutions and, in fact, a corporate portal. This is beneficial both for private users (freelancers, entrepreneurs, students), as well as for micro companies and small work groups.
Perhaps, modern cloud editors, so much loved by users, are not as perfect as desktop ones, but they are full of advantages, the main ones being collaboration and usual work for most people right in the browser. Moreover, if you observe the history of recent years, it is clear that online document editors are developing intensively and are striving to get as close as possible to the desktop. And for this, some flaws can be forgiven.
Whether modern students - laptops, tablets, editors online and offline, collaborate on documents. It seems that problems are in the distant past.
However, even business manages today to face the difficulties of choosing an editor for working with documents, spreadsheets and presentations. Tension in the economy is now rising again, and many small and medium-sized businesses are striving to optimize costs as much as possible. Of course, they can not abandon automation, but try to save on software. Many managers transfer their employees to free analogues of well-known systems. First of all, this applies to the office suite, especially if the company does not conduct any supercomplicated calculations and does not work with colossal data sets (however, this does not have to be saved). And the problem here is not in the choice of a set of editors (there are a great many of them), namely, in the choice of an accessible and at the same time meeting the requirements of office tools package.
')
To help such sufferers, I created a small cheat sheet on
For those who are too lazy to read, a summary table of the main features of the editors:
| Functional | Openoffice | Libreoffice | ONLYOFFICE | Google docs |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Presentations | ||||
| Work with tables | + | + | + | + |
| Additional objects (WordArt, clips) | + | + | - | - |
| Autoshap animation | + | + | - | + |
| Fast autoflash replacement | - | - | + | - |
| Work with charts | + | + | + | + |
| Tables | ||||
| Sort, filters | + | + | + | + |
| Summary Tables | + | + | - | + |
| Macros | + | + | - | - |
| Formulas and functions | + | + | + | + |
| Work with charts | + | + | + | + |
| Text editor | ||||
| Formatting | + | + | + | + |
| Work with tables | + | + | - | + |
| The speed of opening a large file (2 855 Kb) | 38 seconds | 43 seconds | 33 seconds | didn't open |
| Additional features | ||||
| Browser operation | - | - | + | + |
| Collaborative editing without conflicts | - | - | + | + |
| Chat inside work with the document | - | - | + | + |
| Commenting | + | + | + | + |
| - in the document | + | + | ||
| - in the additional field | + | + | ||
Presentations
The object of endless jokes, presentations, remain and will remain the most important business tool. This is not only the usual presentation slides for study, training or annual reporting to management and shareholders, it is also a good mechanism for creating demonstration and training videos that are so popular on Youtube.
Of course, leadership in this category belongs to almost identical in functionality LibreOffice and OpenOffice: they have everything that was familiar to see in PowerPoint. This is a variety of fine-tuning animation, and macros, and fields for notes, and spectacular transitions of slides. Plus, in desktop editors there are a lot of built-in galleries of media files : buttons, clip art , templates, switches. However, a question arises for users: do you often use clip art galleries or macros when creating presentations? And one more question: how often do you chase a presentation on an office file sharing or electronic office, preparing an important project for protection? Similarly, more often.
Then attention should be paid to cloud solutions, the main advantage of which is the ability to work together on the presentation . Both editors do not have a rich clip art, unique fonts like WordArt or FontWork (and it’s good that they don’t - their use is bad taste in presentations). In Google Docs, the animation of individual shapes is quite difficult to install and, in my opinion, looks very weak compared to the effects of desktop solutions. In turn, Google Docs loses in the interface - ONLYOFFICE looks more familiar, buttons and panels are expanded and accessible. In ONLYOFFICE, it is convenient to create tables in a presentation (highly demanded in reporting slideshows) - here the functionality is as close as possible to the desktop. The table is initially created formatted, with the necessary results highlighted - it remains to enter the data and, if necessary, change the style of the table in a couple of clicks. Google Docs creates a faceless sign, which has to be formatted for a long time, making unnecessary clicks and spending time, which, according to the law of office meanness, is usually not enough during the preparation of the presentation.
It is hard to believe, but in office work sometimes important things like trifles, which, as a rule, are not enough. For me personally, it was nice to find in ONLYOFFICE the possibility of replacing the type of autoshapes with just one click of the mouse. For example, the inscriptions are in rectangles, and suddenly it took to redo everything into circles. To do this, there is a replacement function type autoshapes. Naturally, the text has to be formatted a bit, but the task is much easier.
Conclusion: if you plan to prepare a corporate video based on beautifully moving figures and images, then you will definitely be offline. However, if your tasks are standard, and the discussion of each presentation exhausts your nerves from you and your colleagues, you should still turn to the possibility to create a presentation online - it will save great time and energy due to the possibilities of co-editing. In addition, you do not need to upload large presentations hundreds of times - it’s enough to send a link to the document to interested parties.
Tables
Tables are an essential tool in office work. Budget, business plan, reports, charts, comparisons, lists - everything is done in them. In my opinion, the most stringent requirements should be made specifically for the table editor - these are the specifics of working with numbers, lists, and data groups.
Is it a lot - 41,000 rows in a table? For most - a lot. However, hundreds of organizations have the need to work with data arrays that significantly exceed 41,000 values ​​in terms of volume - for example, bell sets, customer lists, product names of a retail store, and so on ... If you need to work with such data in a table or at least view them, you will have to abandon Google Docs - the tables set the limit on the number of rows to 41,000. In offline LibreOffice and OpenOffice, as well as in the online ONLYOFFICE there are no restrictions on the number of rows in the table.
If we are talking about data arrays, it is worth discussing sorting, filters, functions (formulas), macros, and pivot tables.
1. Sorting is good for all review participants; you can customize the main sorting column, take into account or ignore the first row. There are also no problems with setting filters and selecting data through filtering.
2. At the stage of building pivot tables, ONLYOFFICE drops out of the discussion - there is no such possibility in it. However, Google Docs can not boast of convenient pivot tables - their construction requires access to help even from an experienced user. In desktop solutions, summary tables are built as usual for an advanced user, but, of course, they are far from MS Excel - they are not so convenient and intuitive.
3. Formulas and functions
Of course, the palm of excellence in the number of functions belongs to desktop editors - the user receives the maximum set of rules of all types. Cloud participants are seriously lagging behind in this parameter, and their lag is multidirectional. So, Google Docs in its tables gives only five of the most primitive functions, suggests choosing the necessary functions from the extended list and redirecting in a new window to the list of functions of Google tables, from where the user can take the operators he needs. The advantage of these tables is that each function and its arguments are clearly described, each has a separate explanation page; the disadvantage is that the user is unlikely to want to dive into this exciting adventure in the process of doing work - the study of functions.
In ONLYOFFICE, functions appeared relatively recently, at least, in TeamLab of old versions (formerly Onlyoffice), I don’t remember them for sure. They are not less than in Google Docs, but, unlike Google, they are grouped in the usual Excel list. This is important - and here's why: firstly, the familiar interface, and secondly, each user works with a limited list of formulas needed to solve his tasks and gets used to choosing operators from the list in a couple of mouse clicks. However, an advanced user, who knows the functions he needs by heart, can put an equal sign in both cloud editors and start typing in the name of the operator - both editors will helpfully suggest a drop-down list of functions matching in pattern.
4. Macros
Needless to say that both cloud competitors suffer a crushing fiasco in part of the macros - they are not. Google Docs offers Google Apps Script - a programming language based on JavaScript and allowing you to extend the functionality of tables. But this post is about the needs of the main users of documents - managers, of which the vast majority have not heard, not only about JavaScript, but also about macros. In fact, I know a class of users who are extremely in demand for macros, but these people will not use open source editors and will be satisfied with the familiar and familiar Visual Basic.
Conclusion: if you need to simply and quickly create charts for presentations, a beautiful report, calculate basic values ​​and build statistics, then you can turn to cloud solutions. If your data is exorbitant, require macros, pivot tables and careful processing, then perhaps you should completely abandon the solutions considered open source and use MS Excel or MS Access.
Text editors
Perhaps it is during the discussion of text editors that we should talk about real tough competition among the free solutions under consideration. And from my subjective point of view, desktop solutions in the context of the tendency to work quickly and conveniently lose - at least, in the eye-friendly display of text and in convenient toolbars. Well and, of course, they lose in the speed of opening a file - sometimes this process takes up to several minutes.
Both ONLYOFFICE and Google Docs do an excellent job with font and paragraph formatting, spell checking, and insertion of images and tables. Google Docs conquers with the ease of inserting formulas into the text (many people remember how much anguish this brings technical college students), ONLYOFFICE is surprised at the speed of processing large documents . The editors were fed a voluminous document as a guinea pig - a 120-page diploma with tables, pictures, formulas. So, Google Docs cheerfully drove away before the eyes the progress bar of loading the document, thought about it and gave an error, without having “eaten” this document. ONLYOFFICE, the online text editor, drove the progress bar literally a few seconds slower, but opened the document unchanged and allowed to start editing it. Considering that it is the coursework, diplomas, business plans and massive annual reports that need to work together on documents, this is a very significant fact that you will learn about only when using the editors
Of course, open source LibreOffice and OpenOffice throughout their history have incorporated many functions, such as frames, envelope printing, the calculation of formulas in the text, macros, autotext. Now admit - do you often use all this functionality? But working in a browser, chat inside a document, co-editing and the ability to share a document with one link with any number of people today are becoming a direct office need.
Offices for offices
Free software, no matter how controversial it is, exists, develops and allows small companies to save on software. The importance of such savings is difficult to overestimate - many small and microbusiness enterprises, start-ups and individual entrepreneurs tend to reduce costs as much as possible not only at the beginning of their path, but also after the start.
Which product to choose is a matter of taste for everyone. Desktop applications are reliable, like a Kalashnikov machine gun, familiar, do not depend on the speed and stability of the Internet connection. Cloud systems are simple, functional, continuously evolving, but dependent on the Internet. Choosing a cloud solution, you can look at the infrastructure surrounding this solution - for example, working with Google Docs, you get simple integration with the entire world of Google, including Gmail. As a tiny firm and working with ONLYOFFICE editors, you get free cloud project management solutions and, in fact, a corporate portal. This is beneficial both for private users (freelancers, entrepreneurs, students), as well as for micro companies and small work groups.
Perhaps, modern cloud editors, so much loved by users, are not as perfect as desktop ones, but they are full of advantages, the main ones being collaboration and usual work for most people right in the browser. Moreover, if you observe the history of recent years, it is clear that online document editors are developing intensively and are striving to get as close as possible to the desktop. And for this, some flaws can be forgiven.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/241187/
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