[trynton]

@srazzaque: "For those situations where someone emails me an Excel or Word file that they would like my edits in, and I'm simply not in the position to extoll the virtues of open formats or coach them in Markdown or LaTeX, I have a Windows VM and office."

Why not get them to install LibreOffice and sent you the spreadsheet in the native format?

https://www.libreoffice.org/

[npteljes]

Because this creates friction, and from the other party's point of view, it's you who introduces it.

But I think MS Office Online, and to some extent ONLYOFFICE solves this problem mostly, no need for Windows or a VM.

[colejohnson66]

LibreOffice doesn’t format all Word documents the same. They’ve done an amazing job, but AFAIK, they haven’t solved every quirk. Also, if you use Excel, Calc doesn’t support everything from VBA. So esoteric VBA macros won’t work sometimes.

Don’t get me wrong, I’d love for LibreOffice to become better, but having Office on a second install is also a sortove “insurance” for when LibreOffice doesn’t work 100% on old documents.

(The Office XML based file formats are a lot better here. I’m mostly talking about the old OLE-dump pre-XML formats)