https://www.libreoffice.org/ for anyone who wants microsoft to stop messing with their office apps.
I second this. There’s a little bit of a learning curve on some of the functionality, but it’s not bad at all. And most of the functionality is very easy to find. I moved over to Libre Office several years ago and it’s been great.
Office would have a learning curve too if you hadn’t been using it since you were a child.
There is also only office which has better compatibility with MSOffice file types
This here.
I wish Only Office got as much fanfare as LibreOffice. The UI is much closer to Microsoft Office and it tends to have better compatibility.
I have both installed though and use them both lol.
OnlyOffice is Russian-owned, via a holding company in Singapore. When Russia invaded Ukraine and sanctions threatened the business, they obfuscated this, but it’s still Lev Bannov’s product.
The importance you attach to this is up to you, but they try quite hard to hide it.
Mm knowing that makes me never want to go anywhere near OnlyOffice now, oof.
Libreoffice their latest blogpost is from the 20th of August 2025. There have been a few releases in the past few months as well.
Openoffice their latest ( Apache Openoffice 4.1.15 ) was released almost 2 years ago ( December 2023 ).
Libreoffice seems like a more recent, better supported tool over Openoffice which hasn’t seen any updates since 2023 according to their own website.
I’m on my phone, so I didn’t search extensively. But I think that also plays a role in why there’s a much larger fanbase for libreoffice rather than Openoffice.
I’ve no recent experience with either so I can’t comment on how well either works.
Edit: I looked up the wrong one. My statement remains correct w.r.t. Openoffice, but they mentioned Onlyoffice which is a different product.
I believe Open Office and Only Office are different products.
Only Office had a major release in June, 2025.
And you are correct that Open Office last update was back in December 2023.
You are correct. I misread ( or my brain farted ) and looked up the wrong one.
I suppose this means Microsoft will not count Word doc file sizes against users’ cloud storage quotas, right? Right??
🤣
It’ll be like Google: everything goes in, nothing comes out unless you jump through difficult hoops, price continually goes up.
Where do you think Google learned it?
? Google invented it.
Getting anything out is already almost impossible. I moved sway from 3rd party cloud storage a couple years back. I had to get 500gb from onedrive and it was refusing to download at anything more than 50kb/s (my internet was significantly better than that)
Mario_Kart8_deluxe.iso.docx
Anakinsmirk.jpg
tip: do not write about the revolution, short stories, hatred of capitalism, your suicide plans, or your teenage angst and erotic anthropomorphic horse fan fiction.
tip: Only write about the revolution, short stories about your hatred of capitalism, your suicide plans, your teenage angst, and erotic anthropomorphic horse fan fiction.
For everything else, use LibreOffice.
directions unclear, now I’m directing a netflix special on sexy horse guerrillas.
Ugh, the ai spellcheck is broken and I’m writing a Netflix special in six hearse gorillas.
Season one was excellent, it ended on a cliff hanger though. Netflix did not renew for a second season.
would watch
So just bpmb threats and realistic beastiality. Got it.
Tina Belcher?
Ha! Exactly where I was going with that.
Ensure to make sure every doc has 17 giant sized images saying FU MS
You can turn it off. Opt-out is still bullshit.
you can turn it off (for now)
You can make yourself believe that you turned it off for now*
Yes Ms is secretly stealing from users across the world and yet not a single security researcher has found it. AND ALEXA IS LISTENING TO ME 24X365 DAYS A YEAR!
not a single security researcher has found it
They do find it regularly. Its not even a secret, they are openly advertising it as a feature.
AND ALEXA IS LISTENING TO ME 24X365 DAYS A YEAR!
It is… thats its purpose…
I think you are in the wrong place on lemmy if you are so willingly blind to the realities of tech companies.
The true opt out is to stop using Microsoft products
Let’s say this huge breach of security and privacy is okay.
How are Microsoft ensuring these sensitive documents are not being transferred via or stored on servers located in hostile countries with lax data laws (such as foreign nations like the USA?).
Microsoft has already said it doesn’t matter where your data is stored, it isn’t safe from the United States.
But you can change this behaviour in settings, it’s just the default for now.
So, if you don’t trust Microsoft to handle your documents, but still somehow use MS Word and OneDrive, for the moment you can still stop it from saving your Word documents to their servers.
wdym, that’s the point
What if I’m using a pirated copy of windows and office?
You get deported to Uganda.
Uganda be kiddin’ me.
Kenya believe it?
I’m not Ghana believe it.
lmao
Which means an AI scans it…
No for most it’s customers and an option for them all. MS is very clear in its policies. Any AI services you use, isn’t sent back for training. The policy is very clearly explained and one of the clearer ones.
Business or enterprise users data isn’t trained and individuals data can opt out
I remember when facebook had a policy to require users to opt-in to having third parties scrape users data, but then it turned out a “bug” caused FB to sell everyones data anyway and they made billions more money than they would have.
I have no doubt a similar “bug” will make its way to the MS servers if one hasnt already.
Seriously, Microsoft!?!?
Is this on Macs too?!?
Is this on Macs too?!?
Not mine, then again I use nothing Microsoft on my Mac.
tell your friends.
I actually appreciate this. The only place I use Word is at work, and nothing I create in Word at work is ‘mine’. I do not care at all about the security of things I do at work (that’s for our IT Security team to care about), and all this means is that if I accidentally screw up, or if my computer just up and dies on me… all of my work files should be ‘safe’.
My employer has been going very hard towards ensuring that our work computers can ONLY be used for work purposes. Once I accepted this and embraced it I found that I’m now 100% free of Microsoft for anything personal, and it is amazing.
there is a reaching hand that goes further than just using it for work.
lets say you open libreoffice writer and write a party invite. you send this party invite to a friend - they are invited to your party.
your friend opens it in MSWord, its uploaded to the cloud and scraped for all of your personal data to train their AI and to be sold to the lowest bidder.
you had and want nothing to do with microsoft, but they are still harvesting your data.
Export to a .pdf, automatically opens by default in user browser via local storage as a reader, bypasses MS
This is still problematic shit though, on the same level as enabling Recall by default and encrypting W11 storage devices by default.
I agree, however you’re never going to be able to fully control things that you’ve sent out for other people. Even this post can, and likely will, end up as training data for AI. ‘The only winning move is not to play’ applies to a lot of things in life, and if you truly want to protect your data then the best move is to not create any data. The second best move is to not share any data that you’ve created.
I mean, I’m in the same boat. This doesn’t effect me except for work stuff. But here’s the thing, all of my documents are already backed up to the cloud via OneDrive settings. So this is redundant at best.
At the end of the day, one of the reasons I hate the MS experience is because they push things on you. Its not your PC, its theirs. Hey, you want to use OneDrive? No? Are you sure? No? Are you really sure? No? Why don’t I just turn it on for you so you can see how great it is. You must have turned it off by accident, let me turn it back on. OK, OK I get it you really don’t want to use onedrive. Oh, I forgot that fact once our annual update came out and undid that setting. You straight out uninstalled onedirve and altered your registry? Ok, how about we just upload Word documents for you.
Part of why I still hate it at work; work knows almost everything about me. People with poor understanding of PII have my personal information, and use MS products. Microsoft knows all of that, and everything that I type, the notes I make, the phrases I use, inferences on my interests, and can combine that with other profiles. It helps put together a much more complete picture and profile of me and why I interface with. And I can’t opt out, can’t use Linux, and can’t just go somewhere else to avoid it.
I’m interested in how they’re gonna enforce this with my copy of word 2007.
They auto updated my 2007 to 365 when my firewall crashed (I had the updated blocked) and then required a subscription. This has happened twice and is such a pain in the ass to reverse. I switched to Libreoffice.
the new libreoffice won’t run on your vista.
Silence! The great Microsoft has decreed that from this day forward your documents belong to them! No dissension!
Proceed to the payment portal to pay your offerings immediately. Only those worthy enough to pay for the ExtraTM and PremiumTM tiers will be allowed to use the File menu.
Munoz backs up the decision with half a dozen advantages for saving documents to the cloud. From never losing progress and access anywhere to easy collaboration and increased security and compliance.
Munoz kept out the little details where nobody wants this and this is only a good thing for Microsoft
I don’t get it, does Microsoft WANT everyone to stop using their products? First they fuck up their OSes, then they start planting shady shit in their OSes, and now it’s down to every single goddamned piece of software they poop out! What in the fuck are they even doing!
I’m pretty sure most regular users will not even notice the charge, and find it useful down the line. Cause one day they will mess something up, complain to MS that they “lost their work”, will be pointed to the cloud where everything was synced, and rejoice. Most users don’t really care about the implications that their documents are in the cloud.
They’re rent-seeking, more than they already are. The data must flow for training, actively burned bridges be damned.
