October 23, 2014 at 10:52Free office apps: edit it!
A certain part 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, moving, at conferences, and the poor student did not have a laptop. A convenient QWERTY-keyboard and accessible Internet made it possible to type and edit text even with a certain comfort. In general, I have some experience with distortions in typing.
Either modern students - laptops, tablets, editors online and offline, joint work on documents. It seems to be a problem in the distant past.
However, even business today manages to face difficulties in choosing an editor for working with documents, tables and presentations. Now tensions are growing again in the economy, and many small and medium-sized companies are trying to optimize costs as much as possible. Of course, they cannot refuse 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 carry out some very complicated calculations and does not work with colossal data sets (however, you don’t have to save such). And the problem here is not in choosing a set of editors (there are a great many of them), but in choosing an affordable and at the same time meeting the requirements of office work tools.
To help these sufferers, I created a small cheat sheet forfree cheese for free document editors, online and offline. The basis are functions that, as experience shows, are most often in demand in office work. Of course, we are talking about ordinary employees, not developers and project development managers, although they would not hurt to look at the capabilities of these solutions. Similar reviews are periodically found on Habré, however, they quickly lose their relevance. The goal of the post is to orient all afflicted office workers in the world of popular free office suites. The test objects this time are the most relevant and permanently updated tools: LibreOffice , OpenOffice ,ONLYOFFICE and Google Docs . 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 educational videos, so popular on Youtube.
Of course, the leadership in this category belongs to almost identical LibreOffice and OpenOffice in functionality: they have everything that was familiar to see in PowerPoint. This diverse and finely tuned animation, and macros, and note fields, and spectacular slide transitions. Plus, desktop editors have many built-in media gallery galleries: buttons, cliparts, 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 drive a presentation on an office file hosting or electronic, preparing an important project for protection? Precisely more often.
Then you should pay attention to cloud solutions, the main advantage of which is the ability to work together on a presentation . Both editors do not have a rich clip art, unique fonts such as WordArt or FontWork (and the good thing is that their use is a bad taste in presentations). Google Docs animating individual shapesIt’s quite difficult to install and, in my opinion, it 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 the presentation (they are extremely popular 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 table style in a couple of clicks. Google Docs, on the other hand, creates a faceless plate that has to be formatted for a long time, making extra clicks and spending time, which, according to the law of office meanness, is usually not enough exactly during the preparation of a presentation.
It is hard to believe, but in office work it’s sometimes important, like trifles, which, as a rule, are not enough. Personally, it was nice for me to discover in ONLYOFFICE the possibility of replacing the autofigure type with just one click of the mouse. For example, the inscriptions are in rectangles and suddenly it was necessary to redo everything into circles. To do this, there is a function to replace the type of autofigure. Naturally, the text has to be formatted a little, but the task is much easier.
Conclusion:if you are planning to prepare a corporate video based on beautifully moving figures and images, then you are definitely offline. However, if your tasks are standard, and the discussion of each presentation is exhausting the nerves of you and your colleagues, then you should still turn to the opportunity to create a presentation online - this will save a lot of time and effort due to the joint editing capabilities. In addition, you do not need to download three-dimensional presentations hundreds of times - just send the 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, it is the table editor that must meet the most stringent requirements - this is the specifics of working with numbers, lists, and data groups.
Is this a lot - 41,000 rows in a table? For most - a lot. However, hundreds of organizations need to work with data arrays that significantly exceed 41,000 values - for example, call arrays, customer lists, retail store product names, etc. ... If you need to work with such data in a table or at least view it, you will have to abandon Google Docs - the tables have a limit of 41,000 rows. In offline LibreOffice and OpenOffice, as well as online ONLYOFFICE, there are no restrictions on the number of rows in the table.
Since we are talking about data arrays, it is worth discussing sorting, filters, functions (formulas), macros and pivot tables.
1. Sortall reviewers have implemented it well, you can customize the main sort column, consider or disregard the first row. There are also no problems with setting filters and selecting data through filtering.
2. At the stage of constructing summary tables, ONLYOFFICE drops out of the discussion - it does not have such an opportunity. However, Google Docs cannot boast of convenient pivot tables - their construction requires access to help even from an experienced user. In desktop solutions, pivot tables are built habitually for an advanced user, but they are far from MS Excel, of course - they are not so convenient and intuitive.
3.Formulas and functions
Certainly, the leadership in terms of 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 provides only the five most primitive functions, offers to select the necessary functions from the extended list and redirects in a new window to the list of functions of Google tables, from where the user can take the necessary operators with his hands. The advantage of these tables is that each function and its arguments are clearly described, each also has a separate explanation page; the minus is that the user in the process of doing the work is unlikely to want to plunge into this exciting adventure - the study of functions.
Functions appeared in ONLYOFFICE relatively recently, in any case, in TeamLab of old versions (the former name Onlyoffice) I definitely do not recall them. There are no fewer of them than in Google Docs, but, unlike Google, they are grouped in a list familiar to Excel users. This is important - and this is 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 selecting operators from the list with a couple of mouse clicks. However, an advanced user who knows the functions he needs by heart in both cloud editors can put an equal sign and start driving in the name of the operator - both editors will helpfully offer a drop-down list of functions matching the pattern.
4. Macros
Needless to say, both cloud contestants suffer a crushing fiasco in terms of macros - they are not. Google Docs offers Google Apps Script - a programming language based on JavaScript that allows you to extend the functionality of tables. But the 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 with whom macros are extremely popular, but these people will not use open source editors and will be satisfied with their native and familiar Visual Basic.
Conclusion:if you need to simply and quickly create diagrams 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 open source solutions considered and use MS Excel or MS Access.
Perhaps, when discussing text editors, it’s worth talking about real fierce competition among the considered free solutions. And from my subjective point of view, desktop solutions in the context of the tendency to work quickly and conveniently lose - at least in text that is pleasing to the eye and in convenient toolbars. Well and, of course, they lose in the speed of opening the file - sometimes this process takes up to several minutes.
Both ONLYOFFICE and Google Docs do a great job with both font and paragraph formatting, spell checking, and inserting images and tables. Google Docs captivates by the simplicity of inserting formulas into the text (many remember how much torment this brings to students of a technical university), ONLYOFFICE surprises with the speed of processing large documents. As an experimental rabbit, the editors were fed a voluminous document - a 120-page diploma with tables, pictures, formulas. So, Google Docs cheerfully drove out before the eyes the progress bar of downloading a document, thought about it and issued an error, without "eating" this document. ONLYOFFICE online text editor ran the progress bar literally a few seconds slower, but opened the document unchanged and allowed to start editing it. Given that it is course papers, diplomas, business plans and massive annual reports that need to work on documents, this is a very significant fact that you will learn about only when you use the editors.
Of course, open source LibreOffice and OpenOfficeThroughout its history, many functions have been incorporated, such as frames, printing envelopes, calculating formulas in text, macros, and auto text. Now admit - do you often use all this functionality? But work in the browser, chat inside the document, joint editing and the ability to share the document with one link with any number of people today are becoming a direct office need.
Free software, no matter how controversial it may be, exists, develops and allows small companies to save on software. The importance of such savings can hardly be overestimated - many small and micro-business enterprises, startups and individual entrepreneurs strive to reduce costs as much as possible, not only at the beginning of their journey, but also after the start.
Which product to choose is a matter of taste for everyone. Desktop applications are reliable, like a Kalashnikov assault rifle, familiar, not dependent on the speed and stability of the Internet connection. Cloud systems are simple, functional, continuously evolving, but dependent on the Internet. When choosing a cloud solution, you can look at the infrastructure surrounding this solution - for example, working with Google Docs,you get easy integration with the whole world of Google, including Gmail. Being a tiny company and working with ONLYOFFICE editors , you get free cloud-based solutions for project management and in fact a corporate portal. This is beneficial both for private users (freelancers, entrepreneurs, students), and for micro-companies and small work groups.
Perhaps modern cloud editors, so beloved by users, are not as perfect as desktop editors, but they are full of advantages, the main of which is collaboration and familiar work for most directly in the browser. Moreover, if you observe the history of recent years, it can be seen that it is online document editors that are developing intensively and striving to get as close to the desktop as possible. And for this, some shortcomings can be forgiven.
Either modern students - laptops, tablets, editors online and offline, joint work on documents. It seems to be a problem in the distant past.
However, even business today manages to face difficulties in choosing an editor for working with documents, tables and presentations. Now tensions are growing again in the economy, and many small and medium-sized companies are trying to optimize costs as much as possible. Of course, they cannot refuse 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 carry out some very complicated calculations and does not work with colossal data sets (however, you don’t have to save such). And the problem here is not in choosing a set of editors (there are a great many of them), but in choosing an affordable and at the same time meeting the requirements of office work tools.
To help these sufferers, I created a small cheat sheet for
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) | + | + | - | - |
| Auto Shapes Animation | + | + | - | + |
| Quick Auto Change | - | - | + | - |
| Work with charts | + | + | + | + |
| Tables | ||||
| Sort, filters | + | + | + | + |
| Summary tables | + | + | - | + |
| Macros | + | + | - | - |
| Formulas and Functions | + | + | + | + |
| Work with charts | + | + | + | + |
| Text editor | ||||
| Formatting | + | + | + | + |
| Work with tables | + | + | - | + |
| Large file open speed (2 855 Kb) | 38 s | 43 s | 33 s | didn't open |
| Additional features | ||||
| Work in the browser | - | - | + | + |
| Collaborative editing without conflict | - | - | + | + |
| Chat inside a document | - | - | + | + |
| Commenting | + | + | + | + |
| - in the document | + | + | ||
| - in an 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 educational videos, so popular on Youtube.
Of course, the leadership in this category belongs to almost identical LibreOffice and OpenOffice in functionality: they have everything that was familiar to see in PowerPoint. This diverse and finely tuned animation, and macros, and note fields, and spectacular slide transitions. Plus, desktop editors have many built-in media gallery galleries: buttons, cliparts, 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 drive a presentation on an office file hosting or electronic, preparing an important project for protection? Precisely more often.
Then you should pay attention to cloud solutions, the main advantage of which is the ability to work together on a presentation . Both editors do not have a rich clip art, unique fonts such as WordArt or FontWork (and the good thing is that their use is a bad taste in presentations). Google Docs animating individual shapesIt’s quite difficult to install and, in my opinion, it 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 the presentation (they are extremely popular 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 table style in a couple of clicks. Google Docs, on the other hand, creates a faceless plate that has to be formatted for a long time, making extra clicks and spending time, which, according to the law of office meanness, is usually not enough exactly during the preparation of a presentation.
It is hard to believe, but in office work it’s sometimes important, like trifles, which, as a rule, are not enough. Personally, it was nice for me to discover in ONLYOFFICE the possibility of replacing the autofigure type with just one click of the mouse. For example, the inscriptions are in rectangles and suddenly it was necessary to redo everything into circles. To do this, there is a function to replace the type of autofigure. Naturally, the text has to be formatted a little, but the task is much easier.
Conclusion:if you are planning to prepare a corporate video based on beautifully moving figures and images, then you are definitely offline. However, if your tasks are standard, and the discussion of each presentation is exhausting the nerves of you and your colleagues, then you should still turn to the opportunity to create a presentation online - this will save a lot of time and effort due to the joint editing capabilities. In addition, you do not need to download three-dimensional presentations hundreds of times - just send the 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, it is the table editor that must meet the most stringent requirements - this is the specifics of working with numbers, lists, and data groups.
Is this a lot - 41,000 rows in a table? For most - a lot. However, hundreds of organizations need to work with data arrays that significantly exceed 41,000 values - for example, call arrays, customer lists, retail store product names, etc. ... If you need to work with such data in a table or at least view it, you will have to abandon Google Docs - the tables have a limit of 41,000 rows. In offline LibreOffice and OpenOffice, as well as online ONLYOFFICE, there are no restrictions on the number of rows in the table.
Since we are talking about data arrays, it is worth discussing sorting, filters, functions (formulas), macros and pivot tables.
1. Sortall reviewers have implemented it well, you can customize the main sort column, consider or disregard the first row. There are also no problems with setting filters and selecting data through filtering.
2. At the stage of constructing summary tables, ONLYOFFICE drops out of the discussion - it does not have such an opportunity. However, Google Docs cannot boast of convenient pivot tables - their construction requires access to help even from an experienced user. In desktop solutions, pivot tables are built habitually for an advanced user, but they are far from MS Excel, of course - they are not so convenient and intuitive.
3.Formulas and functions
Certainly, the leadership in terms of 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 provides only the five most primitive functions, offers to select the necessary functions from the extended list and redirects in a new window to the list of functions of Google tables, from where the user can take the necessary operators with his hands. The advantage of these tables is that each function and its arguments are clearly described, each also has a separate explanation page; the minus is that the user in the process of doing the work is unlikely to want to plunge into this exciting adventure - the study of functions.
Functions appeared in ONLYOFFICE relatively recently, in any case, in TeamLab of old versions (the former name Onlyoffice) I definitely do not recall them. There are no fewer of them than in Google Docs, but, unlike Google, they are grouped in a list familiar to Excel users. This is important - and this is 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 selecting operators from the list with a couple of mouse clicks. However, an advanced user who knows the functions he needs by heart in both cloud editors can put an equal sign and start driving in the name of the operator - both editors will helpfully offer a drop-down list of functions matching the pattern.
4. Macros
Needless to say, both cloud contestants suffer a crushing fiasco in terms of macros - they are not. Google Docs offers Google Apps Script - a programming language based on JavaScript that allows you to extend the functionality of tables. But the 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 with whom macros are extremely popular, but these people will not use open source editors and will be satisfied with their native and familiar Visual Basic.
Conclusion:if you need to simply and quickly create diagrams 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 open source solutions considered and use MS Excel or MS Access.
Text editors
Perhaps, when discussing text editors, it’s worth talking about real fierce competition among the considered free solutions. And from my subjective point of view, desktop solutions in the context of the tendency to work quickly and conveniently lose - at least in text that is pleasing to the eye and in convenient toolbars. Well and, of course, they lose in the speed of opening the file - sometimes this process takes up to several minutes.
Both ONLYOFFICE and Google Docs do a great job with both font and paragraph formatting, spell checking, and inserting images and tables. Google Docs captivates by the simplicity of inserting formulas into the text (many remember how much torment this brings to students of a technical university), ONLYOFFICE surprises with the speed of processing large documents. As an experimental rabbit, the editors were fed a voluminous document - a 120-page diploma with tables, pictures, formulas. So, Google Docs cheerfully drove out before the eyes the progress bar of downloading a document, thought about it and issued an error, without "eating" this document. ONLYOFFICE online text editor ran the progress bar literally a few seconds slower, but opened the document unchanged and allowed to start editing it. Given that it is course papers, diplomas, business plans and massive annual reports that need to work on documents, this is a very significant fact that you will learn about only when you use the editors.
Of course, open source LibreOffice and OpenOfficeThroughout its history, many functions have been incorporated, such as frames, printing envelopes, calculating formulas in text, macros, and auto text. Now admit - do you often use all this functionality? But work in the browser, chat inside the document, joint editing and the ability to share the 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 may be, exists, develops and allows small companies to save on software. The importance of such savings can hardly be overestimated - many small and micro-business enterprises, startups and individual entrepreneurs strive to reduce costs as much as possible, not only at the beginning of their journey, but also after the start.
Which product to choose is a matter of taste for everyone. Desktop applications are reliable, like a Kalashnikov assault rifle, familiar, not dependent on the speed and stability of the Internet connection. Cloud systems are simple, functional, continuously evolving, but dependent on the Internet. When choosing a cloud solution, you can look at the infrastructure surrounding this solution - for example, working with Google Docs,you get easy integration with the whole world of Google, including Gmail. Being a tiny company and working with ONLYOFFICE editors , you get free cloud-based solutions for project management and in fact a corporate portal. This is beneficial both for private users (freelancers, entrepreneurs, students), and for micro-companies and small work groups.
Perhaps modern cloud editors, so beloved by users, are not as perfect as desktop editors, but they are full of advantages, the main of which is collaboration and familiar work for most directly in the browser. Moreover, if you observe the history of recent years, it can be seen that it is online document editors that are developing intensively and striving to get as close to the desktop as possible. And for this, some shortcomings can be forgiven.