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from the how-do-I-convert-my-existing-files? dept.
Google Docs vs. Microsoft Word: Which works better for business?:
Have you been thinking of reassessing which word processor your business should standardize on? The obvious choices are the two best known: Microsoft Word and Google Docs. But which is better?
Several years ago, the answer to that would have been easy: Microsoft Word for its better editing, formatting and markup tools; Google Docs for its better collaboration. But both applications have been radically updated since then. Word now has live collaboration tools, and Google has added more sophisticated formatting, editing and markup features to Docs.
TFA requires free registration, but the question is an interesting one: Have Google Docs arrived at parity with, or surpassed, Microsoft Word for business needs? How much work is required to transition existing documents, macros, and workflows?
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 02 2020, @07:53PM (3 children)
The 'moat' in office suites is Excel expertise. LibreOffice Calc and even Google Sheets have a colossal set of features, but if you're an Excel power user the opportunity cost of climbing the learning curve to switch your funky ten sheet, five-hundred-formula sheet to an alternative is just too high. And damn near every company with more than ten people has some Excel power users in it.
From the small to medium business side, the strategy has to be migrating your complex Excel sheets to a stand-alone application. For projects or companies trying to eat Microsoft's lunch, they should focus on mimic'ing Excel features as closely as they legally can - right down to VBscript and every other Excel wart.
I don't like this situation, it's just what I keep encountering through my career. I use Etherpad and Ethercalc that I host myself. But when I suggest Excel alternatives to friends, relatives, and employers, I am inevitably stopped cold by the Excel power users. And from a financial perspective, their objectives makes sense - if it takes you 500 hours to get the same level of advanced proficiency in LibreOffice Calc and 100 hours to translate your existing critical Excel sheets to LibreOffice Calc, between 600 hours of your labor and 600 hours you couldn't spend doing something else the transition never pays for itself.
(Score: 2) by KritonK on Wednesday June 03 2020, @10:56AM (2 children)
TFA is about MS Word vs. the competition, not about MS Office in general, so the point about excel is moot in that context.
For people like me, who have very little use for spreadsheets, apart from adding a few columns of numbers, the deciding factor for choosing an office suite is how easy it is to work with the word processor. For what it's worth, I find working with LibreOffice Writer much easier than MS Word.
Perhaps excel should be delegated to the status of a legacy program for running legacy excel applications and nothing else, with no need to upgrade and risk breaking them.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 03 2020, @01:01PM
I realize the article was about Word vs Google Docs and not office suites, but in practice businesses standardize on office suites. I don't know anyone that works at a business that uses a word processor from one company and spreadsheet software from another.
I don't use that many advanced spreadsheet features either. As I wrote, for personal spreadsheets I use EtherCalc (an open source equivalent to Google Sheets, though with far fewer features).
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 03 2020, @01:34PM
It's not moot in the Real World. Because when the Boss starts deciding on which to go with, the Excel users are often quite loud. And if their spreadsheets are important to the Boss (they often are) then the choice is Microsoft Office.
Don't forget the Sales team with their PowerPoint presentations...