The software should also have cross-platform support, so you can access them anywhere. The best Excel alternatives have a clean modern look and smart tool organization, and are stocked with a ready artillery of built-in formulas, functions, and templates.

An Intuitive Interface: Spreadsheets are designed to handle complex tasks, but that doesn’t mean that the software itself should be clunky or difficult to use.Here are the most important features good spreadsheet software should offer, and why they’re important: This has been its status since at least when Apache OpenOffice 4.1.11 was released, half a year ago.What to Look for in a Microsoft Excel Alternativeīest Cloud-Based Alternative: Google Sheetsīest for Apple Users: Apple iWork Numbersīest Open-Source Alternative: LibreOffice CalcĬlosest to Microsoft Excel: WPS Office Spreadsheetsīest for Serious Data Analysis: Zoho Office Sheetįree spreadsheet software should be just as powerful as paid options and come stocked with all the tools you need to spreadsheet your heart out. You can still open it by going into macOS's Security & Privacy prefpane immediately after trying to launch it, where there will be a button labeled 'Open anyway', but this bogus-why isn't this developer verified with Apple yet? The download page for Apache OpenOffice () has a button labeled 'Important hints for OS X', but when you click on it, the only thing it says about an OS X version is 'Coming soon'. If you try to launch even the latest version (4.1.11) of Apache OpenOffice under macOS Big Sur (11), and maybe even Catalina (10.15), macOS will display an alert saying 'OpenOffice.app cannot be opened because the developer cannot be verified'.And, even worse, if you save the document in OpenOffice's format (.odt), Word can't open the file. doc format, the new file won't have any of these undesired font changes. docx file in Microsoft Word, and save it as. This problem is at least partly a flaw specific to OpenOffice, because if you open the same. doc-for instance, Palatino gets changed to Times New Roman, 10 point Helvetica remains Helvetica, but it gets changed to 10 point and who knows what else. docx files, but also even some simple formatting options, like the font, font size, etc. doc, but that format doesn't save some of the newer Microsoft Word formatting options you can choose for.

docx format, since Microsoft has a copyright on the format-instead, OpenOffice can save files as. docx files, and you can edit them just fine, when it comes time to save your changes, you can't save the file in.

Though OpenOffice's Microsoft Word emulator can open.

Here's a couple deal-breakers against using OpenOffice, at least its current version (4.1.11):

Open office ipad app