Microsoft Office

Long-term owners

works just fine on win 10 or under wine, and has the benefit of being written 28 years ago so on a modern computer everything happens imperceptibly fast

Dec 2025 · comment

What hackers pick instead

• LibreOfficeA free office suite that handles everyday documents, spreadsheets and even dissertations, with a choice of ribbon or classic menus, though formatting often breaks when exchanging files with Microsoft Office.345recommend
• Microsoft 365Recommended as an integrated bundle of Office, email, Teams, storage and security that businesses find cheap and easy to run, though critics cite confusing admin, tiers and lock-in.151recommend
• Google WorkspaceRecommended for custom-domain Gmail, easy collaboration and low-admin IT, and widely used by companies; critics cite account lockouts, hard-to-reach human support and fewer enterprise features than Microsoft.107recommend
• OnlyOfficeFree office suite with an interface close to Microsoft Office and strong compatibility with Office files, recommended as an alternative to MS Office. Common caveats are its Russian ties and license restrictions.58recommend
• La Suite numériqueFree, open source French government office suite praised for polished interface and reuse of existing open source projects. Critics say it is more collaboration tool than true office suite.25recommend

Every quote

The 40 most detailed of 797 comments. Each links to the original.

1. works just fine on win 10 or under wine, and has the benefit of being written 28 years ago so on a modern computer everything happens imperceptibly fast

   Recommends · Dec 2025 · in “Microsoft increases Office 365 and Microsoft 365 license prices”

2. Mountainous VBasic monstrosities are sometimes the way things get done in orgs I am personally familiar with and that can be hard to switch away from.

   Mixed · Apr 2026 · in “France Launches Government Linux Desktop Plan as Windows Exit Begins”

3. They never bothered to implement this Preview functionality on the Web version of office, and I bet only a few ever noticed this inconsistency.

   Mixed · Oct 2026 · in “Oldest GUI application that still runs on Windows 11”

4. Yeah Web version will do, if everything you need is doable with Microsoft Works, and no collaboration with others is required.

   Mixed · Jun 2026 · in “Windows 11 users are tired of MS account requirements creeping into everything”

5. This gave add-ins portability between all supported Office platforms, increased security, and made administration much easier.

   Recommends · Mar 2026 · in “No, Windows Start does not use React”

6. Those beholden to MSO and the One True Excel, which of course is not guaranteed to work well (or at all) under Wine / Proton

   Mixed · Jan 2026 · in “Microsoft May Have Created the Slowest Windows in 25 Years with Windows 11”

7. I could never switch to this braindead “ribbons” UI and refused to learn this idiotic new scheme so I stayed with office 2k

   Mixed · May 2026 · in “Microsoft degrades functionality of perpetually-licensed offline products”

8. you can edit the same document with the full office at work and the browser version at home and it won't mess things up

   Recommends · Jul 2026 · in “How proprietary formats have become Microsoft’s main tool for lock-in”

9. I don't think there's anything missing in Office 2000 for upwards of 90% of users' word processor/spreadsheet/etc needs

   Recommends · Mar 2026 · in “The Windows 95 User Interface: A Case Study in Usability Engineering”

10. just to give our Linux users a Windows VM with Office on it if they need to do any significant docs or drawings.

    Recommends · Jan 2026 · in “I dumped Windows 11 for Linux, and you should too”

11. Microsoft Office Online works fine on Linux. In fact, it's superior to native MS Office in terms of stability.

    Recommends · Dec 2025 · in “I can't upgrade to Windows 11, now leave me alone”

12. Excel standalone I think is the hardest to replace if you have lots of macros with business logic inside them.

    Mixed · Feb 2026 · in “Danish Gov agency to ditch Microsoft software in push for digital independence”

13. they still have relatively nice tools, and though their online versions mostly work, it's not nearly as good

    Mixed · Jul 2026 · in “The IBM PC, Part 1: Arrival”

14. The $30/mo looks cheap compared to all of the time spent trying to teach end users how to use something else

    Recommends · Oct 2026 · in “Open-source Microsoft Excel, PowerPoint, and Word replications”

15. there are advantages in using Office and that's the reason we shouldn't expect mass migration anytime soon

    Mixed · Dec 2025 · in “The state of Schleswig-Holstein is consistently relying on open source”

16. What Microsoft sells to enterprise is governance, and they really don't have any competition in this area.

    Mixed · Mar 2026 · in “Wine 11 rewrites how Linux runs Windows games at kernel with massive speed gains”

17. their Office suite is pretty good. Or at least it used to be - the last version I used was 2010 I think.

    Recommends · Oct 2026 · in “Danish Government silently drops plan to dump MS Office”

18. They sell it with the promise of total platform integration for every single software an office needs.

    Recommends · Jul 2026 · in “How proprietary formats have become Microsoft’s main tool for lock-in”

19. You want to use the same stuff your clients use, that's guaranteed to look the same on their computer.

    Recommends · Sep 2026 · in “Show HN: Microsoft Office running with Wine on Linux with no virtualization”

20. tying. Countless millions are forced to use Copilot because their IT department has contracts with Microsoft, and those same contracts are why they use Office, Teams

    Criticizes · Dec 2025 · in “Microsoft has a problem: lack of demand for its AI products”

21. Then Office 2007 happened, tossing out the waffle menu for the ribbon and people started receiving e-mails with strange docx/xlsx files that nobody could open.

    Criticizes · Mar 2026 · in “GitHub backs down, kills Copilot pull-request ads after backlash”

22. If you've ever used it before, you'd quickly come to the conclusion that web only Office is only useful for someone writing essays for school.

    Criticizes · Mar 2026 · in “Our Commitment to Windows Quality”

23. MacOS did not have ribbon shortcuts until a few months ago. That's simply insulting that such a core function for users would be missing.

    Criticizes · Jun 2026 · in “MacBook Neo Is So Popular That Apple Doubled Production”

24. they burnt down one of the most famous brands in the world, MS Office, for zero reason other than to try and whitewash their Copilot name

    Criticizes · Feb 2026 · in “Microsoft is walking back Windows 11's AI overload”

25. Microsoft which is lackadaisical about the subject, like maybe they think Office is a place to stuff with thoroughly unwanted AI features

    Criticizes · Sep 2026 · in “Shopify acquires Tailwind”

26. MS Office is the last roadblock for Linux desktop. It's literally the last thing holding back many users from moving to anything else.

    Criticizes · Jul 2026 · in “How proprietary formats have become Microsoft’s main tool for lock-in”

27. If you had a customized toolbar layout in office, upgrading to 2007 meant you had to learn to use office the way Microsoft wanted it.

    Criticizes · Oct 2026 · in “WorldTUI: I trained a 360M model to pretend to be a terminal”

28. As far as I saw, that site is now 100% about the online SaaS version and trying to get users to save their documents in the cloud.

    Criticizes · Jan 2026 · in “Second Win11 emergency out of band update to address disastrous Patch Tuesday”

29. Whatever amount of time it takes the user to find the button they're looking for costs less than the permanent subscription cost

    Criticizes · Dec 2025 · in “The state of Schleswig-Holstein is consistently relying on open source”

30. I find it difficult to believe that someone with enough technical knowledge to run a Linux desktop for business purposes in 2026 would be reliant on the MS Office suite.

    Mixed · Mar 2026 · in “Wine 11 rewrites how Linux runs Windows games at kernel with massive speed gains”

31. you've got Sharepoint in there, Office, Skype for Business, and very little consideration seems to have gone into how to make all of those work together seamlessly

    Mixed · Nov 2025 · in “Unofficial Microsoft Teams client for Linux”

32. moved all of my on-prem Windows Server clients that will listen to Windows 11 Enterprise LTSC 2024, and all desktop clients out of M365 to Office LTSC 2024

    Recommends · Nov 2025 · in “Microsoft doesn't understand the dislike for Windows' new direction”

33. Microsoft's icons (until their most recent Liquid Glass redesign) were probably the best attempt at abstract but still useful to a new user.

    Recommends · Jan 2026 · in “If you put Apple icons in reverse it looks like someone getting good at design”

34. They showed the world what office software can do and that ultimately it is their software and they get to decide how it works.

    Mixed · Mar 2026 · in “Euro-Office Wants to Replace Google Docs and Microsoft Office”

35. You can finally use a MacBook Pro in a professional environment that heavily use Excel, like consulting, without downsides.

    Recommends · Nov 2025 · in “KeyTips now available in Office for Mac (Windows alt-shortcuts) (2024)”

36. MS's strategy at this point is that Windows is a loss leader to get people onto the subscriptions for Office and OneDrive

    Mixed · Jan 2026 · in “Windows 11's Patch Tuesday nightmare gets worse”

37. MS office is pretty secure and private once you put a "Great Firewall" that blocks most outgoing/incoming connections.

    Recommends · Feb 2026 · in “France's homegrown open source online office suite”

38. Microsoft Office has the Autosave toggle switch that serves some of this purpose, but it could definitely be better.

    Mixed · Dec 2025 · in “Icons in Menus Everywhere – Send Help”

39. Toolbars could be customized. You could select any item from any menu and place it on toolbar for quick access.

    Mixed · Dec 2025 · in “Icons in Menus Everywhere – Send Help”

40. Office for Mac is increasingly getting feature parity with the windows version, but it is not fully there yet.

    Mixed · Mar 2026 · in “Apple Business”