Electronics > Circuit Studio

Will Libre or Open Office satisfy CS need for Excel?

(1/2) > >>

EE-digger:
I just ordered a license last night while I finish off the eval version.  The temporary "new" win10 system I'm on has no office like programs at the moment.

CS output generation for BOMs, etc. requires Excel.  Will it work with Libre Office or Open Office?  Even .pdf output requires Excel, which is too bad.  That should be built in (perhaps it is for AD).

JohnnyMalaria:
The online versions of Office apps are free: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/free-office-online-for-the-web

If the free version can't save as PDF, just select the Microsoft Print to PDF printer.

Whales:
Recommendation: try Libreoffice with your CS stuff.  If it doesn't do what you want then you've lost about half an hour of your life (ie much cheaper than an MSO license).

> Even .pdf output requires Excel, which is too bad

Libreoffice can output PDFs just fine.  It can even import them for editing (albeit imperfectly) which has been handy a few times.

N.B. Libreoffice is the spiritual successor to Openoffice; I don't recommend even considering Openoffice.  It got bought by Oracle and since then has mostly been sat on; most of the devs instead fled and started the Libreoffice project.  In terms of compatibility and features:  LO >> OO

EE-digger:
Thanks guys.  I've run Libre Office in the past but switched to Open Office on other home systems (Libre was closer in response to Excel for functions I needed).

I installed fresh LO just now and it satisfies CS for .xls outputs and they look good (they auto open in LO).  CS still throws an error that it needs Excel for pdf, even though I'm not requesting any .pdf that I know of.

Microsoft "print to pdf" is present as a printer and CS apparently is not satisfied by it.

I'll try a few other things but can live with the good .xls outputs, ignoring the pdf error.

Whales:
If you do want to end up purchasing an MSO license:

1. Be wary of the rental plans VS one-off outright purchases.  Microsoft likes pushing the former, but if you intend to use your copy of office for more than 2 or so years (ie everyone) then the outright purchase ends up being cheaper.

2. Don't buy one-off outright versions from office.com.  For some reason they're a bit cheaper through ordinary brick-and-mortar (or online) computer stores, even though they literally sell you a shrink-wrapped activation key and a link to the office.com website.

(This is based on info from my experiences in Australia, MS might have different rules/plans in other regions)

Navigation

[0] Message Index

[#] Next page