I’ve found that Libreoffice Calc in particular tends to deal with Excel files very well. It can do everything I’ve ever needed to do in Excel. The browser version of MS Office is good for full compatibility if you have access to it, but can be a bit annoying to use.
MS Word and Libreoffice Write never seemed to understand each other’s file formats well for me, especially if you insert equations in text. You can end up with weird formatting that’s laborious to correct. It might be best to avoid Libreoffice Write, especially for technical stuff, unless it’s improved a lot since then. The online MS Office could help you a lot there.
Latex is arguably the best for that sort of thing, but can be hard to use, since you have to learn it. Still, anyone should be able to open a pdf and get consistent results.
WPS Office is another option but I’ve never used it. It has official support for a surprising number of operating systems and seems to work well on different file formats. I’ve seen someone else use it with no complaints, and it does have official Linux support, even though it’s a commercial proprietary software, which can be inconvenient.
Blisterexe@lemmy.zip 3 months ago
I save in odt and my teachers havent had any issues with the libreoffice files ive sent them
01189998819991197253@infosec.pub 3 months ago
I sent an odt file to a teacher, and the response was, “don’t use open office, use Microsoft office for school” (I use libre office). I asked if he needed me to resend it, and he said that Ms office opens odt fine (¿_?). I started saving as docx in libre office, and he was never the wiser.
ZarkleFarkle@sh.itjust.works 3 months ago
Seems like your file worked properly and they were just a bit initially confused by it, but obviously you should export as whatever file format you’re asked to if it’s been requested of you.
Did the document have lots of equations, pictures or tables in it? Do the documents you make tend to?
01189998819991197253@infosec.pub 3 months ago
There were no communicated filetype requirements for the first assignment. Since I know MS office works with open doc formats, I wasn’t worried. He didn’t tell me to send MS office formats. Instead, he told me to use MS office. I wasn’t going to pay (even discounted) for a product that has (for me) been 100% replaced with libreoffice. So, I tried just sending him the files in MS office formats, which worked to appease his requirement. He later did send an email to the class, asking that we only use MS office and avoid foss office programs. I realized it was him misunderstanding how these software work, so I didn’t really sweat it. I’m assuming there was some incompatibility with their cheat-check saas that caused this requirement.
There were some embedded objects in nearly all of the docs, but no equations.