LibreOffice (for Mac)

We reviewed LibreOffice in 2011, and, as it was then, it's still the best no-cost alternative to Microsoft Office that you can find for Windows, Linux, and OS X. In this review, I focus on LibreOffice for OS X, and the Mac-specific reasons why you might or might not want it. I think you're far better off paying for Microsoft Office if you use Windows, while, under Linux, LibreOffice is your only choice if you want a full-featured office suite.

What is LibreOffice?
Some technical details first. LibreOffice is an offshoot from the old OpenOffice.org application suite, now renamed Apache OpenOffice. Like any other office suite, LibreOffice gives you a word-processor (Writer), a spreadsheet app (Calc), presentations and graphics apps (Impress and Draw), plus database, mathematical, and other tools. LibreOffice is fuller-featured and more up-to-date than any other OpenOffice variant, but it still suffers from a clunky interface with a 1990s look and feel.

On the Mac, if you need to share documents with a Microsoft-Office-centric world, you'll want Microsoft Office for the Mac, the only Mac application suite that's fully compatible with Windows-based formats, and a powerful and elegant app by any standard. The best Mac-native alternative to Microsoft Office is Apple's iWork suite with its dazzling graphics and high level of Office compatibility, and its ability to share and sync documents to other Macs and iOS devices through iCloud, but Microsoft's suite is the obvious first choice if you share documents with Windows users.

Libre Means Free
So where does that leave LibreOffice? For one thing, LibreOffice costs nothing, it exports to the latest Microsoft Office formats in addition to its native ODT format, and it's the obvious first choice for any organization that requires the use of open formats and open-source software. Also, LibreOffice is one of the few apps running under OS X that give you a fighting chance of importing legacy documents created by old Windows and MS-DOS apps?and even documents created by ancient Mac apps that almost no other current Mac app can open. For example, LibreOffice opens documents created by any version of WordPerfect, including the DOS, Mac, and Windows versions. This matters because law firms and many government agencies still have thousands of documents in WordPerfect format, and these might otherwise get orphaned if the office switched to the Mac.

LibreOffice also opens Microsoft Works documents that Microsoft Office for Windows can't open, and its graphics module opens vector graphics in CorelDraw and Visio formats. The latest development version (soon to be officially released as version 3.7) opens Microsoft Publisher documents?a feat no app other than Microsoft Publisher has ever performed on any platform.

An Office Alternative?
As a Microsoft Office alternative, LibreOffice ranks as fair-to-good, which is a lot better than nothing. It's harder to use, less flexible, less easily automated, and a lot worse-looking. It opens almost any recent Word file with fairly faithful formatting, and does a good job of opening Excel worksheets if they aren't exceptionally complicated and don't use Excel's latest graphic features. If all you need is the ability to edit and save uncomplicated Word files on the Mac, then OS X's built-in TextEdit may be all you need, just as Windows' built-in WordPad may be all you need to edit such files under Windows.

As a tool for importing and converting legacy documents, LibreOffice ranks as good, which is better than any rival on OS X, but it can't match older utilities like MacLinkPlus (formerly available from DataViz) which won't run under recent versions of OS X. LibreOffice won't solve all legacy-file problems, however. For example, it can't open files created by the ancient MS-DOS versions of Microsoft Word?but neither can the latest Mac version of Microsoft Word. I keep wishing that Microsoft's Mac Business Unit will create import filters for legacy formats such as WordPerfect and Word for MS-DOS, but I've been waiting a long time, and I'm not very hopeful. Meanwhile, for anyone who really needs to run legacy DOS or Windows apps on a Mac, there's always the option to buy an app like VMware Fusion or Parallels Workstation that makes it possible to run a Windows app on the OS X desktop.

Other OpenOffices
LibreOffice isn't the only OpenOffice offshoot available for the Mac. A slightly more Mac-native branch of OpenOffice called NeoOffice is available for download to anyone who donates $10 per year. NeoOffice lags behind LibreOffice in its feature set, and its import filters tend to lack features built into LibreOffice's filters; for example, LibreOffice can import non-western alphabets in WordPerfect documents, but NeoOffice can't. NeoOffice has one major advantage over LibreOffice: it's far more stable. Under OS X?though not under Windows or Linux?LibreOffice crashes a lot more often than any modern app should, often when opening a document or changing an option. NeoOffice tends to stay open when performing the same operation.

LibreOffice isn't for every Mac user, but for anyone who has to work with oddball formats and legacy documents, it's an essential tool. And you can't argue with the price.

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