Hello everyone,
I am using LibreOffice for years now, both on Windows and Linux... however, regularly I have to open and sometimes even to save MS office files. To my experience, opening usually works but unluckily some elements are messed up, e. g. try to open a pptx with slides containing formulas, Impress totally messes up the respective slides. Further, saving can be really problematic, saving a pptx with impress even might cause PowerPoint to resist to open the file.
So why not use open document formats instead? Well, if this was my choice I would completely switch over from docx, xlsx, etc. to the open document formats, objectively comparing them I personally would prefer the non-proprietary ISO-standardized open formats. However, in reality if you exchange files (editable, i.e. not PDFs) with other people, in almost all cases in practice you will receive a MS office file... somehow annoying, but reality. :-(
I always thought that LO's support for MS office formats is the maximum you can expect from non-MS software, since these are proprietary: Theoretically standardized, in face MS is the only one defining and changing the standard, even including binary parts in doucments only MS office understands... or at least I always thought it would be.
Recently I heard about WPS office, not open source, but at least supporting a free version for Windows and Linux (and mobile)... I was extremely interested in its support to MS office files, and I was quite surprised: Everything I tried so far (which LO unluckily messes up) works just like a charm with WPS, all docx, xlsx, and pptx files are correctly opened, editing works quite similar to MS office.
So if WPS can handle these files like MS office, isn't it possible for LibreOffice to support them in the same way? LibreOffice fully supporting MS office would be such a perfect piece of software... :-)
