My computer recently died and I have ordered a new one. I had a number of files which I had created in Excel however I am considering using LibreOffice rather than purchasing Office again. I employ a lot of macros in my worksheets and I was wondering whether they would work in LibreOffice or whether I would have to recreate them. Tfiles in question have an xlsm extension
Not answering the direct question: why do you talk about “purchasing Office again” after getting a new computer - you should be able to continue using your bought MS Office there?
But wrt compatibility: formula compatibility is generally very good (but still, there’s a range of Excel functions not supported yet in Calc, and Calc functions not present in Excel; also, sometimes functions behave slightly differently, like DAYS); feature support is not so good (in both directions: Calc doesn’t support e.g. dynamic tables; Excel doesn’t support styles); and macro support is very basic (some primitive macros might continue to work, but anything advanced would need a rewrite).
I would consider the question from a financial point of view.
- How many different macros do you use in total (if some macros are common to multiple files, count them as 1)? Call this N. Now, let’s assume that 1/3 to 2/3 of the macros will work without issues. Consider one to two hours to fix the issue. So the time (in hours) to fix all the issues is in the range [N / 3, 4 * N / 3]
- How much is one hour of your time worth? Call this number M. The cost to fix all the issues is then [N * M / 3, 4 * N * M / 3].
- Look at the cost for one MS License. If it is well below this range, buy it!