That's a bit like saying Word is useless because it can't retouch photos. Excel isn't meant for any of the things you mention.

On the other hand, there are a lot of other things it isn't meant for either, that it nevetheless does exceedingly well. As a software developer, I find Excel indispensable, although a different spreadsheet program would probably serve me just as well. I doubt OO or LO have as many nifty productivity boosting functions as Excel though. I use it for lots of small tasks. It's brilliant for lots of data manipulation operations of various kinds, as well as for generating different kinds of data-based scripts. I rarely actually save an Excel file though, I mostly just use it as a tool for transforming different kinds of data on the fly as needed.

Well a dodgy formula in a spreadsheet is just the same as a dodgy formula in a database query. If it hasn't been validated both scenarios are quite capable of giving wrong answers. Plus, the more complex the data structure (multiple tables, views, objects, relationships, etc) then the more that can go wrong with database queries.

That said, a complicated structure should be done within a database for the reason that trying to do something like that in Excel will very likely go wrong as it isn't designed for database structured data. It is madness to try to use a spreadsheet for relational database data.

But this is getting a little off-topic as I don't use Excel for database structured data. My most complicated one here at home is for my finances which is a series of tabs (one per account) containing a list of transactions and an account total column. There are no data relationships set up in the spreadsheet, the VBA code just automates inserting rows and filling formulae so that the sheets work from the top down rather than manually scrolling down the page to add a new record for each transaction. And another VBA code grabs the current totals from each sheet tab to merge into one summary sheet.

If it helps, see if the current list of supported functions in LibreOffice Calc is of any use to you and compare them with Excel ones which I'm sure you already know by heart.

Or take a look at this compiled Excel-Calc feature comparison spreadsheet, although it might not have been updated to the latest LO version yet.


In Libre/OpenOffice it's under File > Page Preview.

If that was the case, I don't think so many official institutions, among others, would switch to OpenOffice/LibreOffice as shown in this deployment list.

Problem is, if to compare the same document in MS Office and in OpenOffice, they will look different. Perhaps their printed forms are also changed, but that's not what I meant. Point is that all formatting is screwed when you move between programs, !especially! if document has tables. Not only this, it keeps replacing standard cyrillic letters with different character tables, making many documents corrupt (I had to deal with that just recently).
Many of them probably don't care about quality and form of printed documents (or they convert final forms of important documents into PDF). Can't blame them. In my land, many workers in official institutions don't know basic arithmetic. It doesn't mean that arithmetic isn't something serious. It means something else.

I once had a spreadsheet for WoW Rogue DPS during Burning Crusade and maintained separate versions for OO, Mac Excel and Excel. Actually, at the time OO formatting was pretty close, it was the Mac Excel which messed my formatting up the most.

Back then, OO handled calculations and even VLOOKUP just fine. There were a ton of inter-sheet calculations.

The lack of macros hurt a bit because there were levels of optimization which were only possible with macros, but I don't see OO or Libre Office as any barrier for most uses.

This reminds me, the only thing I really liked better in LO is their XOR function, which I really missed not having in Excel (where I had to expand it making the formula longer than it should be).

Was that the EJ one, or a different one altogether?

Yes, I took over one of the Elitist Jerks sheets under the moniker Dontmindme at the time.