Now. Why am I wrong for Libre
edit a pdf? Edit your expectations.
I feel seen. The number of times I’ve actually needed to do this is too damn high. Sure, I feel entitled to not have to pay for the privilege, as the task was usually thrust upon me by some bank, HR department, or legal firm. But the number of scummy websites online that will happily play with your doc’s confidential info for free, is too damn high. I can’t imagine anyone with average computer skills navigating this particular turing tarpit unscathed.
I (average user) was given a case of sensitive information and told to edit it/update it/reupload it. Using my work device was the expectation…but I had not been granted any paid software to do so.
The IT guy was like “you can use this website” which was almost certainly a violation given the nature of the data. It was maddening because I knew (I also did not use one of those websites).
You can also edit a PDF with LibreOffice Draw
Firefox now allows you to edit PDFs locally, for most use cases it is enough. There is also PDFsam Basic, an open-source tool to divide, merge, extract pages, rotate, etc.
Inkscape is a free vector editor that handles pdf edits relatively well. Always my goto.
* Assuming you’re making minor changes.I’ve used Inkscape for a lot of vector art. Using it to edit a PDF seems… overkill, but it’s probably less likely to screw things up. I’ll give that a shot next time, thanks!
Be Australian. Set language to English: Australian
Write word: color. Does not underline spelling error.
Don’t even mention PowerPoint language.
That’s because you spelled it correctly. What color tire have you got on your SUV
Australian spelling is colour.
If it helps, I thought it was funny. Silly-ass British (Australians are just desert British) spellings. You’d think the group that seems to cut half the letters out of the pronunciation of any given place name wouldn’t also be the group adding fucktons of unnecessary letters to words since they won’t say them anyways.
Then again, French exists.
The extra u’s don’t bother me but spelling check as cheque to distinguish between a bank check and other senses of check is ridiculous. Especially considering a bank check has the same etymological roots as the rest
Counterpoint: it’s 2025 we should have eradicated all traces of that concept from civilized society.
Worcestershire
Guess I hurt some fragile ex imperial feelings
I’m using Libre office at the moment to actually write something more than a few pages, and it’s English dictionary is missing like 50% of the English language.
*its
Give him a break, typing with libreoffice. He didn’t know
best thing about microsoft office is word 3.1 providing me with 30 blank discs for storage.
Might have something to do with Microsoft offering M365 to nearly all universities for dirt cheap or free.
Don’t agree to Microsoft’s terms of service? Guess university isn’t for you.
“Nobody ever got fired for buying Microsoft”
Wanna know something fun about Office?
The keyboard shortcuts are localized.YES, REALLY.
If you press Ctrl+S when running in Portuguese, it doesn’t save, it underlines the word instead (Because the word for it is “Sublinhar”).
Whoever is responsible for this decision won’t die, when their time comes they’ll be swallowed alive by the earth and welcomed into the 10th circle of hell, created for them exclusively.
The 11th circle is reserved for he who decided to localize the Excel Formula Functions too.
The excel function thing has had me fucking irate every time I want to use Excel
My fucking god just thinking about it has my blood pressure rising
Like Ok I get why they localize them but my fucking god just make both versions work like what the fuck is wrong with you
Oh i fucking hate this one, at least once a week I hit control S and excel goes "no problem I’ll underline that cell fo you cause obviously that’s the shortcut for ‘sublinhar’ "
But that’s not the worst part.
The worst part is the actual save shortcut in portuguese.
It’s ctrl+b. I can’t think of any portuguese ‘B’ word that would translate to save.
‘Save’ = ‘salvar’.
But we can’t do Ctrl+s BECAUSE THAT SHORTCUT IS ALREADY TAKEN
download?
Yeah, it’s really shitty. In German, Ctrl+F is Bold.
Nah Ctrl+F is “Finden”. Bold (“Fett”) ist Ctrl+Shift+F
Guess I’m confused either way.
The commands in Excel are localised too, and if you want to change languages you’d have to install some language pack. And I think that due to admin lockdown policies in Windows, if you have to work on a restricted company machine, you won’t even be able to do that because you don’t have permission to install stuff
Wait till you hear about localized Visual Basic
No fucking way
I sure am glad I just use English on all my devices despite it not being my native language.
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Well, Ctrl+S is def what I would expect my programme to do for saving. But for Italics I want nothing else but Strg+Umschalt+K. English hegemony can get bent.
I HATE this. Got absolutely shellshocked by this on a work computer recently.
Luckily, you can “just” change your locale! This is a process that took me a whole hour to figure out, required admin access as well as a system reboot. And it didn’t even work properly.
The same day I ran into a quirk regarding the filename field. Fun fact: Word pulls this directly from the OS. This almost makes sense, except if you want to decide whether or not the file ending is displayed (ie .word). Then you need to set this IN YOUR OS?! There is no other way to set this, and it is broken. When you finally figure this out and set it back to not display the file ending, word keeps doing it, seemingly forever. Yes also through reboots. This issue was fixed over 10 years ago, and then promptly reintroduced and never addressed again. Libreoffice just has another field, this took me all of 30 seconds to discover. But then you have to save in odf, because the word format is ass apparently.
I thought my respect for Word had troughed.
Many such wacky cases in Windows. Like where you install your software (“Program Files”) is localized too.
It’s only half localized though, the actual path is still called program files. It just displays the localized name. Which is somehow even worse.
And if you type in the address bar it’ll suggest the localized version and then give you an error because it doesn’t exist. Drives me bananas.
I haven’t used a localized version of Windows so I don’t know for sure, but sources I can find says it’s actually different in different languages: https://www.samlogic.net/articles/program-files-folder-different-languages.htm
I finally realized a couple years ago that I don’t need an office suite or fancy email client anymore and I ripped it all out. No more LibreOffice and no more Thunderbird.
Now all I use is AbiWord and Gnumeric for my simple needs. I am finally liberated!
Yo! AbiWord is rad! Thanks for the recommendation. This always put me off using LibreOffice. It is so bloated with features nobody uses. Or maybe its actually and the design and UX is just horrible.
There is LaTex which I would recommend for any kind of longer document.
Oh the hours spent writing math formulas. You feel like a wizard, conjuring beautiful equations with an ancient arcane language
Whoever stole my MS office, I’ll find you. You have my Word.
I hate you so much.
Have my upvote.
PowerPoints at you, enthusiastically.
You Excel at this
I cannot Access the words to describe this.
Excellent!
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Microsoft has had a monopoly on office software since the 90s. They illegally leveraged this monopoly to try to destroy competition in other areas. Most infamously, they destroyed Netscape to try to kill competition in the early Internet space. That resulted in a trial for illegally abusing their monopoly which they lost. Then George W. Bush was elected president, and somehow Microsoft effectively got off with essentially no punishment. Admittedly though, part of that was that the judge in the case was so outraged at some of the stuff Microsoft pulled (submitting falsified evidence, having Bill Gates lie under oath repeatedly) that he talked about it in public when he shouldn’t, which opened a door for Microsoft to try to weasel out of the loss.
The “evil” in Google’s motto “Don’t be evil” was widely viewed as being Microsoft. Google was an Internet company in an age where Microsoft was on trial for using their power to make everything about the Internet shitty so that they could control it. In the early days of Google, people weren’t even allowed to use Microsoft software, including Windows, without a special dispensation from the higher-ups. Microsoft effectively avoided any kind of punishment for their abuse of their monopoly, but it distracted them and made them cautious, so they weren’t able to crush Google before it could get going. Before anybody chimes in about how Google is evil, first read up in what Microsoft did. Google might be a bit shady, but where Google got its monopoly by spending hundreds of billions to make its search engine the default, Microsoft used tactics to destroy potential competitors and drive them out of business.
If the US (and the world) had effective enforcement of the anti-monopoly laws, Word would actually have to compete on its own merits. But, because it’s a monopoly, Microsoft can just sit back and keep collecting rent.
Microsoft hurt Netscape, but it was AOL that killed it. At the height of the dotcom bubble, Wall street handed AOL more money than they knew what to do with so AOL bought Netscape. Of course they didn’t have any idea what to do with it (they still kept putting IE on the discs they mailed out to people even when they owned Netscape) and it eventually withered away and died.
The people that ran Netscape correctly predicted it would go this way, but it was a ridiculous amount of money AOL was offering. Luckily they made releasing the code as open source as part of the deal.
No, your revisionist history is wrong. By the time AOL acquired it, Microsoft’s damage had already been done. Its stock price had fallen 50% from its peak value.
The reason AOL didn’t know what to do with Netscape is that it was no longer a viable business due to the interference from Microsoft. Up until Microsoft started giving away Internet Explorer for free as part of the OS, the plan for Netscape was to charge for the browser. That was perfectly normal. People charged for every piece of software up until then. But, when they had to compete with Microsoft’s price of free, they had no real business model anymore.
That’s the whole reason that Microsoft was charged with violating antitrust law. They leveraged their operating system monopoly to enter a new business and destroy their main competitor. Even with their falsifying evidence and Bill Gates lying on the stand, it was an open and shut case.
Microsoft did lots of shady shit to leverage their quasi monopoly on PC operating systems. However Microsoft Office was actually better than the competition in many aspects. The main competition for Microsoft Office was IBM’s Smart Suite. Excel left industry leader Lotus 1-2-3 in the dust pretty quickly in the early 1990s. MS Word was also better than market leader WordPerfect. Then in the late 1990s Outlook became leading and is still unmatched by anything else. Softmaker Office is the only office suite that still exists from back then.
WordPerfect was the leading word processing program under DOS. When Windows was released Microsoft screwed with them by not giving them full access to all the Windows APIs (something Microsoft was notorious for). Surprise, surprise, at the same time Microsoft was not giving WordPerfect the API info they needed, they were releasing their own competitive word processor in Word.
But, once WordPerfect got access to the APIs, they produced a word processor that was superior to Word. The only reason that Word took off is that Microsoft aggressively bundled it with everything.
As for Outlook, I’ve never met anybody who actually likes it. The only thing it has going for it is that it’s available by default and it’s the only thing compatible with emails from other Outlook users. There’s a reason its nickname is “outhouse”. Outlook did the same things that Microsoft did with HTML and HTTP: embrace, extend, extinguish. They took de-facto and de-jure email standards and modified them so that only other Outlook users could use the email properly. They made sure that if you tried to use anything other than Outlook with Microsoft Exchange, that it wouldn’t quite work right.
With Microsoft it’s always about taking their monopoly in one area and squeezing another area, driving their competitors away. It’s what they’re now doing with developer tools, like github and visual studio code.
Outlook is unmatched by anything else? What do you mean? Any email client you take is as good in my experience.
There is currently* nothing Microsoft Office does that I can’t happily do in LibreOffice
The only thing I miss is Excel. Nothing even compares. I use other stuff now, but man my spreadsheets used to be beautiful. Lol
Funnily enough for my needs Google Sheets comes the closest to Excel, but for my personal documents I really want to move to one of those fancy pants python based spreadsheets but I just need to wrap my head around some of the syntax specifics
MS Word is significantly worse than WordPerfect. Reveal codes FTW.
Capitalism? Or nice things? Your decision.
You prefer feudalism?
That is literally the only other way to organize things, yes. Absolutely. One can only be capitalist or feudalist. God you’re smart for catching my bullshit there.
Ah, you’re a fan of dictatorships then?
Only feudal ones, as established.
Plenty of nice things in capitalism
In its gut, being digested, sure
Want to work with .docx files written in English from someone who lives in a country whose main language isn’t English? Better enjoy all your English words being marked as mispelt because fuck you.
Or maybe it’s because they were too stupid/lazy to Select All and set the text language to English? Even so, you can do that at any time as well.
The specific files are generated automatically through some process based on a template, so I think they’d need to fix it there. I don’t really deal with them myself, just remember seeing a coworker struggle with one.
$150
Per year, by the way
massgrave.dev that’s all I’m gonna say.
I’d rather use a free alternative than run a script off a random website
Would you prefer their GitHub?
I also use libreoffice but these people are far from a random website.
I think you’d find more agreement stopping at “I’d rather use a free alternative”. I agree with your sentiment. Repacing proprietary tools built by rent-seekers with volunteer/community run projects whose developers hold user freedom and choice in high regard is categorically better for most people.
Corporate requirements, vendor lock-in, and the friction of momentum make that tough for some people though. I’d still ask they give the alternatives a shot, of course, but I can understand why some might still choose the ideologically inferior option.
For those people? Having options like the open source circumvention tools mentioned allows them to continue using what they’ve paid for (and ought to ostensibly own) without being forced to pay extortion money to do so.
I think you got voted down due to your out-of-hand dismissal of that well engineered alternative with an uninformed value judgement.
tl;dr: you’re correct on the first half but too hasty on the second half.
It’s just the command that launches Microsoft’s own official activation mechanism. It’s hosted on GitHub, which Microsoft owns. Not technically legal, but also not some sketchy Internet crack.
Everyone complaining here about not being able to have unique footers or moving images or ignoring spelling errors just doesn’t know what they’re doing. You’re literally the bad workman blaming the tool. I can do all of those things in Word.
If you prefer another tool, fine. But please stop shitting on things just because you don’t understand them.
And PDF was never meant to be edited. Its sole purpose is to give you a document file which comes out exactly the same on computer screens and printers everywhere. Compact, reliable, compatible. If you need to replace parts of a PDF document post publication, it should be prepared using the Forms tools that are readily available in all good PDF suites.
By the way: I paid 30 Euros for an Office 2019 lifetime license. If ever that should not receive further updates then I’m ready to fork over another 30.
I was working on my thesis a couple days ago using Word, and it permanently deleted a whole line of text when I pressed ctrl+Z to undo a mistake.
That happened with every line on the page until i copied everything to a different text editor and then copied it back to Word.
I respect your take but I will never respect Word.
You know ctrl+Y is ‘re-do’ though right? Just brings it right back.
Yup. That was the first thing I tried, but it also nuked my entire undo history.
Using word for a thesis sounds like a nightmare I would never dare to do
For big projects like that, stuff like LaTeX is so much better in my experience, you could even set up version control for it with, say, git, or similar
“I love typing in ten thousand pounds of syntatic sugar”
– me, an idiot who used embedded images for formulas in a markdown file which gets converted into a PDF
“Totally way easier than LaTeX, I swear”
You may benefit from checking out Typst which gives all of the benefits (and some more) of LaTeX, but without all of the syntax garbage.
Actually learned about this recently too and it looks really cool, but haven’t had to use latex in a while so I’ll defnitley give it a shot next time I have to do document generation
I actually wrote most of it in Obsidian, just copied all of it to Word for final edits because I have to use my school’s docx template.
Definitely trying LaTeX if I end up getting another degree, only learned about it a few days ago. And I just now realized that I could’ve used git with Obsidian this whole time…
because I have to use my school’s docx template.
For a thesis. wtf.
My condolences. I’ve heard good things about LaTeX for scientific papers even though the UI seems a bit daunting.
The “UI” is a text editor.
then I’m ready to fork over another 30.
30 per month now probably
No, for another license that will last me another seven years or however long their service period is. I think I actually have an LTSC license so it might be longer.
lol imagine blaming paid users for ms shit workflow
Imaging people complain about how shit the software is and in response writing 4 paragraphs that amount to “skill issue, get gud.”
You’re holding it wrong
Yeah, it’s so weird seeing all the ones being proud of their tech illiteracy.
All because, right clicking.
Is too much for their small brains to handle.
I don’t think it’s unreasonable or noobish to expect intuitive functions like drag and drop to work properly.
Word is fucking terrible because the workflow is terrible.
It’s not the end users fault when you consider that literally any alternative works properly.
I don’t know how to explain this to you.
But I have never had a problem, or never seen anyone else have a problem. With right clicking. To change the image formatting. To allow drag and drop.
The only time. Are online threads like these. And with how People talk, it sounds like you’re trying to use Word as if it’s Publisher.
“The issue doesn’t affect me, so it doesn’t exist” lol. It’s bad design, whether you agree with that or not…
What exactly is the bad design. Because that’s never been established.
It’s just people getting pissy that right clicking is too difficult.
You can only design around incompetence so much.
And PDF was never meant to be edited
Lol what kind of dumb shit is this to say? There are tons of pdf editors out there, its fucking 2025 and we have incredible technology. Your entire post comes across as a pathetic apologist for multil billion dollars companies.
The web was also never meant to be dynamic. And yet.
It was a apologist statement without a doubt. It was the equivalent of nuh uh.
Word is garbage for what people pay for it. Still charging for the same old software decades later only everything has been rearranged for your convenience err I mean vendor lock in.
Again, I can fully understand if you like other tools better. More power to ya, competition is healthy and all that. But the complaints I specifically addressed are simply unfounded.
I’m not a fanboy nor do I get paid to defend Microsoft. But I have worked with Microsoft Office for 30 years now, and I do get paid to train people how to use it.
99% of users just don’t have the fuckingest clue how anything works in Word. Most can’t even tell a line break from a paragraph break and people still use their PC like a typewriter to indent text…in 2025 🙄
Its amazing how much a little bit of knowledge makes your documents look so much nicer. In my image-heavy documents using page breaks can help limit cascading formatting changes for example. Throw in an autogenerated table of contents, a light drop shadow on your images, a custom template with your corporate letterhead and consistent formatting via the selected theme and you have a recipe for a very professional looking document with nice formatting
Word is like any other word processor nowadays. Pretending it is something special is patently ridiculous.
I was around before Word ever existed and I was never impressed because it was never impressive. In fact, I have been continually disappointed by the changes they have made to promote vendor lock in.
I remember when their was a difference between the return key and the enter key.
there
Pretending it is especially unusable, you mean? Hard agree. Absolute cringe. In fact, that was my entire point.
Nowhere did I write a glowing recommendation of Word as the superior word processing software of today. In fact, I acknowledged several times that there are other valid options out there.
And I’m getting mighty tired of this bad faith argumentation style.
I will gladly speak to that. Is it unusable? No, it works.
That is not saying much though. I have a ton of legitimate gripes about Word. I think their greatest sin in usability was breaking the pull down menu system which was pretty much universal in favor of the dreaded ribbon bar.
Then not standardizing the ribbon bar and instead constantly shuffling around where things are found from version to version. It was and even to this day absolutely infuriating. The reason they did this, to promote vendor lock in is even more messed up.
Their next biggest problem is file interoperability. Not only did did they insert their foot into any file standardization process they also even broke their own standards to once again promote vendor lock in.
MS spent a ton of time and resources breaking standards just to force people to use their product. Excuse me if that makes me dislike them. I don’t hate them because I have trouble formatting documents (although image manipulation in word is absolutely ass to this day).
I don’t like them because they are a shit company selling the same old garbage repackaged with a bow. Word should have been free software over a decade ago. Instead, people keep paying them and they keep coming up with worse ideas.
The newest is disabling autosave unless you have OneDrive installed and activated. I literally could not believe they broke autosave, but they did. Of course they like to say it is even better now with OneDrive but we all know the truth. It is another dose of vendor lock in.
Microsoft is a toxic company that you get to deal with for a living. Getting your feathers ruffled because someone like me is shitting on MS has to be one of the stupidest things I have ever seen. We can agree on everything I am saying. I am not here complaining why there is a extra space between paragraphs.
I am getting mighty tired of the reality of MS. It was old thirty years ago when I first switched to Linux. They have done so much damage to computing in the name of profits it isn’t funny and Word/Office has always been the gas in their vehicle to do it.
its fucking 2025 and we have incredible technology
Yes, and we can modify a VW beetle to turn it into a space ship but why would we?
That would be dope as hell, someone should do that
I taught my brother basic programming when he was 7, and then a little pascal. When he was 8 he asked for a fat C+ programming manual for Christmas. When he was 9, he made a working version of MS Word from scratch, it even saved files in compatible file formats.
That was 1989. I think Word has not improved since then, but my brother is doing alright for himself. I still like to fix computers, but I don’t work in computer science.
