Possibly from past experience; I can't be the only one who's had a red face after emailing a document, only to find out that in Word, the formatting's off just slightly enough to make the entire thing look unprofessional.

This was a good many years ago, and I accept that things may have changed, but Word and Excel work for me right now, and have the added bonus that I can trust what I'm sending to clients.

Just for the avoidance of doubt, I realise that this entire situation could be avoided by using tools meant for the job. Sadly, that wouldn't go down as well with a lot of clients who aren't as technically-savvy as the average HN user.

So I export my LibreOffice Text documents to PDF, then use Acrobat Pro to export the PDF to Word format. What Acrobat Pro does is render a pretty literal representation of the PDF into Word. For someone used to using styles in Word, it is a generally horrid conversion. But I'm in the minority, and everyone I've sent Word documents rendered in this way is satisfied, which completely mystifies me.

For documents that I'm frequently asked to share, like contracts, I deliberately keep them dead plain text simple as much as possible. I have a contract generation program that pulls customer and project data, and populates a LibreOffice template so I can focus on just the specifics of the proposal. The contract parts that a customer's legal team might want to mark up with track changes enabled is kept simple enough that LibreOffice can still faithfully export it to Word.

I generate simple spreadsheets for myself, but keeping formatting consistent from spreadsheets I get from others has held me back from ditching Excel entirely.

I still haven't been able to work out a way to switch away from PowerPoint slide decks that I have to share with others (which is pretty much every presentation deck I produce). I'm a pretty heavy user of animations in PowerPoint, and the faithful conversion of that is non-existent.

If Microsoft was better with keeping parity between OS X and Windows Office, then I would have never explored adopting LibreOffice, but since there are enough differences to matter, I figured it couldn't hurt to wean myself from Office where feasible.

No, this situation could be avoided if Microsoft would actually correctly implement their own fucking pseudo-standard. Not that this is possible, of course, since the 600+ page behemoth that is OOXML is stock full of inconsistencies, contradictions, and missing details.

Oh, and of course there is ODF, which is just plain better than OOXML. If that doesn't work, there is again just a single entity at fault: Microsoft. So don't blame LibreOffice for shortcomings of Microsoft Office and start demanding Microsoft to get their shit together.

Edit: Being more helpful, have you ever had to try and explain to a client who would much rather be doing other things, why they can't edit the document you've sent them?

You can not be serious. How can you possibly think that an UI that consists of 1) two stacked toolbars full of confusing icons and 2) a bunch of options menus with a million levels of nested items is any good at all?

The "new" Office 2007 UI is seriously amazing. For the first time ever I could actually find what I wanted in Office without looking for at least a minute. It's logically organized and it's clean.

LibreOffice feels like Office 97. That isn't a good thing.

Even if I did prefer ribbon, it would have to be MUCH better to justify the drawbacks that come with Office (cost, etc.)

1) A set of rotating toolbars full of icons that are just as confusing, though they are arranged better by default

2) No discoverable keyboard interface (Alt-menu access doesn't work without menus)

It's a preference thing. I don't think either one is strictly better UI; it just depends on the user's preferred interaction modes.

http://imgur.com/ZYaxc,xQiiK,2WbYk,VVW0S - this is when pressing alt, r ("start menu"), au ("auswählen" = select), f ("fangen" = catch - the icon for "select" changes in the last picture).

You can move backward using ESC, too: "alt-r, au, esc, esc, a" puts you in the "Ansicht" (view) ribbon. Once in "alt-mode" it always shows you what you can do, and how.

I haven't used MS Office in years, but I'm fairly confident it would annoy me about as much as LibreOffice does. Office suits are just really hard to do right.

I guess it comes down to Stroustrup's famous quote:

"There are only two kinds of programs: the ones people complain about and the ones nobody uses."

I started to use it to type my science reports and homeworks, then used it to make my resume (I simply couldn't make it not look like shit using MS Word), and finally switched to using it for everything. Now I know Latex is not for everyone, and it's not easy to have other people edit and compile it (especially if they don't know it), but as far as I'm concerned, it turned out to be good for my sanity ...

Oh and for the sake of honesty I should write that image placement in latex, although imho better than in MS Word/Pages/LibreOffice, still do drive me nuts at times..

Most people use the most basic features (bold, center, adjust margins and printing). That is not worth around £200!

It's been said before in plenty of articles right here on HN, the move is minimal. Users see the same icons (open, save, print), the menus are in the same locations, Libreoffice and MSOffice look the damn same. It' just like most problems with marketing, a lot of people cannot differentiate products or companies.

That strikes me as hyperbole, as it's always seemed to do ok opening basic files.

Even a simple pptx will change the bullets to some funky character, mess up the formatting.

It's not hyperbole, its actual real-world corporate experience. I tried recently to edit a pptx for a conference I am speaking at and as usual my linux/LO installation was unable to do so. I really wish it did work, but I just can't honestly say it ever does. try it for yourself, create a pptx in Office, add a couple slides, simple layout, nothing fancy, then save it, try opening it in LO and see what you have...