this post was submitted on 05 Jan 2026
1115 points (98.5% liked)
Technology
78482 readers
3420 users here now
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related news or articles.
- Be excellent to each other!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, this includes using AI responses and summaries. To ask if your bot can be added please contact a mod.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
- Accounts 7 days and younger will have their posts automatically removed.
Approved Bots
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
“Let’s take the most recognizable software package name and make it something totally divorced from what the software is supposed to be for.”
There are probably people for whom Microsoft Office is the only desktop software that they use. There are probably many people in procurement that are going to scratch their heads and think twice about signing off on something that sounds like a flight simulator.
This is an opportunity for alternate office suites.
Its is almost universally the main reason that even a lot of Linux daily-drivers still have a windows install available to them. They fuck up Office enough and there isn't a reason to even have Windows for most users.
That's why they want you to put all your stuff in their dumb cloud, because its the only reason people would keep using this garbage, because they can hold your work ransom in their shitty ecosystem.
That is the whole business model of tech now. Stealing your shit and selling it back to you. That is it.
Do what I did: vm your win machine inside linux. It's how i solved my legacy software / game saves quandry. Just duplicated the win HDD and virtualised it.
I dislike dual booting and will go a looong way to be lazy :P
Who the fuck is dual booting for Office? You just made that up.
Literally everyone I know that runs a Linux desktop and also has a job.
They don’t just use office from the web, via Linux? You can access excel, word, …, all of that in a browser.
I would not shut down my PC and boot into windows just for office. I keep my Windows around because my wife prefers it (for now).
I'm not one of the dual booters mentioned, but the desktop version of Excel specifically has several important features that the online version flat out doesn't support. Primarily I'm talking about creating and running data queries, which is useful for analyzing data and generating reports from remote data sources including external files like CSV and online databases. You can do all this without Excel of course, but this shows the online versions are definitely limited.
'Twas ever so. Years ago (2012) when i was still working in an office we had web MS office to use for work....i ended up bringing in my laptop with full blown office just to get the fckn data manipulation we needed out of excel
That’s fair. I’ve dealt with that before, and in my case I had to rebuild the damn thing for compatibility with the web version. When I did, I was able to use alternatives like Power Query M instead of VBA. This worked in my case, but I’m sure you’re right that some features just aren’t there in any capacity.
The external CSV thing is a PITA but you can (at least there) overcome it via adding a “landing sheet” for raw data. Nobody is going to want to deal with any of this, though.
Web office has barely any features compared to the desktop thing, iirc.
+1
Yeah I think I'd be more likely to use WinBoat or something similar to run a virtual machine rather than fully boot into Windows.
office on the web sucks, lacks features, and basically defeats the purpose of using office at all
Well, IIRC there's a flight simulator hidden somewhere in Excel
Edit: https://www.exceldemy.com/7-excel-easter-eggs-for-power-users/
Unfortunately they no longer include elaborate Easter eggs like that, since they adopted a security policy around 20 years ago that forbids them. https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/archive/blogs/larryosterman/why-no-easter-eggs
Ah! Bummer :(
I haven't used Excel in ages, tho
I don't know many people that still call it "Microsoft Office"... They usually refer to the individual apps they use (Word, Excel) rather than the suite as a whole.
Some people just call it "Microsoft" ("please install Microsoft on my computer"), especially if they're on MacOS where it's the only Microsoft software they use.
Some people assume it's part of Windows since they've only ever used computers that have had it preinstalled.
It's like they're trying to alienate their core customer base. Windows 8 may have been salvageable but Office is not.
For business, they're locked into Excel, there is no substitute. I can see MS blowing out the remaining home users though.