I hate windows. But I have to use it for work. The worse it gets, the more I want to break free completely, minimise my exposure to this OS. The only part I truly cannot do without I think is Microsoft Excel.
Replacing with Excel 2016 or only using webversion or so is insufficient for sure, for work it needs the SharePoint/auto save etc etc stuff. Also power query getting data from SharePoint online.
Replacing with Libreoffice or so seems completely impossible, there’s too many ‘special’ files in organisation, with .xlsm macro mess, I don’t control all that, I can’t fully steer away from such mess but need full functional access.
Other than Excel, I think I could do all my work from a Linux desktop.
Is it possible by now, reliably working in an up to date excel from a base system Linux? What is the way? Have people done this? How? Do I need to run a virtual machine with win11? How do I do that? Does anyone here have experience with it? I have high degree of control over work devices and boss couldn’t care less, as long as I can get my work done.
Thanks and sorry if this is the wrong community for this question (where would it belong better?)
This is what worked for me If you want to run it without a VM: I suggest getting a licence to crossover. Then you can download the office 2016 Iso here https://www.heidoc.net/joomla/technology-science/microsoft/technology-science/microsoft/8-office-2016-direct-download-links and buy a cheap licence online. Mount the Iso onto your computer then in crossover search office 2016 and then as the installer select the exe from the mounted Iso. This way you get native integration so when you open an excel file from Linux it will just open excel. Here is an older video explaining the method https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=WB8uqE5_8s0&pp=ygUhT2ZmaWNlIDIwMTYgTGludXggc2V0dXAgY3Jvc3NvdmVy
Does 2019 work yet
You can try Winboat.
It uses docker or podman to create a windows container and run windows programs, that Wine or Proton can’t run. The experience may not be snappy, as there is no GPU passthrough support yet, but it sure is seamless. I once tried Photoshop and it ran great.
Had to look into this recently for similar reasons. My conclusion was that once you have macros involved, you can’t use anything but an actual copy of Excel. I’ll be spinning up a qemu VM with Windows to support Excel and the full version of Visual Studio when I get that far.
So it’s not excel, it’s share point you can’t live without.
So, you are caught by MS… Either accept it, or do what is right.
There’s a software called Winboat which integrates Windows apps natively in your Linux system and under the hood it’s spin up a virtual machine for it. You can try that for Excel
Wow thank you for this tip! I’m going to give another app a try!
There is no Excel alternative. It sucks, bit its the reality. I run a VM specifically for a couple windows apps and 90% of that is excel.
I use version 2019 and manipulated the installer to only install excel and none of the other office suite apps.
You can also do the same in a docker container instead of VM (winboat) if that’s more your jam.
If you want more info on any of that I’d be glad to give you more details.
There are lots of Excel alternatives.
There is nothing that matches every single feature of excel in 2026.
That’s my point. There are lots of spreadsheet options, but if they don’t meet all the needs then they really aren’t alternatives. Maybe it’s semantics, but I find that definition to not be misleading and keep expectations in line.
I’m saying that case by case, person by person there are alternatives (software and/or processes). E.g.
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If you want features A,B,C then use alternative X
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If you want features C,D,E then use alternative Y
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If you want features A,D,F then use alternative Z
But if your team needs A,B,C,D,E & F then we come to your point that there is no alternative.
I just didn’t want people reading this thread to automatically jump to the “must use excel” conclusion.
Gotcha. That’s a fair point. I kind of jumped to the end because the typical response is to “just use libre office” and OP is clearly a power spreadsheet person where that’s not gong to work.
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Option 1) Dual Booting Option 2) Just run Excel with WINE/Proton Option 3) Proton Sheets Option 4) Google Sheets (Also web and libre office as you mention)
just use an offline ltsc setup instead fucking around with linux
But I enjoy fucking around with Linux
I think using a VM is a good choice. You get all the compatibility benefits while isolating it from your hardware.
There is one special program for some special hardware that I need for work, and I just run said program in a Windows VM. Even better, I can run the program without internet. So it’s completely safe!
This is my solution, as well. Let the windows application do its thing, sandboxed effectively. I’m no purist.
I tried libreoffice too but you have to change a few settings so it’ll be compatible with ms office but it still isn’t perfect, btw Onlyofficr worked great for me, I hope it works for you too.
WPS Office version of Excel is a surprisingly good alternative.
I avoid O365 as much as possible, but when I need to, I do occasionally use it with Crossover and it seems to work. Activation was a little bit janky, but did work.
Crossover is a paid version of WINE, and the other apps I’ve seen mentioned run Windows in a VM and forward the apps through RDP. There are advantages to both approaches, but I prefer the efficiency of Crossover.
It’s been a year (maybe two) since I last tried. I tried activating mine with my work account and got caught up on the Duo 2FA not working. When you activated yours, did you have to go through any 2FA prompts? If you did, do you remember what tricks (if any) you had to use to make it activate successfully?
0·2 days ago- The first link is SEO garbage, that claims to be the official LO site but it is NOT the LibreOffice website
- The post already said LibreOffice Calc is not an alternative.
Infuriaring isnt it!
We just moved to m365 and it sucks, excel is less user friendly than sheets and I hate both.
I get it is needed for its power usage but i detest it. I cannot fathom how a suite of software as bad as m365 is just out there being used.
Calendar sucks. Outlook sucks. Excel sucks. Word sucks. Powerpoint is fine. Sharepoint is woeful. How many other half apps are connected? Loops, etc.
Aaaaaaaaaaaaah
The crown jewel of shittiness in their suite has got to be Teams. Such a dogshit chat program.
Oh god. So annoying teams is. The user you’re chatting with might use Skype for bla bla. No he ain’t, he’s next to me. With teams app.
Onedrive force usage… I prefer Dropbox, better ui, better office support than Onedrive. Best of all with Dropbox, shared files are actually reachable by everyone in the team. Sharing through Onedrive, colleague can’t access file even though we set it up as reachable by anyone.
Its crazy you can fail so badly at cloning a competitors product yet still be so successful
