Could Someone Give me Advice on Migrating from MS Office to LibreOffice for Small Business?

[lizaclarr]

Hello there,

I run a small business with about 15 employees; and we are considering making the switch from Microsoft Office to LibreOffice. We primarily use word processing; spreadsheets; and presentation software; and I have read a lot about the benefits of LibreOffice; particularly in terms of cost savings and open source flexibility.

How seamless is the transition in terms of file compatibility? We often share documents with clients and partners who use MS Office. Are there any significant issues we should be aware of when converting files between the two suites?

My team is quite accustomed to MS Office. Are there any recommended resources or training programs that can help them get up to speed with LibreOffice quickly? How steep is the learning curve?

Are there any major features or functionalities in MS Office that are lacking or significantly different in LibreOffice? We heavily rely on features like Excel macros and advanced formatting in Word.

As a small business, we cannot afford extensive downtime. What are the best support options available for LibreOffice? Are there paid support services or reliable community resources that we can turn to if we encounter issues?

Also; I have gone through this post; https://ask.libreoffice.org/t/is-this-the-main-forum-for-help-and-support-for-libreoffice-aws-devops/ which definitely helped me out a lot.

If anyone here has made a similar transition; I would love to hear about your experiences. What were the biggest challenges you faced; and how did you overcome them? Do you have any tips or best practices to share?

Thank you in advance for your help and assistance.

[ilmari]

tdf-migrationprotocol-v2.pdf

The Document Foundation LibreOffice Certification Program — The Document...

LibreOffice Certified Migration Consultants — The Document Foundation

https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Deployment_and_Migration

[ohallot]

@lizaclarr

Hello there,

I run a small business with about 15 employees; and we are considering making the switch from Microsoft Office to LibreOffice. We primarily use word processing; spreadsheets; and presentation software; and I have read a lot about the benefits of LibreOffice; particularly in terms of cost savings and open source flexibility.

How seamless is the transition in terms of file compatibility? We often share documents with clients and partners who use MS Office. Are there any significant issues we should be aware of when converting files between the two suites?

The 2 softwares produce the same results. So all the jobs will be executed easily in LibreOffice. However LibreOffice is not MS Office, it is extremely similar but there are differences here and there. Users will get used quickly to LibreOffice by just using it.

No software can claim 100% compatibility with MSOffice . In some corner cases there may be some glitches. Depends mostly on how documents are created, and how they are managed. A long list of feature comparison is available in the link below:

https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Feature_Comparison:LibreOffice-_Microsoft_Office

@lizaclarr

My team is quite accustomed to MS Office. Are there any recommended resources or training programs that can help them get up to speed with LibreOffice quickly? How steep is the learning curve?

There are “zillions” of You tube videos on LibreOffice and we have a full library of documentation at this link:

Bookshelf

@lizaclarr

Are there any major features or functionalities in MS Office that are lacking or significantly different in LibreOffice? We heavily rely on features like Excel macros and advanced formatting in Word.

See the comparison chart above. For excel macros here is the deal: LibreOffice macros are different from Excel macros. The language is almost the same but the objects (sheets, cells, range) have different names, so you must adapt the macro to LibreOffice.

But LibreOffice has a compatibility mode that can handle most (but not all) differences between Excel and Calc. It can handle many issues but a review and debug may be necessary.

@lizaclarr

As a small business, we cannot afford extensive downtime. What are the best support options available for LibreOffice? Are there paid support services or reliable community resources that we can turn to if we encounter issues?

Paid support services can be found in the following pages:

Professional Support | LibreOffice - Free and private office suite - Based on...

@lizaclarr

If anyone here has made a similar transition; I would love to hear about your experiences. What were the biggest challenges you faced; and how did you overcome them? Do you have any tips or best practices to share?

Focus on the people. Tech issues are the easiest to fix, but people deserves attention and care. For a small company training may not be affordable, but proper leadership from the boss is advisable. Some tips for free:

• Structure your internal documents in the native ODF format, by creating and using templates.

• Interchange of documents can be in PDF format, until both parties must edit the file, so in that case MS formats is unavoidable.

• Suggest your team to install LibreOffice at home too, so the work can continue with one tool only.

• Enforce as a boss, that you must receive internal docs and reports in ODF format and not MS format. Give example to the people.

If an excel file is critical to the company operation, consider to restrict the license to the only computer that operates it to prevent disruption.

That is what I can suggest for the moment.

Kind regards
Olivier