LibreOffice Review – In-Depth Analysis with FAQs, Advice & More

LibreOffice has been hailed as one of the best open-source office suites out there. 

While it costs nothing to use, the features that it provides are great enough to rival Microsoft’s Office suite. 

Today, we will look at what makes LibreOffice so great, point out its shortcomings as well as provide some alternatives. 

Quick Summary of the Main Product

LibreOffice is one of the most popular, open-source alternatives to Microsoft’s Office suite. 

The tools you get in the package are: 

• A word processor 
• A spreadsheet editor 
• A presentation app (similar to Microsoft Powerpoint) 
• A vector-drawing program 
• A database program 
• A math-formula editor

That’s a pretty big set of tools and considering you get all of them for free, we feel it’s definitely a package worth trying out. 

Features and Benefits

Word Processor 

The word processor app is called Writer and it’s a joy to use. 

It’s very similar to Microsoft Word in terms of its interface and even its keystrokes. This makes it very accessible to former Microsoft Word users. 

It can be used to create your course outline as well as to write actual course content.

Spreadsheet Editor 

The spreadsheet editor is called Calc and just like Writer, its design borrows heavily from Microsoft’s Excel program. 

Editing and organizing spreadsheets are fast and efficient. 

However, you may run into lag and crashing issues when working with bigger spreadsheets. 

You can use it to make graphs and tables to include within your online course.

Presentation App

The presentation app is called Impress and it’s fairly customizable. 

You can download extensions to make things more streamlined and it also features a “wizard” that can guide you through its basic features. 

Moreover, you can use it to create lecture slides for your online course.

Factors to Consider Before you Decide to Buy LibreOffice

User-Friendliness

While LibreOffice does provide a ton of features for free, its interface can be fairly clunky and difficult to navigate. 

You won’t have much trouble if you’re a former Microsoft Office user but LibreOffice’s bulky interface is still something to keep in mind.

Pricing

LibreOffice is completely free so, that’s pretty much the best price you can get. 

What Do You Want to Use it For?

As an online course creator, we feel that LibreOffice definitely covers all the tools you’ll need to at least get started with creating your online course. 

You can use Impress for your lecture slides, Writer for taking notes, and Calc to develop tables or graphs, etc. 

Pros and Cons of LibreOffice

What we liked	What we didn’t like
• Free • Open-source • Compatible with Windows, macOS, and Linux • Compatible with a wide variety of file formats including standard Microsoft Office ones • Features the capability to record Macros for automation of certain tasks	• Tends to crash when handling big files • Interface is clunky

Social Proof

Many people who use LibreOffice switched from Microsoft Office thanks to LibreOffice’s much more robust user experience. 

While it may take some time to get the hang of, it doesn’t run into messy formatting issues like Microsoft’s tools do. 

Here are some reviews we came across: 

Similar to LibreOffice (Recommendations)

#1: Best Long-Form Word Processing Tool – Scrivener Review

Scrivener is a tool that’s designed for long-form writers. 

While this isn’t primarily how you write content for online courses, if you’re writing about a niche that requires a lot of text, Scrivener really it really easy to organize and edit such content.

Factors to Consider Before you Decide to Buy Scrivener

User-Friendliness: Scrivener is loaded with features to help you organize, reorganize, and edit which is great especially for beginners. We recommend you don’t skip the intro that starts when you first boot up the app. 

Pricing: You can get Scrivener on macOS for $49, on Windows for $45, and on iOS for $19.99. Compared to other premium writing apps with similar features, this is a steal. 

What You Want to Use it For: As we said, Scrivener is primarily for writing long content. If your online course doesn’t have text like that, we’d recommend that you don’t get Scrivener. 

What we liked	What we didn’t like
• Great editing features • Organization and formatting are hassle-free with no bugs • Easy to set up • Available on different operating systems • Competitive pricing	• Interface can be hard to understand at first • The Mac version has better features than the Windows version

Best Long-Form Word Processing Tool 

The best long-form word processing tool is Scrivener thanks to its arsenal of tools that make it very easy to format and edit lengthy content. 

#2: Best Word Processor for Formatting – WordPerfect Review 

WordPerfect does not try to emulate Microsoft Word. 

Instead, it has a completely different workflow. 

While that may seem off-putting at first, the benefit of this is that it’s designed to give you a lot more control over the formatting of your content.  

Factors to Consider Before you Decide to Buy WordPerfect

User-Friendliness: WordPerfect may be difficult to get into at first but once you master its features, you can get a lot of value out of it. 

Pricing: WordPerfect comes with a hefty price tag of $249.99. You can get a $99 Home and Student version as well.

What You Want to Use it For: More popular tools such as Microsoft Word tend to run into formatting issues when dealing with lengthy content. This is where WordPerfect shines. If you’re going to be doing a lot of formatting, we recommend getting this product.

What we liked	What we didn’t like
• More stable than other word processors • Specialized academic, legal, and PDF form building features •  You can easily import and export Microsoft format documents • Can record macros for automation • You can import from PDFs	• Quite expensive  • Only available on Windows

Best Word Processor for Formatting

The best word processor for formatting is WordPerfect because of its Reveal Codes panel which reveals exactly where formatting (e.g. italics, styles, etc) starts and ends. 

Guide to Buy

User-Friendliness

Word processing software (along with presentation and spreadsheet tools) should make your job easier and more efficient. 

If you constantly run into issues and have to google how to perform certain tasks, it will waste your time more than it’s going to save it. 

Hence, always put user-friendliness on top of your priority list when choosing a word processor and other office apps. 

Pricing 

As an online course creator, you won’t initially have a lot of money to work with. 

There are other tools you may have to invest money in as well, so we recommend that you either choose a writing tool that’s free or something that costs at least below $20 per month. 

If it’s a one-time payment, we recommend you don’t go over $50. 

What Do You Want to Use it For?

Word processing software often comes in a package rather than a stand-alone tool. 

Oftentimes, the other tools that it’s paired with can also help you out with online creation. 

However, if you feel you only need the word processor, then look for one that comes with a stand-alone plan. 

Furthermore, only go for a word processing tool that specializes in the type of content you’ll be writing. 

Don’t opt for a long-form word processing tool if you’re going to be writing in bite-sized chunks. 

Wrapping Things Up…

With that, we’re at the end of our review for LibreOffice. 

Overall, it’s a free suite that offers a wide variety of tools that you can use in numerous different stages of your online course creation journey. 

That definitely makes it a worthwhile package to consider as an online course creator. 

Let us know what you think of LibreOffice and which office suite you prefer to use.