Oh, that's too bad. I haven't checked it out in a long time. However, in recent years the Office UX has been getting increasingly worse for me too. Not ugly, just bigger and fatter, taking up more screen space to show less info.

If open source alternatives aren't suitable, my fallback is to get whatever the last retail box versions were of the few Office apps I actually occasionally use and then never update them. There hasn't been a single new Office feature I care about added in about ten years.

OpenOffice/Libreoffice lets you choose between multiple UX styles, which rearranges the buttons like old office, the ribbon stuff, and many more. I was amazed when I first noticed this (kind of hidden) feature. You should check it out.

LibreOffice also does this.

Correct. Thanks for the hint. I keep mixing up openoffice and libreoffice even though I only use libreoffice on my system.

LibreOffice should have provided a theme/icon pack "Office Icons" - half the time I can't tell what an icon is for because most of us have been raised on MS Office. Also, it would do well with a "Simple" mode ala Google Docs that is sufficient most of the time for most folks.

Otherwise it works fine, haven't had any issues with the documents it produces and I particularly like the direct export to pdf feature.

LibreOffice has several themes that makes it look like MS Office (e.g. ribbons, modern UI, etc).

Select TOOLS > OPTIONS > ADVANCED > Enable experimental Options (WARNING this is experimental and may be unstable) > OK and then RESTART LIBREOFFICE. On restart VIEW > TOOLBAR LAYOUT > NOTEBOOKBAR. You can then play with the options with VIEW > NOTEBOOKBAR > CONTEXTUAL GROUPS/ CONTEXTUAL SINGLE / TABBED.

It is actually View -> Toolbars -> Customize -> Notebookbar but within that there is only "Tabbed" option which doesn't really show a way to change themes.

This is a perfect example of actions that make adoption harder. This should have been at most 2 clicks and prominently displayed assuming LibreOffice wants to be a great alternative to MS Office and make the transition easier. I have been using Linux daily for over 20 years now and it is not intuitive to me - it doesn't make me very optimistic about the experience for a new user.

Nope, it's actually Menu -> User Interface: https://postimg.cc/sMhhFvC1

Then this dialog appears: https://postimg.cc/YhVWyQVJ

Found it - thanks! I wish this was more easily accessible to new users - it actually makes a difference in terms of organization of icons and ease of finding things.

Check out Only Office

For the occasional user, various online office suites are also an option.

On my personal computers, I haven’t use MS Office in close to 20 years.

I use it at work, because that’s what we’re given to use, but 95% of my usage is opening CSV files in Excel. I find documents are rarely written in Word anymore, and the use of PowerPoint is actively discouraged at this point.

If the parent commenter only uses Office a dozen times per year, they should quite easily get by with something else. Google Docs, iWork, a simple text editor… there are options beyond LibreOffice. Which specific options would depend one what those dozen uses actually are.

My work pays for a full O365 subscription for me. The web apps are more than I'll ever need as someone who basically uses Excel and Word as an interchange format.

MS Office is much harder to use for the casual user not already used to it - the interface is very disorienting.

To be fair, office is also hot garbage. It's just that most people are used to that kind of hot garbage.

As someone who hasn't used office much in the last 15 years, it's nearly unusable for me. I have to Google how to do basic things because everything is confusing, ugly, and hidden(or hard to find amongst the huge number of icons).

It's not as bad as it was 5 years ago. It's closer to the flat office design.

It probably depends mostly on what you're used to. I find that LibreOffice looks fine - no worse than most apps, and much better than Microsoft's UI.

> LibreOffice is so visually gross it’s pretty hard to use.

I don't know, I quite like it, reminds me of the old Office look.

Plus, there's at least a bit of customization that you can do, which is pleasant: https://imgur.com/a/libreoffice-ui-80hwOp0

Very much seems like a matter of preference.