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I apologize for the repetitiveness of this question, but I just yesterday decided to use Ubuntu 13.04 as my only operating system and am trying to figure a few things out. No, I don't mean figuring out things with Ubuntu as I have been messing around with the system for some time on older machines and on VMs.

My question is, since the release of LibreOffice 4.03, are we still looking at any incompatibilities when read/write MS Office .docx files? The university that I attend requires us to turn in weekly projects in Word 2010 .docx format. I would love it if I could use the office suite included with Ubuntu, which just happens to be LibreOffice 4.03, but I have read numerous articles in the past that there are some incompatibilities such as tables not displaying correctly and some items getting aligned differently. These problems absolutely cannot happen on any of my projects; otherwise, my professor will dock points on each project. Can anybody confirm if these problems still exist?

I know it is quite easy to get MS Office 2010 to work through PlayOnLinux, but I want to know if LibreOffice is totally compatible with .docx, .xslx, and .pptx file formats or if I still need to save in the old Office 2003 format. Thank you for any help you guys could provide!

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  • Ok, I figured as much. Thank you for your answer. The school in question is Colorado Technical University, though I think even Kaplan still requires .docx for their originality verification software. I got MS Office 2010 Professinal Plus edition for free from the school, so I guess no reason why I shouldn't be using it. I wish I could do PDF, it would save the headache. Thanks again! :)
    – Kalthrix
    May 14, 2013 at 19:31
  • That other post is really close to what I was asking, but wanted to be sure that not much had changed between 11.10 and 13.04. Glad to know that it hasn't changed much.
    – Kalthrix
    May 14, 2013 at 19:35
  • Probably the other question should get an update ;) And I'm not glad to know that it hasn't changed much :P I am hoping that one day they will be compatible enough so I can ditch Microsoft Office for good! May 14, 2013 at 19:39
  • Of course. I mean it would be nice if it was fixed, but now I know it hasn't been yet.
    – Kalthrix
    May 14, 2013 at 21:04

2 Answers 2

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It has gotten/is getting a lot better, but unfortunately no. Simple documents are ok, but especially if you complex documents and/or you have to collaborate with other students, it can be hell! You're probably better of using Google Docs.

It is however possible to keep Ubuntu as your only operating system! Although you can not run Office natively on Ubuntu, you can run it via Crossover (see here). Crossover is the commercial version of wine (if you know wine, otherwise look it up, brilliant piece of software). My girlfriend uses it for a couple of months now and it works really well. You can get a free trial for Crossover to test it out (and if you don't do anything after the trial they will almost always email you with a discount offer :P).

Of course you can also try to do it yourself using wine, but that is a bit more complicated (you can read here how to do it).

Another solution is running windows in virtualbox, not as neat, but still very handy.

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Yesterday I was testing several 2010 documents. The only problem I found was with footer and foot notes. Tables were correct. Images were correct. I then did a bit of searching and found that most of this problems will be dealt with in LibreOffice 4.1

I also did test out a document from Office 2013. It looked perfect. Am guessing Microsoft did a bit of work on compatibility.

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