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Excel Replacement?

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blufrog

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Hi,

I'm one of the Office 2019 people that is getting screwed by Micr🤬s🤬ft over their refusal to renew a digital certificate in Office 2019. 🤬🤬🤬

I use Excel a lot for math and engineering, and use the graphing functionality quite significantly.

Is there a good/better replacement for Excel on Mac? I haven't really used or looked at Numbers. Can it compete with Excel?

Hell...I'm even considering putting Lotus SmartSuite in a VM (I used it in the 1990s and I'm still nostalgic about it). I'm really not too fussed, but would prefer a Mac-native alternative.

Like millions before me, I'm slowly moving away from Microsoft/PC (but not for the usual reasons). I'm about two uses away from being able to ditch my PC entirely, but now Micro$oft have screwed things with breaking Office!!!

I WILL NEVER USE SUBSCRIPTION SOFTWARE!
 
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blufrog said:
I use Excel a lot for math and engineering, and use the graphing functionality quite significantly.
Click to expand...
If your graphing is limited to 2 axle, LibreOffice Calc can handle the job. If you need XYZ graphing, it can't do that.
blufrog said:
Is there a good/better replacement for Excel on Mac?
Click to expand...
No spreadsheet is better than Excel on Windows. That's the power of the Dark Side.
star-wars-darth-vader.png
 
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blufrog said:
Hi,

I'm one of the Office 2019 people that is getting screwed by Micr🤬s🤬ft over their refusal to renew a digital certificate in Office 2019. 🤬🤬🤬

I use Excel a lot for math and engineering, and use the graphing functionality quite significantly.

Is there a good/better replacement for Excel on Mac? I haven't really used or looked at Numbers. Can it compete with Excel?
Click to expand...

Not generally but depending on your situation it may be good enough.

Also try OnlyOffice. They have the best compatibility with Word documents that I've seen. Their spreadsheet component lagged Excel's functionality in the past but I believe they are catching up.

Euro-Office (an upcoming fork of OnlyOffice) might be a good one to follow.

SoftMaker Office might be good as a commercial solution (that has a one-time license option) but I haven't tried it.

Depending on your actual needs you should also consider non-spreadsheet solutions like BI tools (unfortunately, Tableau Desktop, one of the top BI solutions, now subscription), GNU Octave, and other dedicated data analysis and visualization tools.
 
Numbers is good at what Numbers does... it's not Excel but it's not bad. It's gained mail merge and Pivot Table ability in the past couple of years, and to be honest the only thing I really miss from Excel is some text formatting options (e.g. being able to adjust the angle of text, helpful if you're dealing with a lot of small columns).
 
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In your position, I'd do my own evaluation of any suggested replacement.

I'd pick a few existing spreadsheets that are typical representatives . I'd also pick a few others that contain complex things, or unique things that can only be done with a particular feature. I'd then import those spreadsheets into each app and print the results to PDF without making any changes or edits, to evaluate the default fidelity to original. The PDFs will make it easier to compare the outputs. I'd also make sure I had the output PDFs produced by Excel, because those are the references.

That's just the evaluation for fidelity and correctness. You'd have to separately evaluate how well the UI works for you.
 
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chown33 said:
In your position, I'd do my own evaluation of any suggested replacement.

I'd pick a few existing spreadsheets that are typical representatives . I'd also pick a few others that contain complex things, or unique things that can only be done with a particular feature. I'd then import those spreadsheets into each app and print the results to PDF without making any changes or edits, to evaluate the default fidelity to original. The PDFs will make it easier to compare the outputs. I'd also make sure I had the output PDFs produced by Excel, because those are the references.

That's just the evaluation for fidelity and correctness. You'd have to separately evaluate how well the UI works for you.
Click to expand...
When I actually thought about what I used Excel for, it was nothing crazy. For the real heavy-lifting I have other math tools or I write small computational programs.

I'll give Numbers more of a chance. I'm otherwise happy with everything else. I only had Office just for Excel.
 
bzgnyc2 said:
Euro-Office (an upcoming fork of OnlyOffice) might be a good one to follow.
Click to expand...
As I understand it that's not a stand-alone application yet - its a browser-based, collaborative Google Docs/Office 365 alternative that can be integrated in to a "private" cloud service (some assembly required) - so organisations can run their own collaborative editing apps without trusting Google or MS with their data. Interesting, but maybe not a solution here.
 
I’m retired so I don’t need the graphing support of excel. Numbers does not come close to the functionality of excel. If I ever need those capabilities I have an old Windows computer that I can use. I have not tried any of the other programs so I can’t help you there.
 
Personally, I'd go with LibreOffice Calc instead of Numbers.

LibreOffice Calc has more Excel functions than Numbers (507 vs 256), so more Excel like. Seen some odd results in date/time math with Numbers (though will admit, have not used Numbers in years). LibreOffice is also Windows, Linux so if move to one of those environments, no migration/conversion required. And Google Sheets is originally based on OpenDocument standards (aka what LibreOffice writes) so another platform that should read in easily should the need arise.
 
theluggage said:
As I understand it that's not a stand-alone application yet - its a browser-based, collaborative Google Docs/Office 365 alternative that can be integrated in to a "private" cloud service (some assembly required) - so organisations can run their own collaborative editing apps without trusting Google or MS with their data. Interesting, but maybe not a solution here.
Click to expand...

Ah thanks -- the OnlyOffice from which it forked is still available standalone and didn't realize Euro-Office only pulled the browser-based components. Hopefully the capabilities and functionality between these two won't diverge much...
 
blufrog said:
I use Excel a lot for math and engineering, and use the graphing functionality quite significantly.
Click to expand...
Have a look at OnlyOffice.

In no way am I a power user, but for me OnlyOffice has replaced Microsoft Office for Mac because of bloat. The direction Apple is heading with Numbers, Pages, Keynote, etc, doesn't interest me.

Alternatively if you have a Microsoft Office Windows perpetual license, consider Crossover.
 
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