Hi, my friends,
I would like your help with the following:
I have to use a Word document that uses data from an excel sheet and they are “linked” through a function in word that is merge 9 I believe is the correct name) that fetches the data from the excel sheet and fills in the document, kind of like mail merge, as I understand it, because I can’t see it.
I can’t touch the documents to configure them or change them to other formats, but eventually I will have to work with them.
I’ve tested lots of Office programs for Linux, but I haven’t found any that work.
Do you know of any Office for Linux that works or that is as compatible as possible with MS Word?
I’ve even tried the free Office 365, but it doesn’t work either
Try Freeoffice from Softmaker (a german company with quite good reputation).
I had some problems with Presentation (Powerpoint, LO Impress alternative), but Textmaker is definitely much better with tricky Word documents, than LO Writer.
I can’t say for sure that it will be THE solution now for you, but trying it surely worth.
Hi László,
Thanks for your reply.
I had already done tests with FreeOffice, but it was not compatible with this situation. However, I will be again, I may have gotten something wrong, we’ll see.
Thank you very much
Obviously you’ve tried LibreOffice, which a majority of well known Linux Distros provide. Including Mint all editions, Cinnamon, Mate and Xfce. Manjaro, Ubuntu, Ubuntu Mate, Linux Lite. The only problem though is they pack LibreOffice Suite into their ISO’s, when all you need is LibreOffice Writer and LibreOffice Calculator for spread sheets and Excel stuff.
Maybe you could try the Softmaker Office. The Free office is a somewhat cut down version, so the paid version may have an option which is missing in your situation.
I expect, there should be a trial period to test wether it really works?
I’ll check this later, install the paid version just to see a 30 day trial.
For my usage the free version is more than enough
I wrote a similar post about this in this network about for MS Office and Adobe Reader. Well about the former:
If you can get Office365 would be nice, of course to work through online mode, but I am not sure if you can link documents. I am assuming it is possible. It is something common in Office
Worst scenario: do virtualization of Windows itself and install Office365.
About Office365: If you have an email based on a education center - such as a university, should be free.
Google office suite?
Google docs linked to sheets ?
Without a sample of what you are trying to do we can only guess.
You coukd install wine then run microsoft office itself but not sure which version works best on that but i am sure if you look at the wine website there is a compatibility listing
Hi László,
Thank you very much.
I’ve installed the SoftMaker Office you mentioned, but it’s not fully compatible, which is a shame, but it’s not what I want either
Thanks for your help
Hi Manuel,
Thank you very much.
I tested it with the free Office365 from the Outook account, but the mail merge only works with the Desktop Word App.
Thanks for your help
Hi Paul,
I just tried it with Google Docs and it doesn’t work either.
It seems that the most correct solution is to use MS Office.
I have a disk with Windows on it. If I can’t find another solution for Linux, I’ll have to buy MS Office and use Windows.
Thanks for your help
Hey, @Tech_JA In trying to find a close as possible MS Word program for my mom (mine involved printing labels from a database) the only one that would work was the MX Office 2024. I had to purchase it just to use on Linux Mint. But since you have an Excel database (not a Word or Access database), you would need to first import the excel sheet into their “Planmaker” which is the Excel equivalent. Then you would have to import your document into the “Text” app. It is an office suite, just like Libre & MS Office. But since you cannot “touch” the Excel sheet, none of them would probably work for you.
I would suggest using a VM like I did for Windows, so that you can use MS products. Even still, if you do not have an Office 365 subscription, you would need to purchase that.
I use Crossover by Codeweavers to emulate the Windows OS, and it works great for games, but the forums are chock full of people getting MS Office to work on both Mac and PC. It is basically a WINE GUI that uses bottles, or closed environments much like a VM, to pull all of the OS files required to run a program. Most of the other apps like Crossover are strictly for gaming. Crossover is the only one I know of that works for normal desktop apps as well. They do offer a free trial of the full version, I think 2 weeks. So you could try it.
But I think you were looking for a way to bypass MS Office for this task, and without having complete control of both the Excel database & the Word document, it is not going to happen.
I can’t find MX Office 2024… Could it be MS instead of MX?
I can use it as long as I keep the MS Office xlsx format and don’t change or add anything that is incompatible with Excel.
I was trying my best not to use Windows or MS Office. I have MS Windows 10 on a disk and I can buy MS Office, but I was hoping to find software for Linux that would be compatible with these Office functions.
I didn’t know about CrossOver, thanks for the tip.
I think you’re absolutely right. I’m trying to find an online condominium program to see if I can overcome this situation. I’ve already created a thread and I’m looking at a few programs to see if they can do what I want.
Thanks for your help
Hi Neville,
Thank you very much
For now, I don’t have time to test another operating system and, if I need to work with MS Office, I’ll install it on my Windows disk.
I never thought there would be so much incompatibility between MS Office and the Offices I’ve tested for Linux. it’s a shame, but it’s the truth
The problem is , there is no standard for Office Software.
Microsoft has become the defacto standard, and that is a problem because they keep changing what Office does.
You cant have a shifting standard.
If we had an open source office software standard, and we made all the open source office suites comply with it, then MS would be forced to match it, at least as an option, because
people would ask for standard compliance.
Then you would be able to get a document from an MS user, and operate on it with any open source office program.
Its a pipe dream today, but not undoable.
