Yes. I’m a self employed professional. I mean I have different computers, I have my laptop for instance which is for work only. But it’s still my laptop.
You probably don’t for personal budgeting and tracking of items for tax purposes. Any run of the mill spreadsheet will work just fine for that purpose.
I’m a chartered accountant though, like think of me as a free agent if you will, I’m not tethered to anything or anyone. I do professional work or give professional advice in exchange for currencies of various origins. My work as such, is a bit more complicated, and I need Excel. Sometimes I have to shared access to files for instance, or I need to share a file with someone, who won’t have libre because they are using Excel locked behind a corporate environment they don’t control. Libre Calc does have some unique functions that I’d argue Excel doesn’t have, but on the flip side Excel has more advanced functions, and xlookup, which I pretty much use every day. Google Sheets isn’t even in this conversation, and I personally have a hard dislike for Google Workspace apps in every form.
It would be nice if there was an actual alternative, and I think Libre would probably be the closest viable one. The gap is narrowing. Microsoft Office is atrocious in price, but thankfully easily hackable though, although in a professional environment you have to be more careful with this, than you personally would care to be. It’s also a memory pig for absolutely no reason, and so full of historical bugs they haven’t cared to fix for 30+ years. Plus some new ones that are infuriating. And you could set Microsoft Word on fire with no complaints from me.
I could see why it has use for professional accounting esp. when live editing. LibreOffice still doesn’t do live editing.
But what accounting do you do for your personal life itself that would require MS Excel? I’m asking since it’s the topic of the post; buying MS Office pro with a laptop for home use.
sidenote, LibreOffice does have xlookuo and I’ve happily used it a number of times before, I thought it’d be nice to know
I use Dynamics365 as my accounting software to keep track of my own personal stuff, which is tied in pretty tightly with excel, I wouldn’t be able to export anything without it. Actually I’m not even sure I’d be able to use it at all really. I also use Word more often than one would think, just for general around the house things. My investments too, like I use excel exports to do analysis on tables of data, stuff like regression and 50 day/200 day plotting, and general chart analysis. Probably could maybe get away with that on the free stuff, I’m not sure.
You don’t need pro to do any of this. The normal Office Home license is sufficient. And for personal use, it would be a real son of a gun if you accidentally downloaded them off the office website and then went to https://massgrave.dev/ and by grave mistake typed in a few of those commands
You do accounting at home?
Yes. I’m a self employed professional. I mean I have different computers, I have my laptop for instance which is for work only. But it’s still my laptop.
I mean, I do some accounting at home (my savings, taxes) but I don’t see why they require $150 software for their home accounting.
You probably don’t for personal budgeting and tracking of items for tax purposes. Any run of the mill spreadsheet will work just fine for that purpose.
I’m a chartered accountant though, like think of me as a free agent if you will, I’m not tethered to anything or anyone. I do professional work or give professional advice in exchange for currencies of various origins. My work as such, is a bit more complicated, and I need Excel. Sometimes I have to shared access to files for instance, or I need to share a file with someone, who won’t have libre because they are using Excel locked behind a corporate environment they don’t control. Libre Calc does have some unique functions that I’d argue Excel doesn’t have, but on the flip side Excel has more advanced functions, and xlookup, which I pretty much use every day. Google Sheets isn’t even in this conversation, and I personally have a hard dislike for Google Workspace apps in every form.
It would be nice if there was an actual alternative, and I think Libre would probably be the closest viable one. The gap is narrowing. Microsoft Office is atrocious in price, but thankfully easily hackable though, although in a professional environment you have to be more careful with this, than you personally would care to be. It’s also a memory pig for absolutely no reason, and so full of historical bugs they haven’t cared to fix for 30+ years. Plus some new ones that are infuriating. And you could set Microsoft Word on fire with no complaints from me.
I could see why it has use for professional accounting esp. when live editing. LibreOffice still doesn’t do live editing.
But what accounting do you do for your personal life itself that would require MS Excel? I’m asking since it’s the topic of the post; buying MS Office pro with a laptop for home use.
sidenote, LibreOffice does have xlookuo and I’ve happily used it a number of times before, I thought it’d be nice to know
I use Dynamics365 as my accounting software to keep track of my own personal stuff, which is tied in pretty tightly with excel, I wouldn’t be able to export anything without it. Actually I’m not even sure I’d be able to use it at all really. I also use Word more often than one would think, just for general around the house things. My investments too, like I use excel exports to do analysis on tables of data, stuff like regression and 50 day/200 day plotting, and general chart analysis. Probably could maybe get away with that on the free stuff, I’m not sure.
You don’t need pro to do any of this. The normal Office Home license is sufficient. And for personal use, it would be a real son of a gun if you accidentally downloaded them off the office website and then went to https://massgrave.dev/ and by grave mistake typed in a few of those commands