MS Office Dominance

Discussions center on the persistent use and dominance of Microsoft Office in corporate and professional environments, comparing it to alternatives like Google Docs and LibreOffice, and addressing challenges in switching due to features, inertia, and enterprise standards.

➡️ Stable 0.9x Startups & Business
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20
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5
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#1082
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Keywords

MS IT OneDrive OK PC StarOffice FWIW M365 IBM PowerPoint office microsoft ms office ms excel google docs libreoffice windows docs 365

Sample Comments

saagarjha Apr 10, 2024 View on HN

People are more than happy to use Microsoft Office…?

belter Feb 6, 2025 View on HN

But then they use Microsoft Office....

wyclif May 22, 2019 View on HN

Why don't they use Google Docs instead of MS Office? It's 2019...

soup10 Apr 9, 2020 View on HN

Office is business productivity software. You don't buy it for every employee, you negotiate a license for the number of seats in use. It has way more features than google docs and is standard everywhere. It's like saying you could save money by having programmers write code on pencil and paper. You saved the money on the computer but you have a net loss because you lost the power and efficiency of real time editing, compiling and debugging. These corporate guys just drink the inter

dsg42 Apr 29, 2015 View on HN

You're completely lost in your Silicon Valley mindset. Most of the western world still shows up to work and uses Office on Windows. Even in tech, I've seen non-technical workers request PC's just so they can use "real" Office. Office for Mac doesn't cut it. And while it might be good enough for you, it's not for many people who rely on Word, Office, and PowerPoint for work. Oh, and Google Docs is hardly free in the office.

jcalvinowens Sep 16, 2025 View on HN

Doesn't microsoft have office in the browser now? I'd think that would be a way around it. But I don't know, the last time I actually used MS office was over ten years ago...

astine Nov 21, 2019 View on HN

I'd be very surprised if this were true. My experience is that in actual offices, MS Office is king and it would be very hard to move most workflows away from it without exactly replicating it bug-for-bug.

_ink_ Jan 6, 2025 View on HN

I wish that was true. But the corporate world runs on MS Office. The alternatives to that just cannot keep up :(

mdekkers Apr 20, 2017 View on HN

what do you use instead of MSOffice?

Delk Apr 20, 2022 View on HN

Things like Office 365 are also still pretty much a hard requirement at lots of offices. More enterprisey projects can definitely require working with all kinds of moderately complex technical or non-technical documents in Word or Excel.It may be possible to get it running on Wine or CrossOver Office, of course, but most generic Windows-centric corporations probably aren't going to buy Crossover, and "I can't send you a commented version of this document by today because I'