Now. Why am I wrong for Libre
edit a pdf? Edit your expectations.
I feel seen. The number of times I’ve actually needed to do this is too damn high. Sure, I feel entitled to not have to pay for the privilege, as the task was usually thrust upon me by some bank, HR department, or legal firm. But the number of scummy websites online that will happily play with your doc’s confidential info for free, is too damn high. I can’t imagine anyone with average computer skills navigating this particular turing tarpit unscathed.
You can also edit a PDF with LibreOffice Draw
Inkscape is a free vector editor that handles pdf edits relatively well. Always my goto.
* Assuming you’re making minor changes.I’ve used Inkscape for a lot of vector art. Using it to edit a PDF seems… overkill, but it’s probably less likely to screw things up. I’ll give that a shot next time, thanks!
Firefox now allows you to edit PDFs locally, for most use cases it is enough. There is also PDFsam Basic, an open-source tool to divide, merge, extract pages, rotate, etc.
I (average user) was given a case of sensitive information and told to edit it/update it/reupload it. Using my work device was the expectation…but I had not been granted any paid software to do so.
The IT guy was like “you can use this website” which was almost certainly a violation given the nature of the data. It was maddening because I knew (I also did not use one of those websites).
I pay for Nitro PDF locally
Be Australian. Set language to English: Australian
Write word: color. Does not underline spelling error.
Don’t even mention PowerPoint language.
That’s because you spelled it correctly. What color tire have you got on your SUV
Australian spelling is colour.
If it helps, I thought it was funny. Silly-ass British (Australians are just desert British) spellings. You’d think the group that seems to cut half the letters out of the pronunciation of any given place name wouldn’t also be the group adding fucktons of unnecessary letters to words since they won’t say them anyways.
Then again, French exists.
The extra u’s don’t bother me but spelling check as cheque to distinguish between a bank check and other senses of check is ridiculous. Especially considering a bank check has the same etymological roots as the rest
Counterpoint: it’s 2025 we should have eradicated all traces of that concept from civilized society.
Worcestershire
Guess I hurt some fragile ex imperial feelings
Might have something to do with Microsoft offering M365 to nearly all universities for dirt cheap or free.
Don’t agree to Microsoft’s terms of service? Guess university isn’t for you.
“Nobody ever got fired for buying Microsoft”
best thing about microsoft office is word 3.1 providing me with 30 blank discs for storage.
I’m using Libre office at the moment to actually write something more than a few pages, and it’s English dictionary is missing like 50% of the English language.
*its
Yeah, I’ve been having trouble with that, because its is possessive. I never claimed to actually know what I’m doing, just that I am. Fortunately this time, I probably can’t injur myself horrifically.
And I’m learning now that their’s is incorrect.
Give him a break, typing with libreoffice. He didn’t know
No, I really didn’t. Its is a possessive, and that’s been tripping me up. I should have about 150 of those to fix in my draft.
I finally realized a couple years ago that I don’t need an office suite or fancy email client anymore and I ripped it all out. No more LibreOffice and no more Thunderbird.
Now all I use is AbiWord and Gnumeric for my simple needs. I am finally liberated!
Yo! AbiWord is rad! Thanks for the recommendation. This always put me off using LibreOffice. It is so bloated with features nobody uses. Or maybe its actually and the design and UX is just horrible.
It’s cause they teach it in school
Word? Pfff… that is not longevity. If you want to see something REALLY long living, look at Troff.
I taught my brother basic programming when he was 7, and then a little pascal. When he was 8 he asked for a fat C+ programming manual for Christmas. When he was 9, he made a working version of MS Word from scratch, it even saved files in compatible file formats.
That was 1989. I think Word has not improved since then, but my brother is doing alright for himself. I still like to fix computers, but I don’t work in computer science.
Boy oh boy, I can’t wait to use Libre Office Writer and have the exact same issues, but only half the features!
I’m going to be honest and I mean this sincerely.
What features has word added in the last decade that are actually impactful?
I wouldn’t mind some book writing features, like the ability to jump to chapters, and maybe text previews of each. I don’t think Office does this either, but it would be nice. Also…why does it use an English dictionary that’s missing like 30% of the language?
Collaborative editing is the main thing that puts it above Libre in a professional setting.
I use Libre at home, but at work MS Office wins 😕
Online LibreOffice exists and is called Collabora: https://www.collaboraonline.com/
Works great, for example in Nextcloud.
Ok but that isn’t really word in the libre office sense. That’s more Microsoft 365, which is fair I guess because I don’t even know if you can buy the actual software anymore.
Are you able to do the collaborative editing in the local software or is it just the browser based Google docs equivalent?
Yes, I can collaboratively edit within the desktop MS Word app. The online version is objectively worse for that, ironically.
Whoever stole my MS office, I’ll find you. You have my Word.
I hate you so much.
Have my upvote.
PowerPoints at you, enthusiastically.
You Excel at this
I cannot Access the words to describe this.
Excellent!
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Want to work with .docx files written in English from someone who lives in a country whose main language isn’t English? Better enjoy all your English words being marked as mispelt because fuck you.
Or maybe it’s because they were too stupid/lazy to Select All and set the text language to English? Even so, you can do that at any time as well.
The specific files are generated automatically through some process based on a template, so I think they’d need to fix it there. I don’t really deal with them myself, just remember seeing a coworker struggle with one.
Wanna know something fun about Office?
The keyboard shortcuts are localized.YES, REALLY.
If you press Ctrl+S when running in Portuguese, it doesn’t save, it underlines the word instead (Because the word for it is “Sublinhar”).
Whoever is responsible for this decision won’t die, when their time comes they’ll be swallowed alive by the earth and welcomed into the 10th circle of hell, created for them exclusively.
The 11th circle is reserved for he who decided to localize the Excel Formula Functions too.
The excel function thing has had me fucking irate every time I want to use Excel
My fucking god just thinking about it has my blood pressure rising
Like Ok I get why they localize them but my fucking god just make both versions work like what the fuck is wrong with you
Oh i fucking hate this one, at least once a week I hit control S and excel goes "no problem I’ll underline that cell fo you cause obviously that’s the shortcut for ‘sublinhar’ "
But that’s not the worst part.
The worst part is the actual save shortcut in portuguese.
It’s ctrl+b. I can’t think of any portuguese ‘B’ word that would translate to save.
‘Save’ = ‘salvar’.
But we can’t do Ctrl+s BECAUSE THAT SHORTCUT IS ALREADY TAKEN
download?
Yeah, it’s really shitty. In German, Ctrl+F is Bold.
Nah Ctrl+F is “Finden”. Bold (“Fett”) ist Ctrl+Shift+F
Guess I’m confused either way.
I sure am glad I just use English on all my devices despite it not being my native language.
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I thought my respect for Word had troughed.
The commands in Excel are localised too, and if you want to change languages you’d have to install some language pack. And I think that due to admin lockdown policies in Windows, if you have to work on a restricted company machine, you won’t even be able to do that because you don’t have permission to install stuff
Wait till you hear about localized Visual Basic
No fucking way
Many such wacky cases in Windows. Like where you install your software (“Program Files”) is localized too.
It’s only half localized though, the actual path is still called program files. It just displays the localized name. Which is somehow even worse.
And if you type in the address bar it’ll suggest the localized version and then give you an error because it doesn’t exist. Drives me bananas.
I haven’t used a localized version of Windows so I don’t know for sure, but sources I can find says it’s actually different in different languages: https://www.samlogic.net/articles/program-files-folder-different-languages.htm
Well, Ctrl+S is def what I would expect my programme to do for saving. But for Italics I want nothing else but Strg+Umschalt+K. English hegemony can get bent.
I HATE this. Got absolutely shellshocked by this on a work computer recently.
Luckily, you can “just” change your locale! This is a process that took me a whole hour to figure out, required admin access as well as a system reboot. And it didn’t even work properly.
The same day I ran into a quirk regarding the filename field. Fun fact: Word pulls this directly from the OS. This almost makes sense, except if you want to decide whether or not the file ending is displayed (ie .word). Then you need to set this IN YOUR OS?! There is no other way to set this, and it is broken. When you finally figure this out and set it back to not display the file ending, word keeps doing it, seemingly forever. Yes also through reboots. This issue was fixed over 10 years ago, and then promptly reintroduced and never addressed again. Libreoffice just has another field, this took me all of 30 seconds to discover. But then you have to save in odf, because the word format is ass apparently.
So the Japanese version would require
Ctrl+ほ?
$150
Per year, by the way
massgrave.dev that’s all I’m gonna say.
I’d rather use a free alternative than run a script off a random website
Would you prefer their GitHub?
I also use libreoffice but these people are far from a random website.
I think you’d find more agreement stopping at “I’d rather use a free alternative”. I agree with your sentiment. Repacing proprietary tools built by rent-seekers with volunteer/community run projects whose developers hold user freedom and choice in high regard is categorically better for most people.
Corporate requirements, vendor lock-in, and the friction of momentum make that tough for some people though. I’d still ask they give the alternatives a shot, of course, but I can understand why some might still choose the ideologically inferior option.
For those people? Having options like the open source circumvention tools mentioned allows them to continue using what they’ve paid for (and ought to ostensibly own) without being forced to pay extortion money to do so.
I think you got voted down due to your out-of-hand dismissal of that well engineered alternative with an uninformed value judgement.
tl;dr: you’re correct on the first half but too hasty on the second half.
It’s just the command that launches Microsoft’s own official activation mechanism. It’s hosted on GitHub, which Microsoft owns. Not technically legal, but also not some sketchy Internet crack.
