Over the last 2 or 3 weeks I've been involved in some deal-making things and negotiating contracts that requires me to use docx (Word) documents, a xlsx (Spreadsheet) document or two. I knew this time was coming and thought I had prepared sufficiently by installing Onlyoffice for Mac. Boy was I wrong. It's been a struggle and a half to get anything to work properly.

Onlyoffice is kinda nice in that it connects to NextCloud, which I also use a lot. Better yet, it has its own sync connection for it. It works on iPhone, on my iPad and on macOS. Using it that way, it allows me to review documents on my iPhone and edit things on the larger screens. Cool!

Except it doesn't work. Onlyoffice for iPad can't edit spreadsheets, the UI is super buggy and gets in the way so much that it's beyond useless. Nothing really works when editing cells, and don't even try to save a file, that won't work either. I have edited files multiple times now, simply adding or changing a few cells, adding paragraphs of text. Simple edits really. When I close the file it prompts me to save the file, which I confirm and the file should be saved. But if I then re-open the file a minute later I find the old, unedited, version again.

I've tried this 3x times before I threw the iPad in the corner and went to get my laptop. What the fuck!?

Then I ran into more issues with saving and converting files. Since Onlyoffice in its infinite wisdom doesn't give me options for docx beyond what it thinks it's current. I can't save in odt (Opendocument Text) and ods (Opendocument Sheet) or some reason. Nor does it support to save files as Office 2007 compatible. And, well, it's just too limited. Useless!

So, LibreOffice it is then, right? More popular, better features. The ugliest icon, but what can go wrong? LibreOffice has other, but equally moronic, problems. It does support saving into a ton of types of files. That's cool. But formatting documents doesn't work, open a Word file and everything is misaligned and stupid looking. The UI is even more atrocious than Onlyoffice and there is no mobile version. But hey, at-least it has a basic UI for the spellcheck function, something Onlyoffice doesn't seem to have at all.

Neither app supports any translations in a useful way, having me to copy my text into Apple Pages or some other "normal" text editor so I can use the macOS translation feature.

After fidgeting with a few documents I thought, fine, screw it. I'll use Apple for creating my files! I'll use Pages and Numbers, and I'll use Apple's stupid file standard. Then when others need to access my files I'll export the file to docx and xlsx.

That kind of works, but between all the software I have, and am open to use, compatibility is rudimentary at best.
Because, why, after 35+ years of office software, why would ANYTHING be decently compatible with each-other?!

Should I just use Office365? For compatibility that would be the best option. But that's a subscription I refuse to pay. Not to mention it probably has Co-pilot built in and worst of all, it's a Microsoft product - In their cloud.
I could use Google Docs, but that also requires the internet, is not Microsoft Word or Excel. It requires (or defaults to) Google Drive and comes at the cost of my privacy.

It's just a poor deal all around.

No, that won't do. None of the 'regular' paid options appeal to me, since they all claim to use LibreOffice or OpenOffice (or some similar platform) as a basis for their product. Collabora does that for example. I've looked at OpenOffice, but that's a relic with barely any updates since 2014. As far as I could tell it doesn't even have an Apple Silicon version. And, like LibreOffice, is an unwieldy turd too.

So, that makes LibreOffice the best turd. You can roll it in glitter all you want, praise its open-source roots or whatever. Boast about compatibility and all that. But it's a ridiculously stupid piece of software for the time we live in.

Still, it is the best turd, unfortunately!