Programs that emulate MS Excel

[vernal45]

Need help.  Other than open office, are there any other "office" type programs that will do exactly what excel will do?  I mean will it take an excel document and work? 

[bedlamite]

http://www.openoffice.org/

It's 90+ % compatible, and can read and save in the .xls format along with several others. And it's free.

[roo_ster]

http://siag.nu/siag/

It sucks less!



A Couple More:
http://www.koffice.org/


http://www.gnome.org/projects/gnumeric/



I have used all of htem.  The OO spreadsheet is most Excel-y.  Gnumeric is the next most usable.  Siag is extremely lightweight, but less MSExcel-y.  I can't remember my Koffice work.

[GigaBuist]

What features are you looking for specifically?  Formulas? Macros?  OLAP Cube browsing?

[vernal45]

All of the above.  It needs to do what excel does. And be completely friendly with existing excel documents.

[JimMarch]

It needs to do what excel does.

Then  you want OpenOffice.

[vernal45]

Open office it is then.  Thank you all for your help.

[K Frame]

From my experience Open Office will not be 100% compatible, but it will be very close.

[Silver Bullet]

If you're using a Mac, Mariner Calc is another option.  I doubt if it is 100% compatible, but it can open Excel documents.

[lupinus]

Open office isn't 100% compatible but it's bout as close as you will get.  And even then, you will likely just have to check any documents and make tweaks.

[Manedwolf]

Just as a note, if a vendor sent me any file that I cannot open with MS office, anything that I had problems with or needed a third-party shareware whatever to look at, I would immediately go with another vendor.

Depends what you want it for, but if you're doing spreadsheets for the business world, pay for the real thing. If you take a class, you can get the academic version for very little cost.

 

[Ben]

Open office isn't 100% compatible but it's bout as close as you will get.

Yup, I don't think anything else comes close.  I tried using Open Office at home for a while, but the "not quite 100% compatible" ended up taking too much of my time when I was working on work documents, because I'd have to carefully go through them to look for the "every once in a while" glitch that if I didn't find, I would hear about on the job.

If I was retired or working for myself, I would replace MS Office with Open Office in a heartbeat, no regrets.