Core office applications
How do the five office suites on test handle the basics?
There’s room for debate on the matter, but we consider the core office applications to be: word processing, spreadsheet, presentations and database. LibreOffice and Calligra have all of these, and the applications themselves are fully featured in each case. The same is true for FreeOffice, OnlyOffice and WPS Office, except they don’t come with a database.
As for the modules themselves, they all offer the basic facilities. In the case of word processing, you’re more likely to make your decision due to personal preference about the user interface rather than because of a lack of essential functions. In addition to the basic facilities that most users need, each of the word processors have features for more advanced, graphical layouts.
In the case of FreeOffice, only the paid-for version offers mail merge and label printing. It’s a shame that the OnlyOffice word processor doesn’t have a way of adding continuous word count to the main window. The Calligra Office word processor ploughs its own furrow when it comes to UI layout, and the whole thing feels like an original take on how a word processor should work, making it less immediately familiar to the first-time user.
Similarly to the situation with word processors, each of the spreadsheets contain all of the basic facilities that most users will need. In the case of LibreOffice, there’s some awkwardness when creating charts because the settings are altered in a dialog. The other suites take a more efficient approach of using a sidebar, which enables real-time tweaking of settings. But then, the LibreOffice spreadsheet did have the advantage of a spellchecker.
The Calligra and LibreOffice databases cover similar ground to each other. They can be used to design a visual front end, and both can use industry-standard database back-ends such as MySQL. The LibreOffice database supports integration with its word processor module for things like mail merge tasks, and label creation and integration features with the spreadsheet module.
All of the suites have a presentation module that enables the user to create slides that are composed of text, graphics and animation, and to play them back in a sequence.