On the left is a pane showing thumbnails of all the slides in the presentation. It can also be turned off altogether by unselecting Tools -> Options -> LibreOffice Impress -> General -> Start with Wizard.īy contrast, PowerPoint opens directly on the editing window.

This wizard guides users through the basics of choosing a template, slide background, and transitions, but can be bypassed at any time. In most Linux distributions, Impress is configured to start with a wizard. Instead, the majority of differences tend to be subtle ones, a matter of small bits of extra functionality more than basic features. However, many users acquiesce with a few grumbles to whatever interface they are offered. While some argue that ribbon interfaces are more efficient, others argue that finding features on them can be harder, and that their dialog windows tend to be cramped. Probably the most obvious difference is that PowerPoint and Excel use MSO’s ribbon interface, while Impress and Calc, like the rest of LibreOffice, use traditional menus and toolbars.Īlthough this difference does not affect functionality, most users are likely to have strong opinions about it. Styles work best with largely uniform information layouts like text, and are harder to implement in more variable layouts like slide shows and spreadsheets - which is likely why many Impress and Calc users ignore them completely. Both Impress and Calc offer styles, and they can be powerful tools.īut, unlike Writer, Impress and Calc do not require the use of styles for advanced features.

Nor does the LibreOffice emphasis on styles, which makes such a difference in word processing, matter so much in slide shows and spreadsheets. By contrast, LibreOffice’s Impress and Calc, which were developed after Writer, are designed for compatibility with their MSO counter-parts, and are more similar to them in design. Writer and Word are applications with distinctly different approaches and assumptions about how users work. The answers are far more complicated than with the word processors. If functionality and stability are the criteria, LibreOffice’s Writer is a more powerful tool than Microsoft Word.īut how do the other main productivity tools in LibreOffice and Microsoft Office (MSO) compare? In other words, how do Impress and PowerPoint, the slide show applications in the two office suites, compare? Or Calc and Excel, the spreadsheet apps?

Libreoffice power point