Linux

Separate your personal and your work computer. You don't want to be in a situation where you have to explain a software issue caused by your decision of not running standard software. Put Windows and all work related software on a separate work laptop and use remote desktop from your Linux PC to do your job.

To use Excel with macros, I don't even think the web version will cut it. Your only option is to use something like winboat to use excel inside a windows docker container as far as I know.

Using something like Winboat on top of a linux distro installation might be be the best option for you, since Winboat allows you to virtualize windows on a per-application basis.

(This is not Wine, it's essentially a barebones VM, but I don't think you need GPU acceleration for excel lol)

TIL about winboat thanks to this thread

For work, I just use windows. Not my machine not my problem.

You could use something like WinBoat to make installing and using a virtual machine for Windows a lot easier. It also makes Windows apps feel almost like they are native to your Linux desktop, which is nice.

Alternatively, you could try running Excel in wine using Bottles, but I'm not sure how well that'll go since Excel is kind of a monster of an application.

Habe you tried winboat? Is basically a docker container with a Windows virtual Maschine inside of it.

You can try Winboat.

It uses docker or podman to create a windows container and run windows programs, that Wine or Proton can't run. The experience may not be snappy, as there is no GPU passthrough support yet, but it sure is seamless. I once tried Photoshop and it ran great.

So it’s not excel, it’s share point you can’t live without.

There is no Excel alternative. It sucks, bit its the reality. I run a VM specifically for a couple windows apps and 90% of that is excel.

I use version 2019 and manipulated the installer to only install excel and none of the other office suite apps.

You can also do the same in a docker container instead of VM (winboat) if that's more your jam.

If you want more info on any of that I'd be glad to give you more details.

There’s a software called Winboat which integrates Windows apps natively in your Linux system and under the hood it’s spin up a virtual machine for it. You can try that for Excel

Infuriaring isnt it!

We just moved to m365 and it sucks, excel is less user friendly than sheets and I hate both.

I get it is needed for its power usage but i detest it. I cannot fathom how a suite of software as bad as m365 is just out there being used.

Calendar sucks. Outlook sucks. Excel sucks. Word sucks. Powerpoint is fine. Sharepoint is woeful. How many other half apps are connected? Loops, etc.

Aaaaaaaaaaaaah

So on my linux PC, I have made a KVM (Kernal Virtual Machine) using QEMU and made a Windows 11 machine inside it (and I bought a digital license for it), which I have work office and email set up. I personally only need to use it occasionally. If you give it enough resources it works decently & runs all windows software; although as it doesn't have a dedicated graphics card it won't look as slick as native windows 11 machine and run GPU intense software well (you can get it it's own dedicated video card and pass it through but really isn't worth it for just using Excel). It means I can main linux but use Windows occasionally if I really have to. It means you can have a full Windows machine with work Microsoft account set up for Office, One Drive etc - depending on your employers policies of course. You can cut down the resources you allocate it if you want to be switching between the Windows machine and other software in Linux, but Windows can be laggy without enough resources as it's so poorly optimised.

There are sites that guide on setting up a windows 11 machine in linux, but essentially you need to install KVM modules and Virtual Machine manager in linux (available on all distros). You do need to access your PCs bios to ensure the settings that allow virtual machines to access the CPU are on (slightly different name between AMD and Intel CPUs).

Then you create a machine in Virtual machine manager, give it plenty of resources (especially if the idea being when you use it if it's the only think you'll be doing, give it access to most of your CPU cores and the majority of your RAM), and create a decent size virtual hard drive file (I'd say minimum 128gb or more as Windows is bloaty - you can set the virtual drive file size to be flexible so it has a max size but the actual file size is only what is used by the guest system but some file systems still use the whole space unfortunately; not sure how Windows behaves). Download the Windows 11 installer ISO, and then add that file as a virtual CD drive for your guest machine, boot the guest machine, and you should get the Win 11 installer. The VM can only see the virtual hard drive file, so you can install Win 11 safely onto the drives it sees with no risk to your PC. Then reboot and you should have a new Windows install; test it - if it works, buy a digital license (if you want...) and install Office using your 365 account OR if you have old CDs then pass those through to the virtual machine and install as on any Windows PC.

I tried libreoffice too but you have to change a few settings so it'll be compatible with ms office but it still isn't perfect, btw Onlyofficr worked great for me, I hope it works for you too.

So, you are caught by MS... Either accept it, or do what is right.

I got it working under both Wine and Bottles for someone that needed it, but it was a real pain in the ass, and the reports on actually successfully doing so are hit or miss.

Found this solid write up on various options and results though, which sounds like it could be helpful for you while investigating: https://gist.github.com/eylenburg/38e5da371b7fedc0662198efc66be57b

Does CrossOver Office support a version of Excel which ticks your boxes? Are you in a position at your workplace to move them off Excel? I honestly have never found an organisation where they were using it for what it was meant for, often being used in place of proper tools - databases, issue management systems, requirements tracking, etc - where the better tool would be better and cheaper.

But, like JIRA, the people who make decisions only know one tool, and that tool is a hammer.

This is what worked for me If you want to run it without a VM: I suggest getting a licence to crossover. Then you can download the office 2016 Iso here https://www.heidoc.net/joomla/technology-science/microsoft/technology-science/microsoft/8-office-2016-direct-download-links and buy a cheap licence online. Mount the Iso onto your computer then in crossover search office 2016 and then as the installer select the exe from the mounted Iso. This way you get native integration so when you open an excel file from Linux it will just open excel. Here is an older video explaining the method https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=WB8uqE5_8s0&pp=ygUhT2ZmaWNlIDIwMTYgTGludXggc2V0dXAgY3Jvc3NvdmVy

If its for work, its on a work machine.

That said, I have a lot of efforts (personal projects with hardware I get given, or side work not related to my job) where I need specific software. For those, I have a VM tailored to that application that's been trimmed down as much as possible.

This let's me rdp into them, do what I need to do, save to a designated location, and shut the VM down. Since its a VM I tend not to give it network access unless required, and I have USB drive I pass through to the VM.

This makes sure everything works, I limit the access of MS with local only accounts and win 10 (among other specific versions like XP for a specific piece of hardware, server 2008 for an irritating piece of software I sometimes need, etc).

All the VMs are on my proxmox cluster, easy to start/stop with a script.

I avoid O365 as much as possible, but when I need to, I do occasionally use it with Crossover and it seems to work. Activation was a little bit janky, but did work.

Crossover is a paid version of WINE, and the other apps I've seen mentioned run Windows in a VM and forward the apps through RDP. There are advantages to both approaches, but I prefer the efficiency of Crossover.

Run windows in a vm for work.

WPS Office version of Excel is a surprisingly good alternative.

I've tried various methods to run a couple Windows programs I use occasionally and most reliable method I've found (without buying a commercial package like Crossover) is a VM. With a decent multi-core processor and enough memory the only downside I've found is it makes my laptop run warm.

There's also winapps you can use to run it in a native windows environment in some way (another machine tucked away somewhere, in a VM etc.) and have it acting like a native app over RDP and even have integrations with file manager like file associations.

Instead of having a full desktop view in a remote desktop session, you'll get each window in a separate window that'll act like any other singular app. I used it when I had to use ms office and some other windows only app when I had a secondary PC that had to have windows anyway in a separate office in the same building.

It's the first time I've ever heard of winboat and i feel like they are pretty much equivalent in what they do.

I think using a VM is a good choice. You get all the compatibility benefits while isolating it from your hardware.

There is one special program for some special hardware that I need for work, and I just run said program in a Windows VM. Even better, I can run the program without internet. So it's completely safe!

Had to look into this recently for similar reasons. My conclusion was that once you have macros involved, you can't use anything but an actual copy of Excel. I'll be spinning up a qemu VM with Windows to support Excel and the full version of Visual Studio when I get that far.

Do I need to run a virtual machine with win11?

Yes this definitely works fine. QEMU with Virt-Manager works well, you can set up as many versions of Windows as you like. Other people use VirtualBox, VMWare Workstation, etc. These all work well enough to run Windows + standard apps like MS Office or whatever you need.