Use Microsoft Office Shortcuts in Libre Office | Hacker News Reader

Use Microsoft Office Shortcuts in Libre Office

github.com

72 pointsZaki101Aslam20 comments

As a finance guy, this is a massive, massive impediment to me "maining" Linux. Without my long-ingrained Excel shortcuts I'm not getting very far. I was previously planning to investigate a couple of "containerised" ways to run 365 (the names escape me) and I may yet have to in order to be able to use the collab/live edit features of Office, but this is a big step if it does what it says on the tin. Thanks for sharing!

EDIT: On second look, it looks like this might only bring over the native/bespoke hotkeys rather than the "Alt Codes" which are the majority of (my) shortcuts? e.g. Alt + H - I - S for Insert Sheet. Will have to have a look at it properly

> "Alt Codes" which are the majority of (my) shortcuts? e.g. Alt + H - I - S for Insert Sheet

Alt + H opens whatever menu H stands for, then the subsequent letters hit the appropriate menu items. The menus and their hotkeys would have to match the Office counterparts as well, and that's unlikely in normal free software clones. Not sure if it'll be that case here.

edit: After looking at what this tool does, I actually would not be surprised if you could just rewrite all the menus and their hotkeys...

Yeah, I do/did doubt this would port over the Alt Codes, though as you say I'm not sure someone couldn't just long-hand re-write the Alt Codes in either a mod/add-on/config file for any given Office competitor suite.

After all, the majority of the "mappings" are arbitrary/obscure anyway as only one option can "match" the letter (e.g. F is for File, so ForMulas needs to use M. I and D are used for legacy Office Shortcut compatibility so iNsert and dAtA use N and A respectively).

In other words, looking for a logic to these codes even in Office is a hiding to nothing anyway and it's really just a case of building muscle memory (or coming up with a bizarro-logic that helps e.g. "A is for dAtA").

It would be incredible to just be able to install a "365 Mode" or config where the full re-map has been done. I'm semi surprised this hasn't already existed for a long time, even to the point of being shipped built-in.

Interesting they kept that, I really feel we lost something when we lost menus that underlined the shortcut letters you use for them.

Yep and funnily enough it's less subtle/aesthetic than before. The letters appear as big yellow stickers over each UI button, making them very easy to find & learn.

They even kept the ability to use / instead of Alt, for those with Lotus 1-2-3 muscle memory. The muscle-memory problem experienced by office-software challengers is old.

I wonder how they implemented "alt codes" is some remnant of the menus still in there (if only from some accessibility feature".

This, so much this!

I have the same issue with Google Sheets. Non-experts don't understand how much of an impediment this is.

People need to watch a Shrekli video on YouTube to see how much some of us rely on the keyboard shortcuts.

You wouldn't expect a Vim user to just abandon their muscle memory and just switch to Emacs.

> You wouldn't expect a Vim user to just abandon their muscle memory and just switch to Emacs.

Expect to just abandon, no. Expect to spend a reasonable time learning and trying out the new interaction paradigm to see if it could (after controlling for unfamilliarity) also suit them, yes. (The ultimate answer may turn out to be negative, like for me in the case of Emacs.)

> You wouldn't expect a Vim user to just abandon their muscle memory and just switch to Emacs.

Abandon? Yes, no problem.

Switch back and forth? Now we're talking.

Same with switching from Qwerty to Colemak. That itself is large, but if it is a one way ticket it is doable. Problem is: the world (read: those using US keyboards) is made for Qwerty users.

Although the difference between modal and non-modal is rather large.

A compatibility layer like this, is for people who need to switch back and forth, and for whom it is better to stick with the Microsoft Office keybinds.

Understanding that it's not a perfect metaphor... plenty of vim users seem happy to switch to helix.

Took me about two weeks and I'm not looking back :)

Don't mean to trivialise this problem, but, libreoffice provides full keyboard shortcut customization, which I find very easy and intuitive to work with, including, if you really wanted to, a "bring up menu then functionality from that menu" multi-key sequence shortcut as you describe here. So isn't this something that could be solved relatively easily by reassigning keyboard shortcuts once in your machine?

Nah I appreciate that. And you're probably right. Only reason I hadn't looked into it was:

a) I didn't know if it could simulate the "Alt Codes" i.e. Alt + 3 separate keys in quick succession.

b) There's 50-100 I'd need to replicate (and arguably all of them as I pick up a new one every short while and it would be nice to be able to universalise them and be able to go back to Excel any time).

c) Even if a and b were no issue, I haven't "mained" Libre Office ever so I'd want to be sure the juice was worth the squeeze and I didn't find that it was missing some key/edge capability (I believe some of the newer functions released for 365 might be proprietary... at least they aren't on Sheets).

Fair enough. My personal anecdote (and obviously your mileage may vary) is that, I've switched to Libreoffice a long time ago, and now my frustrations mirror yours except in reverse; i.e., I'm very happy and comfortable with the Libreoffice suite, and whenever I am 'forced' to work on MS Office, I find it super-unintuitive, buggy, and frustrating. So perhaps some of this is 'habit / comfort-zone' disguised as preference of functionality. Sometimes it's just simple stuff, like, being unable to resize the comment column, but even small stuff like that adds up in the end.

Having said that, I'm not a heavy Excel user, yet I'm already aware of some differences between it and Calc which are probably not a simple matter of reassigning a keyboard shortcut. Switching from AB mode to RC mode is one example; in Calc you need to go to Tools::Options::Calc::Formula::Syntax to switch. But so far I've had no problems working in Calc in general. I was able to follow Joel Spolsky's infamous "You suck at Excel" video [0] with no problems, for example.

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JxBg4sMusIg

Was just going to say this!

The macOS version of Office has finally gotten native support for alt+shortcuts, would have been nice if LibreOffice had exploited that neglect by Microsoft :(

Speaking of shortcuts... yesterday I noticed that excel online opens in a localized version.. and with grey letters it tells what shortcut to use to jump to search bar: Alt+Ē

Meh... non-ascii chars as hotkeys maybe work in some languages, but not mine where I have to press silent letter (Apostrophe) to make e -> ē, but it doesn't work within shortcuts: ALT + (' + E)

I'm currently transitioning from Windows to Linux and getting familiar with LibreOffice. To make the switch smoother, I created a tool that maps (almost) all MS Office shortcuts to LibreOffice equivalents.

I used Jules agent to help build and refine the repository. I figured others making the same transition might find it useful.

Would love feedback from the community about improvements to the mapping!

Libre Office does allow customising shortcuts. I got peeved when Ctrl+Plus (or Ctrl+Shift+=) is not available to add rows or columns, but found that it is very much possible to add it within Libre Office Calc itself.

From my notes (MD):-

- The shortcut can be reassigned under Tools > Customise > keyboard

- Add Ctrl+Shift+= (Equals to not Plus) too

- Select category All commands, scroll down there are 2 Insert Cells

- Hover mouse over. It shows the Uno command. Pick the one with `.uno:InsertCell`

- Under Shrtcut Keys select Shift+Ctrl+= and click on Assign

I used to really like the Apple suite, but with their move to the subscription version I might be moving to Libre office as well.

Try onlyoffice.

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