Let’s be honest: as writers, we love free things. A good pen, a found notebook, and, of course, free software. For years, I was (and I am) a devoted fan of LibreOffice (and OpenOffice before it). After all, what more could a writer need?
You can write in it. You can format. It understands the .docx format, it can save it, it can open it. On paper, it offers the same thing as its expensive, corporate sibling, Microsoft Word—only without costing a single penny.
I thought LibreOffice was enough. And for the semi-pro league it is.
But as the saying goes: no matter how good and free it is, it will always have its downsides. And on a professional path, those downsides are just big enough to trip you up.
The “Almost the Same” Illusion
The problem isn’t that LibreOffice is a bad program (because it’s not… it’s surprisingly good). The problem is that it’s different.
As long as you’re working alone, writing for yourself, and at most printing a PDF at the end, it’s perfect. But the moment you send a manuscript out—submit it to a competition, an editor, or a publisher—you step into a minefield of compatibility.
LibreOffice handles the .docx format like an interpreter. It understands the language, but it has a slight accent. Microsoft Word, on the other hand, is the native speaker.
And that “accent” is what ruins everything.
The Downsides I Didn’t Expect
I thought formatting was formatting. Double-spaced, 12-point font, done. But when I first saw my own manuscript, which I had polished to perfection in LibreOffice, open in a genuine copy of Word, I was shocked.
- The paragraph spacing was “a little too big.”
- Page breaks weren’t where I expected them.
- Special characters sometimes fell apart.
These seem like minor things, but to an editor who sees dozens of manuscripts a day, it sends a message: “This file is faulty.” Or even worse: “This writer doesn’t even know the standards.”
But the biggest downside is invisible until you run right into it:
- The Death of “Track Changes”: The publishing world lives and dies by this feature. It’s how editors work. And the Track Changes feature in LibreOffice and Word are simply not compatible with each other. No matter if you save as .docx, the comments can shift, get lost, or become unreadable. The editor won’t be able to work with your material.
- The Lost Trust: If you send a file that looks “weird” the moment it’s opened, you’ve already lost. Before they’ve read a single sentence, you’ve already caused a small technical problem, a moment of frustration. Why give them such an easy reason to set your writing aside?
The Real Cost of “Saving”
The realization was painful. In exchange for “free,” I had sacrificed the most important thing: guaranteed compatibility. With LibreOffice, there will always be that doubt: “Will it look exactly like this on the other end?”
When you buy Microsoft Office, you’re not just buying a word processor. You’re buying security.
So, what did I do? I bought a “lifetime” Office 2021 key for my Mac. I got a little lucky: since everyone is chasing the newer Office 2024 or the 365 subscription, the 2021 version could be found for almost nothing during Black Friday.
It works perfectly, it’s tied to my own Microsoft account, and it’s legit.
The whole investment was 30 dollars. For thirty dollars, I bought perfect peace of mind. The knowledge that my manuscript will be technically perfect, and I will never again be rejected because of my formatting.
To me, that was worth it.
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