From the LibreOffice online conference 2021 https://events.documentfoundation.org/libocon2021/talk/WCCU8R/

1. Calc Survey

2. Demographics

3. Location / Usage
Other:
●
14x daily+
●
10x few times the week
●
2x whenever needed
●
2x once
●
2x never
●
2x no longer
●
2x reply in Spanish

4. ●
Office: 14x WPS Office, 18x
OnlyOffice, 2x OpenOffice,
Collabora Online, Zoho Sheet,
Softmaker, Planmaker,
IBM Symphony, MS Office from
1990, Quattro Pro
●
Code: 117x Python (numpy,
Pandas), 12x Matlab, 8x Octave,
15x CLI tools, editors
●
Database: 27x SQL, LO Base,
Ninox, MS Access
●
Cleanup: OpenRefine, Root
●
Collaboration: 3x Airtable,
Cryptpad, OX Drive, Framacalc
●
Statistical: 5x Stata, Jamovi,
Cogstat, Alteryx, JASP, PSPP,
Sofastat, Minitab, JMP
●
Plotting: 9x PowerBI, Veusz,
GnuPlot, LabPlot, Graphpad Prism
●
3x GnuCash, Quickbooks, QGis,
microMathematics, Dynamics NAV,
crm/erp
What other data related software
do you use?

5. <5
<10
=10
<25
<50
=50
=100
<1.000
=1.000
0 20 40 60 80 100 120 140 160
Number of columns
1-2
<5
=5
<=10
<=20
<=50
<=100
>100
0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100
Number of sheets
<=50 <=100 <500 =500 >500
0
5
10
15
20
25
30
35
Size in kB
<=20
<50
<100
=100
<1.000
=1.000
<=5.000
<20.000
<50.000
<100.000
<1.000.000
>=1.000.000
0 20 40 60 80 100 120 140 160
Number of rows
How large is your typical LibreOffice Calc document?
<1 <5 <10 <100 <1.000 >=1.000
0
20
40
60
80
100
Size in MB

6. Other?
●
Pivoting data
●
Count/Sum(If)
●
Conditional formatting

7. Data Storage / Tracking
Finance / Accounting
Data Analysis / Calculations
Modeling / Simulation
Graphs / Charts / Visualizations
Import/Export External Files Formats
Data Exploration / Cleaning
Reporting
Project Planning & Management
Scheduling / Planning
Data Formatting
Macros / Programming
0 % 10 % 20 % 30 % 40 %
What do you mainly do in LibreOffice Calc?
Examples would be
good

8. ●
Text formatting has a high
importance for users
●
Some functions are unknown
by many but highly valuable
when known (eg. Data
Validity, Pivot Tables, etc.)

9. In your opinion, which LibreOffice Calc feature[s]
(if any) need improvements the most.
1)Usability & User Experience
●
Usability, UI Improvements / Design, Styles/Formatting, Ribbon/Toolbar, Icons, Dark Mode
2)Compatibility
●
Better External Software/File Formats Compatibility, Excel Compatibility, Improved Connectivity to External Data Sources, Better
default keyboard shortcuts
3)Performance & Stability
●
Speed/Performance, Better support for large datasets, Stability. Improved Scrolling, Bug Fixes, Increase the number of columns
4)Functions
●
Charts, More Graph Types, Formulas/Functions/Function Wizard, Formula Autocomplete, Conditional Formatting, Collaboration
Feature
5)Macros
●
Macros/Programming, Macro Recorder, Python
6)Documentation & Help
●
Feature discoverability, Learnability, Help Documentation
“Conditional formatting is not
very stable and cannot be
copied and pasted.”
“Scrolling - provide an option
to scroll without snapping to
cell grid.”
“Improve Interface and
usability, the ribbon needs to
be improved with most used
functions.”
“Pivot tables need to be user
friendly to manipulate data
easier.”
“Charts are difficult to
manipulate even delete
when they are already
created.”
“Improve the function wizard to show
intermediate results and also allow
the user to step through a formula
like Excel does, showing the
intermediate result of every step.”
“I appreciate the speed
improvements that have
been made through previous
updates. Please continue.”
“The wizard to create chart is
so hard to understand.
Should be redesigned from
scratch!” “I have stopped using Calc
for Google Sheets due to it's
lack of web data source
support.”
One feature that has been
difficult to translate from Excel
has been the conditional
formatting dialogue.
Copying/Cutting/Moving of
cells/columns/rows should
be simplified, keyboard
shortcuts should be
improved
A lot of the information,
especially for non-trivial
things... is not detailed enough,
or is obsolete, or is hidden.
I always have a hard time
dragging cells. You have to
be very precise with the
cursor so I usually give up
and use copy paste.
Would love it if
conditional formatting
did not fragment when
rows added.
The solver needs to store
the objective function and
limiting conditions when
the spreadsheet is saved.
When manipulating large spreadsheets
(20+ worksheets, 50000+ rows and
100+ columns per sheet), CALC quickly
becomes unresponsive if there are
many lookup formulas.
Removing
duplicates from a
dataset is much
more cumbersome
than in Excel.
Applying paragraph or
character styles to the
contents of a cell. The ability
to have bullets/lists would be
great.

10. What do you expect from LibreOffice Calc in the
future? What new features would you like to see?
Better External Software/File Formats Compatibility
Improved Excel Compatibility
Usability
Improved UI/UX Design
Speed/Performance
Improved Charts
Stability
Improved Macros/Programming
Functions/Improvements/New Functions
Improved Styles/Formatting
Improved Feature discoverability
Python
Improved Ability to Link to External Data Sources
Dynamic Connection to External Data Sources
Improved Help Documentation
More graph types
Web/Cloud Based Version
Improved Ribbon/Toolbar
Dark Mode/Theme
0 % 1 % 2 % 3 % 4 % 5 % 6 % 7 % 8 %
Learnability
Collaboration
Global Search Bar/Functionality
Bug Fixes
Save to Cloud
Improved Pivot Tables
Better Handling of Large Datasets
ImprovedConditional Formatting
Responsive Design/Mobile/Tablet Compatibility
New Keyboard Shortcuts
Startup/load times
XLOOKUP/New Function
Dasgboard/BI Functionality
Increase the number of columns
Improved Scrolling
Macro recorder
Removal of Duplicate Data
Filter by Color
0 % 1 % 2 % 3 % 4 % 5 % 6 % 7 % 8 %

11. ●
Satisfaction increasing with
expertise
●
Beginners (or users with low self-
estimated skills respectively) under-
perform (average SUS is 68)
●
Users with intermediate or advanced
skills state a good usability
●
Similar, co-variate effects with age
→ simple UI with less functions for
beginners, more complex UI with
advanced functionality on demand
→ alternatively educate users about
the workflow, eg. with wizards,
documentation etc.