I can use VM maybe but I don’t want to pay for the Windows license.

If this is your only concern, there's a script floating arround on github (MAS 104k *) that activate any Windows version.

Not sure I'm allowed to send any links because this could be considerate as piracy and probably isn't allowed in this community.

But you have enough keywords to find your way with any search engine if that's a route you would consider.

Onlyoffice is said to have better compatibility with MS Office so that may be worth a try.

And their web apps are nearly unusable (especially with Firefox and its variants)

Admittedly, I use LibreOffice, and it works for almost all of my needs. However, I've never encountered the above issue, and the web versions have worked for me on Firefox. What's your particular issue? The solution could be pretty simple; I have my user-agent string reporting Windows, and I've never had an issue. Maybe worth a try?

Changing the user agent shouldn't work, but there's a stupid amount of times that it does, and so I've just kept it permanent.

Now I really have to use MS Office applications for my school. Libreoffice is good but not completely compatible

Indeed it is not. It all depends the tools you have to use and your level of expectations. But you still may want to some research to see if there is no simple fix available?

How do you guys manage to open MS files appropriately?

I don't try to 'manage'.

I mean, if it's work-related (aka with a deadline and clients waiting for me to deliver) and if I need full compatibility or a very specific set of Office tools and have no alternatives, I simply use a Windows PC with Office installed on it. I would only use it for that purpose, though, as I don't want Windows to get their dirty hands on my files, but I would use it.

BTW, there is no need to spend a fortune on that machine/Windows key. Office will run fine on older hardware that can be purchased for dirt cheap used and that Often comes with a Windows license. Maybe you PC has its won Windows license you can still use.

Also, since you're a student, your school should provide you with an Office sub or something like that, or they should not be allowed to require you to use it.

One other thing you may want to do is explain your teacher the issues you and maybe other students are facing by requiring you to use tools that are not relying on open standards. Maybe also suggest alternatives if you know some?

If you need honest-to-god office, then yeah you’ll need a windows installation. Either a VM or a second drive is best.

You can use windows indefinitely without activating, you’ll just have the watermark and default desktop background.

WPS office is proprietary but works, so is FreeOffice. OnlyOffice, I think the desktop editors at least is FOSS

It sounds like the only problem is that you can't edit a graph in a template, is that true? Any chance you can post the file, or perhaps just the graph section of the file? If it's rendering properly in LibreOffice then I suspect someone can figure out how to edit it.

I never had a problem with LibreOffice. But I also never encountered a situation at school where "advanced" MS office features where required. So, pure luck, I guess.

That being said, LO is not the only the only office suite for Linux. All of these have better MS Office support than LO:

• OnlyOffice: for the most part web based, but there is also a desktop app that wraps the web app into a local container. Free & open source, integrates with nextcloud.
• SoftMaker Office: Proprietary, paid solution, that advertises with having the best MS compatibility on the market. Based in Germany. Usually €99, currently €70 (or a €30 annual subscription)
• FreeOffice: Free but proprietary. Feature reduced version of SoftMaker Office (Comparison)
• WPS Office: Free but proprietary. Chinese, I had some problems with it when I last tried it to install years ago. Maybe they fixed them since, IDK

Actually Office on Wine is in a pretty usable state so maybe you could give it a try. What does not work (or didn't work the last time I tried, like 2 years ago), was the connection to OneDrive and stuff. So you couldn't work collaboratively.

But otherwise everything worked just fine, just as it did on Windows. One more caveat though, VBA is not available in Excel, in case you need that.

Hope you find a solution! I will start school next year and mabey i will search for the same solution as you. Good luck. I use Libreoffice as my main program for documents, writing ect.

Do you have a school computer lab you can use? If the school truly requires MS Office and gives you a copy, they will have no sympathy for not using it.

I don’t have experience with this because I use Google docs for simple documents and latex for anything serious, but it may help.

https://gist.github.com/eylenburg/38e5da371b7fedc0662198efc66be57b

I can use VM maybe but I don’t want to pay for the Windows license.

It's free?

I feel dirty suggesting this, but you can install Edge on Linux to improve the web apps.

This is something you should have thought about, before doing the actual switch. As far as I know there is no good way of running the MS office desktop apps on Linux.