Not sure whether Excel is still good.
For everybody else, Libreoffice is fine as far as functionality is concerned. UI might be another story, but that's worth getting over anyway, especially since a lot of people for whom this is a problem, would also have problems with getting away from Windows as a whole, just from buttons moving and things being different in general.
Yes!! Misusing Excel as a database is really part of the problem. It also causes so many issues. Having multiple data elements within one cell. Someone overtyping a formula in a column of 200.000 values leading to one cell no longer being updated. Needing 32GB of RAM just to edit a spreadsheet with a measly 500.000 rows.
All stuff that never would happen with a real database. Microsoft never really put much effort into making Access approachable.
Do you recreate a spreadsheet, use an existing online service, and/or create a database with proper logic, etc.? If the latter, how do users handle the UI change, and can they have an ease of creation similar to what Excel provides?
A family member has recently written a book on the latest version of MS Word. It's not their first book written with MS Word. It's also not the first time I give a hand to make sure that typography matches publisher requirements. I find that using style sheets has become more complicated, more limited and better hidden with successive versions of MS Word.
Contrast with Apple Pages, in which style sheets are so well integrated in the UI that you barely need to think when you create a new rule.
In fact, I find that even LibreOffice is much better at style sheets these days.
I remember the (not necessarily good) old days when I used MS Word to create character sheets for my tabletop RPGs, or in-game newspapers, etc. These days, I would hate doing this with MS Word – and not just because I'm an open-source aficionado.
Although MS themselves apparently don't realize that, considering how they push the web version which doesn't support them?