Microsoft Office 2013 on Linux Mint
 

Good evening to all. I am trying to install Office 2013 in Mint 18.1 but to no avail. I tried with wine 2 which I do not seem to manage to configure correctly and with Play on Linux. Any suggestions?

Yes; don't use Microsoft/Windows products on Linux. Check the Wine database for support (it's rated "garbage" for a reason)
https://appdb.winehq.org/objectManag...View+Developer

Microsoft Office is for Windows...if you're using Mint, then you need to use Libreoffice. If you're not prepared to do so, then your next best option is to load Windows in a virtual machine/dual-boot/run Windows ONLY, and use whatever Microsoft products you'd care to use.

Second LibreOffice. For what it's worth, I'm using LibreOffice on Mint 17.3 and am in the process of converting a 78-page booklet into an e-book. Multiple fonts, pagination, images, lines and arrows, tables, etc. Works for me.

A couple, but I'll be nice(r).

Virtualbox > Full install of Windows > Office 2013

or dual boot.
Virtualbox route is the "I want it now" favored by some folks.
Dual boot would be the hard route.
Trying to install Office on LinuxMint...that "boomerang"?
Throw it all you want, it isn't coming back.</opinion>

When Wine-2.0 was announced earlier this week, one feature mentioned was the ability to run ms-office 2013. Perhaps installations instructions are available over at WineHQ?

Nope...the INSTALLER works fine...the SOFTWARE doesn't. Yes, really...they're listed separately at the Wine AppDB..

Years ago I was able to run an earlier version of ms-word and ms-office on the Linux desktop using Wine, but it took several additional steps, that is, additional .dll libraries had to be installed.

If you need MS office, then you need windows. In my opinion, unless you need the whole outlook + ms exchange sever (which a home user is not likely to need), then you probably don't need MS office. The only decent application in the office suite is Excel anyway - and if you need that for work/study, then, once again, you need windows (powerpoint is another piece of widely used corporate crap and same arguments...).

In most other cases libreoffice should do.

Unless he needs MS Office compatibility for work, school, or anywhere else that he needs to send or receive documents from people who use MS Office. LibreOffice compatibility with MS Office is horrible, not even worth attempting. If he needs to be able to read/write documents in MS Office format, then he needs MS Office, which means he needs MS Windows. I prefer the Virtualbox route because it's easier, faster, smaller, and more efficient than dual boot, but some people like to dual boot anyway.

LibreOffice is perfectly fine for 99.9% of documents.

Which is kind of what I said in the first paragraph...

On the compatibility question, it may be worth looking at OpenOffice. That probably has more users of the Windows version than of the Linux one, which may affect its ability to exchange files with MS Office. Of course, spreadsheets are a problem: I seem to remember Gnumeric is better for compatibility there.

OO is just as bad as LO, basically unusable for reading/writing Word files.

Only if you will never have to share that file with someone who uses MS Office. I don't believe I've ever opened a Word document with images, tables, or any kind of formatting in OO/LO and had it render properly. Sometimes it's good enough to read (sometimes it's not even close enough for that), but you can forget making any changes and saving it back out. You'll destroy the formatting in the entire file and force the author to spend hours fixing it.

The MS office formats are xml rather than binary, which makes it simpler to support. docx, xlsx, etc are really just zip archive containers. opendocument format is also widely supported nowadays.

Office 365 if you actually need MS Office.

LibreOffice or Google Docs if just need something similar.