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CIA NICKED Office

How it compares

What the other suite does that ours does not, written down before you switch.

Most comparison pages are adverts with a table in them. This one compares N.I.C.K.E.D. Office with the Microsoft 365 desktop apps — Word, Excel and PowerPoint — and lists what they do that we don’t, including the things we have decided never to build, because you should know all of it before you depend on us, not after.

The gaps come in two kinds, and we label them. By design means a deliberate refusal we argue for on the development page — macros, cloud collaboration, refreshable data connections. Everything else is simply not built yet; the changelog is where you watch that list shrink, and the known limitations page holds the defects in what we do ship.

Every row below was checked against the product source at version 1.1.5 on 4 October 2026 — not against our own marketing.

Side by side

The suite, side by side

The comparison throughout this page is with Microsoft 365's desktop apps — Word, Excel and PowerPoint — because that is what most people would be moving from. The two products are built on opposite premises: Microsoft 365 is a cloud service with desktop apps attached; this suite is a desktop application whose AI talks to the model endpoint you configure, by default Ollama on your own machine.

  • An AI assistant that edits your documents

    Ours Yes

    Theirs Yes

    Ours runs against a local model through Ollama — no account, no API key, and the only address the app's own code contacts is the endpoint you set. Microsoft's Copilot is a cloud subscription, and your content transits Microsoft's servers.

  • Works fully offline

    Ours Yes

    Theirs Partial

    We have no online mode to fall back from. Microsoft's desktop apps work offline, but licensing check-ins, Copilot, co-authoring and OneDrive features do not.

  • Macros, VBA and add-ins By design →

    Ours No

    Theirs Yes

    There is no script execution model in the product and there will not be one — a macro engine is a security liability we chose not to build. Macro-enabled files (.xlsm, .docm) are refused rather than half-opened. The assistant is our answer to automation.

  • Real-time co-authoring and cloud sync By design →

    Ours No

    Theirs Yes

    Collaboration needs a server that sees your documents, which contradicts the entire premise. Files are files; share them however you already share files.

  • Runs with no account, and no telemetry in the code

    Ours Yes

    Theirs No

    There is nothing to log into, and no analytics SDK, crash reporter or usage tracking anywhere in our source — a test fails the build if one appears. There is also no auto-update, which cuts both ways: fixes arrive only when you download a new version. Microsoft 365 requires an account and collects diagnostic data.

  • PDF editing

    Ours Yes

    Theirs No

    A genuine PDF editor — text, images, forms (fill and create), signatures (drawn, or with a certificate), redaction, text recognition on scans, annotations, compression — is one of the five editors. Word edits a PDF by converting it into a document and reflowing the layout; an in-place PDF editor is not part of the Office suite.

  • Markdown editing

    Ours Yes

    Theirs No

    A full Markdown editor with live preview and export to .docx. Office does not read or write Markdown.

  • Legacy binary formats (.doc, .ppt, .xls)

    Ours Partial

    Theirs Yes

    .xls imports with its values but loses its styling; .doc and .ppt do not open. The modern formats — .docx, .xlsx, .pptx — are the native ones here.

Editor by editor

Documents

Our word processor against Word — the most complete of the three comparisons. Formatting, styles, tables, images, sections, references and review tooling are all real; the gaps are automation, proofing and mail merge.

  • Core writing: styles, lists, tables, images, columns, headers and footers

    Ours Yes

    Theirs Yes

    Including multilevel lists, nested tables, drop caps, watermarks, cover pages and per-section page setup.

  • Track changes, comments and document compare

    Ours Yes

    Theirs Yes

    Full revision tracking — insertions, deletions, formatting changes, table revisions — with accept and reject, a Reviewing Pane that lists every change and filters by author, and a compare view.

  • References: table of contents, footnotes, citations, bibliography, index

    Ours Yes

    Theirs Yes

    All present, including cross-references and a citation source manager.

  • Equations

    Ours Yes

    Theirs Yes

    Written in LaTeX, stored as native OOXML math, so they survive the round trip to Word.

  • Spelling and grammar checking

    Ours Partial

    Theirs Yes

    Spelling is checked offline: on a Mac by the system spellchecker, on Windows and Linux with bundled US and British English dictionaries and right-click suggestions, used only when the app is set to English. There is no grammar engine. Review, Check Style suggests clearer wording a paragraph at a time from your local model, and is only as good as that model.

  • Mail merge, envelopes, labels and form fields

    Ours No

    Theirs Yes

    None of it exists here. Content controls in an incoming file are preserved on save, but read-only.

  • Find and replace

    Ours Partial

    Theirs Yes

    Match case and whole word only — no wildcards, no search-by-formatting, no Go To.

  • SmartArt and embedded objects

    Ours Partial

    Theirs Yes

    Displayed, and preserved byte-for-byte on save — but not editable.

  • File fidelity on .docx

    Ours Yes

    Theirs Yes

    Saves patch only what you changed; everything else is written back byte-for-byte. What the editor cannot model, it preserves rather than destroys.

Editor by editor

Spreadsheets

Our spreadsheet against Excel — the widest gap in the suite, and we would rather you hear that from us. Everyday spreadsheets work well; heavy Excel users will hit the edges. The engine is deliberately cautious: an edit it cannot perform safely is refused rather than performed badly.

  • Formulas

    Ours Partial

    Theirs Yes

    The calculation engine is broad, but we have not yet proved on a saved file which of the newer functions — XLOOKUP, FILTER, LET, LAMBDA, dynamic arrays — survive a round trip to Excel, so we do not claim them. About 60 are curated in the insert dialog. Excel has around 500.

  • Charts

    Ours Partial

    Theirs Yes

    Nine chart kinds with basic editing — titles, type, colours, ranges. No 3D, waterfall, treemap or secondary axes. A linear trendline already in a file is drawn; other trendline kinds are not.

  • Pivot tables

    Ours Partial

    Theirs Yes

    Creates new pivots with filtering, grouping and pivot charts. It cannot edit a pivot that arrived in an existing file, has no calculated fields, and the grouping interoperability gaps are itemised on the limitations page.

  • Conditional formatting and data validation

    Ours Yes

    Theirs Yes

    Colour scales, data bars, icon sets and rule editing; validation with cross-sheet lists. Extended rules it cannot model are left untouched rather than mangled.

  • Named ranges, freeze panes, merged cells, number formats

    Ours Yes

    Theirs Yes

    Including a full name manager and custom number formats.

  • External data: Power Query, the data model, refreshable connections By design →

    Ours No

    Theirs Yes

    No data connections of any kind — a refreshable connection is a cloud dependency by another name. Existing ones in a file are preserved, never refreshed.

  • Macros and scripting By design →

    Ours No

    Theirs Yes

    VBA workbooks (.xlsm) are refused at open, and there is no scripting surface of our own. No script execution, ever.

  • Very large workbooks

    Ours Partial

    Theirs Yes

    Reading streams to any size, but structural edits — sort, filter, inserting rows — currently need a fully loaded workbook of about 50,000 cells or fewer.

  • File fidelity on .xlsx

    Ours Yes

    Theirs Yes

    Untouched parts of the file are copied byte-for-byte, and an unsafe edit fails closed instead of corrupting the workbook.

Editor by editor

Presentations

Our presentation editor against PowerPoint — deeper than you might expect, with honest limits around content that arrives from elsewhere.

  • Slide editing: text, shapes, images, tables, charts, media

    Ours Yes

    Theirs Yes

    Including connectors, grouping, crop, background removal, ink, and screen recording — plus mind maps, which PowerPoint cannot draw at all.

  • Slide masters, layouts and themes

    Ours Yes

    Theirs Yes

    A real master editing view; applying a theme rewrites the file's theme part properly.

  • Animations

    Ours Partial

    Theirs Yes

    19 entrance, emphasis and exit effects plus motion paths, with triggers and timing, written as real OOXML timing so they play elsewhere. PowerPoint has around 150; effects of theirs we do not model are downgraded to the nearest equivalent on import.

  • Transitions

    Ours Partial

    Theirs Yes

    11 kinds, including Morph. A transition we do not model shows as none — and re-saving that slide loses it, which we would rather tell you than have you discover.

  • Presenting: slideshow, presenter view, rehearsal

    Ours Yes

    Theirs Yes

    Dual-display presenter view with notes, timer, next-slide preview, pen and laser; custom shows; rehearsed timings saved into the file; a show can loop until Esc or run as a kiosk.

  • SmartArt

    Ours Partial

    Theirs Yes

    We generate shape-group diagrams of our own; real SmartArt in an incoming deck is display-only, preserved on save.

  • Editing charts from an existing deck

    Ours No

    Theirs Yes

    Only charts created here are editable. Imported ones render and are preserved, untouched.

  • PDF export

    Ours Partial

    Theirs Yes

    Exports each slide as an image, so the PDF has no selectable text or links.

  • File fidelity on .pptx

    Ours Yes

    Theirs Yes

    A deck saved without edits is byte-identical; unedited elements are re-emitted from the original bytes.

The verdict

Who should not switch.

If your work depends on VBA macros, Power Query, co-authoring in the browser or the long tail of Excel’s function library, stay where you are — sincerely. Those are exactly the things we chose not to build, and pretending otherwise would waste your time.

If your work is writing, everyday spreadsheets and presentations — and you want an assistant that runs against the endpoint you configure, by default a model on your own machine, opening and saving the same .docx, .xlsx and .pptx files everyone sends you — that is the product. Where it cannot do something safely, it refuses and preserves your file byte-for-byte rather than guessing.

On price: Free for individuals, always — donations welcome, never required. Organisations pay a subscription; for organisations over 100 people it is required. The software itself is licensed under Apache-2.0. These terms govern the service and support relationship — they are not a restriction on your right to the code.

Download it → Read the defect list first

Microsoft, Microsoft 365, Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Copilot are trademarks of Microsoft Corporation, named here nominatively for comparison only; Consultancy in Action is not affiliated with or endorsed by Microsoft. Their capabilities are stated per the current Microsoft 365 desktop apps and may change.