Will Open Office spreadsheet do for occasional Excel work?

[TreyWilly]

My wife uses Excel at work, and occasionally will need to do some work from home. I don't have Excel (never really needed, and sadly don't really know how to operate it).

I don't feel like shelling out the $$ to buy a program we'll hardly use, so I wonder if the Open Office version of Excel will suffice in this case? I believe it's called Calc.

I use Word constantly, and remember hating Open Office's word processor when my cheap-ass company switched. But it did the job fine.

Thoughts?