As far as I know, the only option IS a virtual machine. I have tried to find ways to work around this but the software is specifically designed for Windows. The only thing I can offer up is alternatives like LibreOffice or ONLYOFFICE which is meant to be a direct MS Office alternative.
I have used these in the past and had no issue but if you like to keep and manage files offline, it can be a bit of a headache. I ended up finding an alternate software that worked for me.
@Space_Cat I think this is probably your best option outside of using a VM
You can give PlayOnLinux a go. I have used it without any issues.
This is fair to point out. For whatever reason, these two versions work the best. I was using 2016 without running into any trouble but I am not an extensive user and primarily needed it for work at the time.
Thanks! I seem to have it functioning for the most part. I ran into some issues with it crashing. I am not sure what I was doing wrong there but it seems to be working now. I am going to work on moving away from MS Office if possible.