There are many free Microsoft Office alternatives abound. Such of them as Open Office or Libre Office familiar to many, but these two packages are not limited to the choice. In this review — we choose the best free office for Windows, and along with some other information options to work with documents. All programs were tested on Windows 10, Windows 7 and 8.
LibreOffice and OpenOffice
Two free office suites LibreOffice and OpenOffice are the most famous and popular alternatives to Microsoft Office, and are used in many organizations (to save money) and ordinary users.
The reason that both products are present in one section of the review — LibreOffice is a separate branch of the development of OpenOffice, that is, both offices are very similar to each other. Anticipating the question of which one to choose — most agree that the LibreOffice is better, since it’s faster evolving and improving, while Apache OpenOffice development is not so confident.
Both options allow you to open Microsoft Office files, including documents docx, xlsx and pptx. The package includes tools for working with text documents (Word analogues), spreadsheets (Excel analogues), presentations (like PowerPoint), and databases (Microsoft Access analogue). Also package includes simple tools for creating drawings and mathematical formulas for later use in documents, support for export to PDF and import from this format..
Almost everything you do in Microsoft Office, you can just as easily do in LibreOffice and of OpenOffice, if you have not used any very specific functions and macros from Microsoft. Perhaps this is the most powerful office programs. At the same time, these office suites work not only on Windows, but also Linux and Mac OS X.
WPS Office
Another free office is WPS Office that also includes everything you need to work with documents, spreadsheets and presentations, and, judging by the tests (not my) best supports all the functions and features of Microsoft Office formats, which makes working with documents docx, xlsx and pptx, prepared in it without any problems.
Among the shortcomings — a free version of WPS Office produces output to a printer or to a PDF file, adding to document their watermarks, and in the preservation of the free version is not available in the above Microsoft Office formats (only common dox, xls and ppt) and the use of macros.
Despite the fact that the whole WPS Office interface is nearly the same as it is in Microsoft Office, it presents own characteristics, for example — support for tabbed documents, which can be quite handy.
Users should also please the broad sets of templates for presentations, documents, spreadsheets and graphs, and most importantly — hassle-free opening of Word documents, Excel and PowerPoint.
SoftMaker FreeOffice
Office programs as part of SoftMaker FreeOffice may seem easier and less functional than those already listed products. However, for such a compact product feature set is more than sufficient and everything that most users can use Office applications to edit documents, spreadsheet or presentation, are present in SoftMaker FreeOffice.
When downloading the office from the official site, you will be asked to enter a name, country and e-mail address, which then comes a serial number for the free activation of the program. Everything else should be accustomed to work with other office suites — the same analogues Word, Excel and PowerPoint to create and edit the corresponding document types. SoftMaker FreeOffice supports export to PDF, and Microsoft Office formats, except for docx, xlsx and pptx.
You can download SoftMaker FreeOffice on the official website http://www.freeoffice.com/en/