3 Free Microsoft Office Alternative

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In the space of office productivity software, it is no surprise that Microsoft Office has positioned itself as the dominant force in this industry. Most people know no other alternative as they are so used to MS Office that they panic whenever their yearly subscription is about to run out and they are a little short on funds to make the necessary payment. This happened to my boss lately, who uses the Microsoft Office 365. Our business was going through a rough time in terms of sales, and we were very prudent with cash at the time, and all of a sudden, it dawned on him that he won’t be able to work with his Suite anymore once his subscription expired.

In this post, I will reveal certain available options that you will probably find useful as you stay productive at work and in school, especially if you are on a budget. We all need a word processor, a presentation, spreadsheet software to be very effective and efficient in our day-to-day dealings. Although the majority of these software are free, if you are used to Microsoft Office and you wish to continue using it, there are a lot of resources available online that will help you crack the software and use it for free.

But in this post, we are focusing strictly on the alternatives of the products of this Mammoth corporation that has been in existence since the rise of personal computing. Without further ado, here are the best 5 Free Microsoft Office alternatives.

Google Docs, Sheets and Slides

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This shouldn’t come as a surprise to a majority of users who are very conversant with the tech world, for the past few decades, Google has been strategically positioning itself as a global technological giant with the range of its highly innovative products and services, which most of the time are free. This is due to their omnipresence in the range of their technological products, for they have touched almost all the key pressure points.

The Google Docs range of products encompasses of a presentation app which is an alternative to the MS Powerpoint, a word processor which replaces the MS Word, a spreadsheet that replaces MS Excel. They also have a few more innovative additions such as the Google forms, Google drawings. They can all be accessed for free in any part of the globe that you might be working on schooling from.

All you need to enjoy this range of products for free is a google account, specifically, a Gmail account, and an active internet connection. And all the documents will be automatically back to your google drive. The internet part might be difficult for some, and Google has made available an offline extension that works without an internet connection, which only works for files stored on the hard Google drive.

I believe this is the best cloud-based and free office application, that supports industry standard documents export such as ‘docs’ ‘PDF’ and many others. It also has a mobile-friendly application that one can use on the go.

WPS Office

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This is another big player one can easily mention as a Microsoft Office Alternative in the recent years down to 2018. In the past, it was known as Kingsoft Office in the past, and I believe Android users are very familiar with this application, as it comes pre-installed in the phone for their use for free. The desktop version comes at no cost to users, it comes with the full package similar to Microsoft Office. The only downside to the use of the software is that there are the non-stop advertisement banners once you start the software application.

As mentioned earlier, the package includes a word processor, a presentation application, and a spreadsheet. It has almost the same functionality and feel of Microsoft Word. They also have the cloud feature that enables one save work progress, and the application comes with a wide array of custom-built templates that one can take advantage of.

They have a paid and free version, although both packages are similar, they paid version is said to have far more additional features.

LibreOffice

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Formerly part of OpenOffice some years back, but for some business reasons, it was ejected from the fold. Both companies offer the same services LibreOffice and OpenOffice, but the community the whole company once had, after the breakup, all followed LibreOffice, and ever since, OpenOffice has never been the same.

LibreOffice is an amazing software that can match Microsoft Office on all fronts if you want a software that you can install on your system and work with locally without the need of an active internet connection. If your system runs on Linux operating system, you are mostly working with LibreOffice. It has a well-design user interface, and the software comes with all the perks of the Microsoft Office we’ve all come to know and enjoy.

It supports all Microsoft Office document formats, and it has its own format as well, this free open source is listed as one of the best open source applications for the Windows Operating system, so Windows users might want to consider an open source application like LibreOffice as a possible replacement for a closed source application like Microsoft Office

The main focus of this post is to highlight the software mentioned above, which in my opinion are the best alternative to Microsoft Office, that cannot go without me saying that there are more options out there. And some of which I hope to mention in case you don’t find these software helpful.

1. Office Online
2. Apple iWork
3. Calligra Office
4. DropBox Paper

References

FOSSYBYTES - Best Alternatives to Microsoft Office Suite

PC World - Best Free Microsoft Office Alternatives

Thanks for reading!

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