Best Alternatives to Microsoft Office

Microsoft Office is the longtime leader in office productivity software. If you are looking for an alternative due to cost, performance, or just a dislike of Microsoft products, you have many alternatives available. There are several free alternatives to microsoft office that contain similar versions of Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Access. Many of these Microsoft Office free alternatives open, edit, and create Office documents. Follow along to learn more.

1.LibreOffice: LibreOffice is so good, you'll wonder why you ever paid for office software. It's compatible with all Microsoft document formats, and has almost every feature you'll find in the latest versions of Word, PowerPoint, and Excel. The suite contains six programs to cover every common office task: Writer, Calc, Impress, Draw, Math and Base. The last three are tools you won't find in many other free office suites and are designed for vector diagrams, mathematical functions, and databases, respectively. The latter is particularly useful; free alternatives for Microsoft Access is hard to find. LibreOffice is an open-source project maintained by a huge and enthusiastic community of volunteers constantly working to improve stability and add new features. There's a great selection of extensions and templates to make it even more flexible, and it's free for businesses as well as home users.

2.Apple Office Suite / iWork: If you own a Mac, you get an office suite included with your purchase. While they are not as popular as the Microsoft and Google suites, Pages, Numbers, and Keynote are great for occasional use and solo needs, particularly if you are entrenched in Apple’s ecosystem including iCloud and devices like the iPad. i work also offers a web-based version compatible with the latest versions of Safari, Chrome, and Internet Explorer that integrates fully with iCloud. Like others on this list, it works with its own file formats and easily imports and exports files in the popular Microsoft Office formats like .docx, .xlsx, and .pptx. Mac users don’t have to pay; the only cost is for additional iCloud storage space if you run out of the room and want to store your files there.

  3.Apache OpenOffice: Apache OpenOffice has a word processor, database, spreadsheet, and presentation program that can all act as Microsoft Office application alternatives. Writer (word processing), Calc (spreadsheets), Base (databases), and Impress (presentations) are the Microsoft Office free alternatives offered by OpenOffice that can be used in full at absolutely no cost. (The suite also includes Draw and Math.) Many popular file formats can be opened with OpenOffice, such as DOC, DOCX, XML, XLS, XLW, DBF, PPT, PPS, and POTX.

Windows 10, 8, 7, Vista, and XP are supported as well as Linux and Mac operating systems. There's also a portable version of OpenOffice so you don't have to install anything, though the download is almost 40 MB larger than the regular installer.
4.WPS Office Free:  WPS Office Free is a slimmed-down version of a premium office suite, but you'd hardly know it. Each of its three programs looks just as slick as the latest versions of Word, Excel and PowerPoint, and is packed with just as many features.  File format support is excellent, and you can save your work in native Microsoft formats for easy sharing with Office users. There's no database software, but WPS Office comes with an excellent free PDF reader that's a great replacement for Windows' built-in app. There are versions of WPS Office Free for Windows and Linux systems, as well as apps for android phones , but Apple device users will need to look elsewhere.
5.FreeOffice:  FreeOffice offers a relatively easy transition away from Microsoft’s version, as it looks and feels a lot like Microsoft Office. As the name implies, it is free. It works on Windows, Mac, and Linux PCs and comes from developer SoftMaker. Core apps in FreeOffice 2018 include TextMaker, PlanMaker, and Presentations, which replace Word, Excel, and PowerPoint respectively. You can choose classic Windows-style menus or the more modern ribbon view. Softmaker FreeOffice is also available for Android. If you have an Android tablet, you can download the upgraded (still free) SoftMaker Office HD. Some features of that version require an in-app purchase to unlock. If you use this suite and are a Windows user, you may also enjoy the free FlexiPDF Basic, a good companion that gives you many of the features of Adobe’s PDF editor.

Conclusion

A few years ago, there were virtually no good alternatives to Microsoft Excel. But these days, things are totally different. All of the alternatives mentioned in this list offer just about all the functionality that subject matter experts are likely to need from their spreadsheet application. And to be honest, the difference isn’t worth paying for unless you use Excel’s more in-depth functions on a regular basis.