Free alternatives to Microsoft Office

Over the years, the pioneer Microsoft Office has become the most preferred and advanced office suite to manage worldwide computers & data. As business world & personal users are getting more & more dependent on MS Office, the high price tags attached to legal and licensed copies of Microsoft Office can become a trouble in the long run.

As our web world is a huge repository to always get new & better, I found very useful article on alternatives to MS Office on infotech.indiatimes that inspired me to explore the various free-wares available in hand. In the economic crisis if something as big as MS office comes free for all then we should grab the opportunity to get more & better. Hence sharing my views to bring better options to you all.

I observed that a number of 100% free alternative office suites are available providing applications that are powerful enough and offering most of the features found in Microsoft Office. Here’s bringing to you my findings: -

1. Google Docs & Spreadsheet

Developed by Internet search giant Google, Web-based Google Docs offers word processor, spreadsheet, presentation, and form application. Google Docs combines the features of two services, Write and Spreadsheets.

Features:

a) Allows multiple users to create and edit documents online while collaborating real-time with other users.

b) Documents can be shared, opened, and edited by multiple users concurrently.

c) Allows mobile phone users to browse their Google Docs documents in a mobile browser.

d) Google Docs can also be accessed offline with Gears, an open source browser extension that enables web applications to run offline. When a user is not connected to the Internet, Google Docs uses information stored on his computer’s hard drive, rather than relying on information sent across the network.

e) Each doc can have a maximum size of 500K, plus up to 2MB per embedded image. Each Spreadsheet can be up to 256 columns, 200,000 cells, or 100 sheets. Presentations Files in .ppt and .pps formats can have a maximum size of 10MB or 200 slides; files uploaded from the Web can be up to 2MB; emailed files can be up to 500K.

Ø Experience it @ gDocs

2. OpenOffice

OpenOffice is a free open-source office application suite by Sun Microsystems that offering support for standard Open Document Format (ODF) for data interchange as well as Microsoft Office formats. The suite offers word processing, spreadsheets, presentations, graphics and databases.

Features:

a) Supports over 80 languages.

b) Its word processor, called Writer, offers features like AutoCorrect, AutoComplete, AutoFormat, Styles and Formatting, Text Frames and Linking, Tables of Contents, Indexing, Bibliographical References, Illustrations, Tables and other objects.

Ø Experience it @ Open Office

3. ThinkFree

Haansoft ThinkFree Co Ltd. offers ThinkFree Office that includes a word processor (Write), spreadsheet (Calc), presentation program (Show), and a WYSIWYG html and blog editor (Note). Also has a web-based edition an online version, ThinkFree Office Live that runs Write, Calc, Show and Note in a browser using a mix of Java applet and Ajax technologies. It includes unified online document viewer called Uni Paper.

Features:

a) Key features includes: No need to attach documents to emails if they need to be shared with business partners or colleagues, support for group document editing and reviewing, Document tagging and creation of Adobe PDF documents for free.

b) Supports Microsoft Word, Excel and Powerpoint file formats. It provides identical features for Windows, Mac, or Linux.

c) User gets 1GB of online storage space for saving their documents.

Ø Experience ThinkFree Office online @ ThinkFree Office Live

Ø Experience ThinkFree Office @ ThinkFree Office

4. Buzzword

Buzzword by Adobe lets users write reports, proposals and share it with others.Buzzword has two views, Document Organizer and Editor.

The Editor provides six sliding toolbars at the top of the window which lets users choose fonts, text styles and format paragraphs. It also lets users add lists, images, tables, and comments to a document.

The Document Organizer shows all Buzzword documents, the one’s that are shared and created by the user.

Features:

a) A Sort feature in Document Organizer to organize how documents are grouped: by author, by date modified, by size, or other options.

b) To assign user roles; add comments that include text, tables, and images; maintain history of document versions; and a Collaborator bar showing who is invited to collaborate on a document.

Ø Experience it @ Buzzword

5. IBM Lotus Symphony

It’s a suite of applications contains IBM Lotus Symphony

• IBM Lotus Symphony Documents
• IBM Lotus Symphony Presentations
• IBM Lotus Symphony Spreadsheets

for creating, editing and sharing text, spreadsheet, presentations and other documents.

IBM Lotus Symphony Document lets users create documents with predefined document templates, formatting with predefined styles for paragraphs, characters, and headings, contextual toolbars and editing menus.

Features:

a) Inline spell checking and correction feature. Graphics for creating tables, charts, diagrams, automatic creation of a table of contents, footnotes, indexes and footers and headers.

b) Supports a variety of file types, including Microsoft Office and Lotus SmartSuite Export documents and Adobe PDF for easy sharing.

a) Businesses can control software acquisition and upgrade costs, provide ability to compatibility with Microsoft Office file formats, protect future access to documents with support for ODF and support a global workforce with Lotus Symphony’s native language support for over 23 languages.

b) Developers can extend their applications with the power of Lotus Symphony through support for plug-ins and, when the Lotus Symphony editors inside Lotus Notes are used, rich composite applications.

c) Lotus Notes users can create, edit, and share documents, spreadsheets, and presentations with the integrated version of Lotus Symphony which is built into the Lotus Notes client user interface.

Ø Experience it @ IBM Lotus Symphony

6. Jarte

Jarte is a light-weight, portable word processor based on the WordPad engine. The standard version is available for free. It uses the Windows built-in word processing engine at its core & able to edit Microsoft Word documents.

Features:

a) OLE support, the ability to insert pictures and sounds

b) Tabbed document access, spell checker, page breaks, print previewing, visual header and footer designer, clip history, a reference bar, multilevel undo and redo functionality.

c) Single-click bookmarking.

d) Instant dictionary and thesaurus word lookup (integrates with free WordWeb).

Ø Experience it @ Jarte

7. Zoho

Zoho Office is an online & web-based office suite by AdventNet (an online software services provider). It includes tools for word processing, spreadsheets, presentations, databases, note-taking, wikis, CRM, project management and invoicing. Its online word processor, Zoho Writer, quite closely apes Microsoft Word features and functionalities.

Features:

a) For up to 1gb of online storage, it is available for free.

b) Zoho Writer works even when one is offline. Offline document edits get synchronised when user goes online. It also provides a choice of footnotes or endnotes, with note numbers in superscript, placed in the text.

c) Lets users edit a document when page breaks are displayed.

d) You can also use it on iPhone & Windows based mobiles.

e) It supports common formats, including Microsoft Word (DOC), Office Open XML (DOCX), OpenDocument text (ODT), OpenOffice text (SXW), HTML, RTF, JPG, GIF & PNG files.

Ø Experience it @ Zoho

Quick Glance*:

*Scoring on 10.