Many of the suites listed below open, edit, and create Office documents. Although they don’t have all the cool Office features, many get close. Six separate programs are included that make up the suite: Writer (word processing), Impress (presentations), Calc (spreadsheets), Base (databases), Math (formula editing), and Draw (vector graphics and flowcharts). You can install it on your computer or use the portable version. You can open files from your computer or remote locations like Google Drive, OneDrive, or an FTP server. Each of the MS Office alternatives can open, edit, and save to formats that are compatible with versions of Office back through 2007. Many popular file formats can be opened with OpenOffice, such as DOC, DOCX, XML, XLS, XLW, DBF, PPT, PPS, and POTX. During installation, selectively decide to install some or all of the OpenOffice programs to avoid adding a program you won’t use. 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. Writer is a replacement for Word. It opens common file formats such as WPS, DOC, and DOCX, as well as Microsoft Word template files such as DOT and DOTM. The PowerPoint alternative, Presentation, opens and saves files in formats that can be used in Office or with the free WPS Office; file types such as PPT and PPS are supported. The Excel alternative is called Spreadsheets and works with Excel 2010+ files such as XLSX and XLSM; functions like SUM, COUNT, SUMIF, and AVERAGE are supported when building formulas. WPS Office supports Windows, Mac, Android, Linux, and iOS operating systems. There are also Android and iOS versions.
Files created with Google Drive are automatically saved to your Google account, accessible from any browser at any time, and can be shared with anyone, even if they’re not a Google user. Google Drive also supports simultaneous collaboration with other users in real-time and allows add-ons to be used to extend functionality. Existing Microsoft Office documents, such as DOCX and XLSX files, can be opened from your browser and then converted to a Google Drive format for easy editing and sharing. Upload several popular file types to Zoho Docs from your computer or Google Drive as well as create new ones online. There’s a huge file size limit of 1 GB for uploads, and downloads can be saved in Microsoft’s newer formats, like XLSX. Once your files are stored in your account, you can edit them, share them with others, and download them. All the common text formatting tools are included and files are saved automatically as you work. Files can be edited only when saved to your OneDrive account, which means you must upload files there to edit them with Word, PowerPoint, or Excel. Any file type that works with Microsoft Office products works with Office Online, which means you can edit any file and save a copy to your computer or in OneDrive. Files can be uploaded from your computer as well as a few cloud storage services, such as Dropbox, Yandex Disk, OneDrive, etc. Also supported in this free MS Office-like program is co-editing, chat, spell check, and sharing with anyone, even if they aren’t logged into their ONLYOFFICE account. All three portions of SoftMaker FreeOffice work with the file types supported in the newest version of Microsoft Office as well as older ones. There’s also auto-save, background/automatic spell check, and lots of options you can customize to your liking. Instead of downloading the whole Microsoft Office free alternative suite, you can get just the word processor, for example, or just the spreadsheet program. There’s also a portable version on the download page called Blade Runner. A handful of web apps are available as well, including one for WordGraph Editor, but it’s nothing near as comprehensive as other online Word alternatives.
