Free Microsoft Office Alternatives or Replacements

Microsoft Office suites and products are one of the most popular Office productivity application suite in many companies and corporations. However, Microsoft Office is expensive, overly priced at best. Microsoft Office comes with many advanced features that one may never use or need, and with user friendly interface. If you willing to sacrifice some bloated features, there are plenty of complete replacement alternative for Microsoft Office, which has slowly gaining market share. Best of all, the alternative Office suites are free, and possess all features you ever need to use, including compatibility and support for Microsoft Office file formats.

Here’s a list of the popular and free Microsoft Office alternatives or replacements that you may use in home, office or school. Most of the alternatives are also able to open, read, edit and save documents, workbooks and presentations created by Microsoft Office products (typically Office 97-2003 formats and not Open XML format used by Office 2007), thus you won’t have any problem when receiving Microsoft Office files from other users. Beside, the Office suites listed below also support much many computer system platform, rather than just Windows and Mac OS X for Microsoft Office. If you opt for web based online Office apps services, you also embrace the instant sharing and collaboration feature that built-in into most online services.

Free Alternative Downloadable Desktop Based Office Suites

• OpenOffice.org – Consists of Writer (word processor), Calc (spreadsheet), Impress (presentation program), Base (database program), Draw (graphics editor), Math (mathematical formula editor), QuickStarter and the macro recorder. Supports the OpenDocument standard for data interchange as its default file formats, and also Microsoft Office ‘97-2003 formats. Available for free download for Microsoft Windows, Linux, Solaris, BSD, OpenVMS, OS/2 and IRIX platform. OpenOffice.org has gaining popularity across many organizations and small medium businesses.
• StarOffice (via Google Pack) – Also known as StarSuite in East Asia, and is the base Office suite that OpenOffice.org built on. Consists of StarWriter (word processor), StarCalc (spreadsheet), StarImpress (presentation program), StarDraw (drawing tool) and StarBase (database). Supports XML file format, including (as of StarOffice the OpenDocument standard, and can generate PDF and Flash formats. Comes with templates and macros system. Original license costs $70 USD, but you can download free via Google Pack.
• IBM Lotus Symphony – Comprises of Documents (word processor), Spreadsheets (as name implied) and Presentations (as name implied). Supports the OpenDocument format (ODF), and Microsoft Office and Lotus SmartSuite formats. Able to export to Portable Document Format (PDF) files. Available for Windows and Linux, with Mac OS X coming soon.
• GNOME Office (GO) – Consists of AbiWord (word processor), Gnumeric (spreadsheet) and GNOME-DB (database connectivity). Available for free download for Linux, Windows and Mac OS X.
• NeoOffice – If you want to dump Microsoft Office for Mac, NeoOffice is good candidate. NeoOffice is a fork of the free/open source OpenOffice.org office suite that is ported to Mac OS X. It implements most features of corresponding OpenOffice.org release.
• Kingsoft WPS Office – Kingsoft WPS Office is a Microsoft Office compatible suite of applications. It comprises of Writer, Spreadsheets and Presentation, all of which have a close resemblance to the familiar layout and functionality of Microsoft Office prior to 2007 version. Unfortunately the free personal edition of WPS Office only available in Simplified Chinese edition. Kingsoft Office 2007 Personal English version is now available for free download.
• Softmaker Office – A German company product consists of TextMaker (Microsoft Word clone) and PlanMaker (Microsoft Excel clone). Softmaker Office 2006 is released as freeware.

Online Web-based Office Applications or Suites

• Google Docs – A free, Web-based word processor (previously Writely), spreadsheet (previously Google Spreadsheets), and presentation (by Tonic Systems) application offered by Google. It allows users to create and edit documents online while collaborating in real-time with other users.
• ThinkFree Office Online – ThinkFree Online is free online edition of ThinkFree Office by Haansoft ThinkFree, and consists a word processor (Write), a spreadsheet (Calc) and a presentation program (Show). ThinkFree Online runs in web browser using a mix of Java applet and Ajax technologies. ThinkFree Office reads and writes to Microsoft Office file formats (.doc, .xls, and .ppt), and has a look and feel similar to Microsoft Word, Excel and PowerPoint, allowing users to switch over easily.
• Zoho Office Suite – Zoho Office Suite is a web office suite that includes tools for word processing (Zoho Writer), spreadsheets (Zoho Sheet), presentations (Zoho Show), databases (Zoho DB and Reports), note-taking, wikis, CRM and other applications. Zoho applications are operating system independent, and supports read and write formats used in MS Office, OpenOffice, and other systems. The data (document) files can be saved on Zoho’s servers as well as those of several integration partners like box.net or Omnidrive, which allows synchronization back to the local PC. Integration plugin for Microsoft Word and Excel, browser plugin to open text documents or spreadsheets without having word processing or spreadsheet applications installed, desktop widget to run Zoho products on their desktops in a similar way to traditional office programs, mobile version of Zoho Writer, Sheet, and Show called iZoho, available at iZoho.com for iPhone, and Zoho for Facebook also available.

If you’re not satisfying with some components in the alternative Office suites above, there are plenty others standalone or web based word processor, spreadsheet and presentation applications available. Microsoft Office System Suite also may contains some unique program such as Microsoft Outlook, Project and Publisher. If you’re using these programs, there are also free replacement alternative for them, which can be used to complement the free Office suites you selected.

Free Alternative for Microsoft Outlook (PIM)

• Novell Evolution (Windows version) – A personal information manager and workgroup information management tool which combines e-mail, calendar, address book, and task list management functions. Evolution has user interface and functionality that are similar to Microsoft Outlook, but support iCalendar, full-text indexing of all incoming mail, powerful email filters writable in Scheme, a “Search Folders” feature (i.e., saved searches that look like normal mail folders), Ximian Connector to connect to Microsoft Exchange Server using web interface, and synchronize with Palm Pilot devices using gnome-pilot or other mobiles telephones and PDAs using OpenSync. Evolution available for GNOME, Windows (beta) and Mac OS X.
• Mozilla Thunderbird with Lightning – Mozilla Lightning is an iCalendar compatible calendar extension that adds calendar and scheduling functionality to the Mozilla Thunderbird mail and newsgroups client.

Free Alternative to Microsoft Project

• OpenProj – OpenProj is an Java based open source project intended as a complete desktop replacement for Microsoft Project, it can open existing native Project files. OpenProj runs on Linux, Mac OS X, Unix, and Microsoft Windows.
• dotProject – dotProject is a web-based, multi-user, multi-language Project Management application. Its basic data elements and management functions include Projects and Tasks, Companies, Departments and Contacts, ToDo lists and Resources (rooms, equipment et al).

Microsoft Publisher Free Replacement Alternatives

• Scribus – A free desktop publishing (DTP) application with native versions available for Linux, Unix, Mac OS X, OS/2 and Windows. Scribus has broad feature set of page layout features that comparable to leading commercial applications such as Adobe PageMaker, QuarkXPress and Adobe InDesign, and able to prepare files for professional quality image setting equipment. It can also create animated and interactive PDF presentations and forms.

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This entry was posted on Sunday, November 25th, 2007 at 11:21 pm and is filed under Business, Databases, Graphics & Images. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.