Microsoft Office has been dominating the market of office suites for about three decades. A domain that is more than justified, since the different versions launched has always been shown. As the best within their segment, being able to say that even far above its competitors. We share best alternatives to Microsoft Office.
However, the fact that Microsoft Office (MS Office) is a very complete and full of possibilities solution makes many of its features are dispensable for most users, who use little more than the word processor (Word) to a basic level.
In addition, as happens with web browsers, the strong domain of a product does not mean there are no alternatives, but rather the opposite. Currently, there are many free quite competent options that can make the basic user forget MS Office, and of which we will mention five. Keep reading- 5 tools to create web heat maps and analyze visits
The best alternatives to Microsoft Office
LibreOffice
Today is the most solid alternative to Microsoft Office and the most media. In fact, in MuyComputer we give a lot of coverage to this suite whose development started from an OpenOffice bifurcation on the part of the community.
Besides being free, it is a free software project published under various licenses, although the main one is MPLv2.0. Its applications are Writer (word processor), Calc (spreadsheets), Impress (slides), Math (creation and editing of mathematical formulas), Draw (vector graphics editor) and Base (database management similar to Access) ).
Although qualitatively far from MS Office, LibreOffice is a fairly complete solution that can cover the needs of more than 90% of users. By default, it uses its own document format, ODF, although it also supports both the most recent (Docx, Xlsx, Pptx …) and the old ones (Doc, Xls, Ppt …) from Microsoft. It is cross-platform, covering Windows, Mac, and Linux (usually the reference suite in the case of the latter). It is one of the best alternatives to Microsoft Office.
If you use several different operating systems for the desktop and prefer a locally functioning office suite, LibreOffice is emerging as the reference solution for these situations.
OpenOffice
He is the “father” of LibreOffice and was for many years the great reference of free office suites. Formerly called OpenOffice.org and was born in the year 2000 as a result of the release of the StarOffice source code by Sun Microsystems.
It happened to be under Oracle after acquiring this to Sun Microsystems and then it was donated in 2011 to the Apache Foundation, which since then is in charge of managing OpenOffice as a project and promoting its development. This brought about the change of license to Apache, and although in principle it was able to respond to the challenge that LibreOffice supposed, it ended up giving up de facto due to the smaller amount of resources available to it. The fact that LibreOffice has shown a great evolution in recent years has forced OpenOffice to fight to avoid falling into irrelevance. It is one of the best alternatives to Microsoft Office.
In spite of everything, it is still a very capable office suite that offers support for Windows, Mac, and Linux. As applications, it has the same ones as LibreOffice under the same names and supports Microsoft formats, although it is not capable of exporting, at least by default, to the most recent formats of the Redmond giant for office automation documents.
WPS Office
WPS Office is another best alternatives to Microsoft Office. Although it is a privative software of Chinese origin that has no connection with OpenOffice.
The WPS Office, formerly called Kingsoft Office, stands out especially for how well it supports documents under Microsoft formats, making many users prefer to use it as an alternative to MS Office versus LibreOffice and OpenOffice. Although it may not seem like it, it is a quite veteran project, whose first version appeared in 1988.
Among its applications, it has a word processor (Writer), spreadsheets (Spreadsheets) and slides (Presentations). It does not have any software for database management, manipulation of mathematical formulas or manipulation of vector graphics. Despite this, as we said at the beginning, most users use little more than the word processor in a basic way, so this solution covers their needs. It has a paid version with more features than the free one.
Officially offers support for Windows, Mac, Android, iOS, and Linux, although users of the latter system have complained about more than one occasion of the treatment received by Kingsoft. It is one of the best alternatives to Microsoft Office.
Google Docs
We live in an era in which cloud storage has gained much prominence. So the use of an office suite that works through the Internet can be a good alternative. In addition to saving disk space, you gain in other aspects such as the ability to edit documents anywhere. And even through multiple devices, with the only limitation of needing an Internet connection.
Due to the widespread popularity of Android, billions of people have at least one Google account. So the use of Google Docs is available to almost everyone. At the application level, it offers word processing (Docs), spreadsheets (Sheets), presentations (Slide), survey software (Forms), web creation (Sites). And map overlay editor (My Maps), editor code for the G-Apps Script language (Apps Script) and database manager (Fusion Tables). It is one of the best alternatives to Microsoft Office.
At the desktop level, it may be easier to use Google Docs through the web browser Google Chrome. Another based on Chromium, although on mobile devices (iOS, Android, and BlackBerry) it would be preferable to use official applications. The documents generated, uploaded or shared are saved on Google Drive and can be uploaded. And downloaded in both the LibreOffice and OpenOffice formats as well as the most recent ones from Microsoft.
FreeOffice
FreeOffice is a free office suite based on SoftMaker Office technology (which is paid and includes more features). Whose developer is the German company SoftMaker Software. The first thing that stands out about this suite is the fact that it uses a Ribbon-style graphic interface and is optimized for use on touch screens.
FreeOffice has as applications a word processor (TextMaker), spreadsheets (PlanMaker) and presentations (Presentations). It is proprietary software and its main virtue is the support it offers for more recent Microsoft document formats. As well as managing their own. It is available for Windows, Linux, and Android and despite not being mediatic it is a veteran development since the first version appeared in 1994.
conclusion
Although Microsoft Office is omnipresent, this does not mean that there are no free quality alternatives that can satisfactorily cover the needs of users, especially those of a more basic profile. These alternatives offer in many cases a better multiplatform support to cover Linux or support on the web. Which decreases the dependence of the operating system (in the case of Google Docs until Chrome OS serves).
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