CNET's Cheapskate scours the Web for great deals on PCs, phones, gadgets and much more. Questions about the Cheapskate blog? Find the answers on our. And find more great buys on the. Quick housekeeping note: If you grabbed the I mentioned the other day (or its ) and you're having trouble with activation, the folks at StackSocial have assured me they'll help get you straightened out. A few years back, I dubbed Kingsoft Office the best free Microsoft Office alternative. Then the developers renamed it WPS Office, built in a bunch of clunky online features and added a watermark to all printed and PDF documents.
Talk about ruining a perfectly great freebie! (To be fair, developers gotta eat, and the free version really was almost too good. I'm guessing few users bothered to pay for the pro version.) So what's the alternative to that alternative? Ladies and gentlemen, the 2016 Cheapskate Award for Best Free Office Suite hereby goes to. This is, of course, a decidedly old-school option. For many a user, word processing, spreadsheet management and presentation creation work just fine in a Web browser, thank you.
• Follow the instructions on the screen to save the file to your hard disk. • Make sure that your computer meets the minimum system requirements. Download microsoft office for free. • Click Download, or click the link for the language version that you want.
Tools such as Google Docs and Microsoft's own Office Online afford plenty of basic features, without extra software to install or money to spend. So why bother with a desktop office suite? I can think of any number of reasons: mail-merge, text boxes, change-tracking, custom styles. Shall I go on?
Plus, and let's be honest, Google Docs is a really ugly place to spend your time. Interface isn't everything, but it's something. LibreOffice, for its part, borrows heavily from Microsoft Office circa 2003 -- and that's just fine. (I know plenty of folks who despise the Ribbon interface that's prevalent across newer versions of Office.) I do wish it offered a tabbed view for multiple documents, though, of course, Microsoft Office doesn't, either. Which is ridiculous. That gripe aside, I like pretty much everything about LibreOffice.
You can import Microsoft files and edit them in Pages, Numbers, or Keynote as needed, which is a huge advantage that makes iWork the perfect Office alternative for those working on a Mac.
It's fully file-format compatible with Microsoft Office (read: it can open and save.docx and all the other 'x' files), and it offers some of the more obscure features (macros, track changes, etc.) not typically found in freebie suites. If you're a regular Cheapskate reader, you know I'm a bit conflicted about this.
I like Microsoft Office, and in fact I rely heavily on Outlook because it's the only desktop mail client worth a damn. (Yep, I said it.) But I still think it's overpriced, and drive me insane. That's just me.
If you're looking for a free (technically, open-source) office suite that can handle the big-three productivity tasks with aplomb, look no further than LibreOffice 5.1. Your thoughts? Bonus deal 2: Calling all Mac users! Roadmap Planner is a highly rated project-management app that normally runs $24.99.
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Completely free 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 to Microsoft Access are 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 and to make it even more flexible, and it's free for businesses as well as home users.
LibreOffice is a fork of Apache OpenOffice, and the two are extremely similar, but we’d opt for LibreOffice thanks to its more frequent update schedule and more modern interface. LibreOffice is available for Windows, Mac and Linux, but there are no official mobile versions available except for a for Android. Opening older files is tricky If you work collaboratively, or switch between a PC and a Mac, should be your first port of call. Download sas for mac. For anyone who's already deep into the Android/Google ecosystem, this suite will be a natural choice. The three key tools run happily in any web browser, and are available as mobile apps for Apple and Android devices. Google's free office suite doesn't offer the advanced tools you'll find in desktop software like LibreOffice (there are no pivot tables, for example, and there's no database tool) but everything is laid out in a clear, logical way and all your files will be saved and synced automatically so you don't have to worry about transfers and backups. The chief disadvantage of Docs, Sheets and Slides is that opening files created using other office software is a cumbersome process and files aren't always converted perfectly.
While all you need to take advantage of WeVideo is a browser and and good Internet connection, you are a not limited to your desktop or laptop, either. WeVideo provides mobile apps for iOS and Android, so you can truly take your work with you via phone or tablet. Because WeVideo is a complete online video editing service, it goes a little bit further than a lot of the other cloud-based video editing services out there.