When it comes to presentations, spreadsheets, documents, and more, Microsoft office is the popular choice. Whether it is the software-based package in your personal computer or a cloud-based Microsoft 365 suite downloaded in your chrome book. Well, when it comes to Android and other operating systems, it does not work well. They demand you to get a subscription for paid features, and it is burdensome for students. However, to overcome this issue, there are a different alternatives to Microsoft Office in the market. The list is still increasing according to the increasing demand.
Some of them are free of cost, and some ask for a fee. Being free of cost does not mean that they are of low quality. You can testify to these alternatives to Microsoft Office as they are an open-source community. The sharing of files among different office suites can be troublesome, and this is the actual problem. Due to this issue, you should consider different aspects. I will recommend you have different Microsoft alternatives because it will make it easy to share them.
In this article, I have compiled the top alternatives to Microsoft Office. So, have a look and choose one of your needs.
FreeOffice
It is one of the free alternatives to Microsoft Office that is quite similar to MS office. If you search for an easy and free alternative to Microsoft office, this is indeed the best choice for you. This office suite is the free flagship product by the famous company Soft Maker. It is quite easy to use at home and in the workplace too. It is a diverse free office suite that works excellent for different operating systems like Windows, Linux, and Android.
You can get all the formats of PowerPoint, word, and excel in this suite. It allows you to save and view files in formats like PPTX, PPT, XLS, DOCX, and XLSX. It has a familiar interface. Well, they have launched a new interface this year. It is up to you, either you use the old toolbar menu or the modern one. For all the touchscreen PC owners, it is the most compatible suite. You can enlarge the icons by touching the screen.
LibreOffice
The lightweight and flexible office suite is free to use. It is the product of The Document Foundation and was split from Open office in 2010. This suite is open source and contains spreadsheets, presentation software, document word processor, and many others. It is available in 110 languages. The basic format of LibreOffice is ODF, which is an open document. However, it also supports the formats of Microsoft Office. Undoubtedly, it is the default suite for Linux operating systems. It also supports macOS and Windows. So, there is good support for all basic operating systems. For Android users, they have launched the new version.
We know that software provides online technical and customer support. But, this office suite is straightforward to use, that’s why you do not need any support at all. Well, PDF files are the common concern of people in educational and official places. LibreOffice allows you to share files in PDF format. The download size of Microsoft is quite small. But, when it comes to LibreOffice, it takes 298MB. So, it is a still large suite to install on your device.
Calligra
It is an excellent office suite with some advanced level features, but it is only suited to Linux operating systems. Like all the alternatives to Microsoft office mentioned above, it is also an open-source and free suite to install. It was launched in October 2000, 20 years ago. At the initial level, it was part of KOffice. You can download it directly from the official website or KDE’s page. It is far different from LibreOffice and Microsoft office. So, it will be totally different from Microsoft office users.
When you open it, there are useful features present in tabs on the device screen’s right side. However, the feature tabs are on the top of Microsoft office. So, the editorial page will not take up the full screen of your device. You can get all the basic features free of cost. But, you have to pay the extra cost for using a project management tool and mind mapping features. You can read the DOX and DOCX formats, but there are no options for editing them. You can face many issues if your contacts are using LibreOffice or Microsoft office. You will not be able to share files in the same formats. Instead of the basic formats, you have to share files in Open document text format.
WPS Office
It is the best free tier office suite that provides multi-language support. WPS Office was released early in 2016 by a Chinese software developer. It works effectively for different operating systems, including iOS, Android, Windows, and Linux. You can enjoy both the free and premium paid tier of this suite. The free version of WPS Office is similar to Microsoft Office, and you can make presentations, use spreadsheets, and write in the free tier. Apart from it, you can also go for a PDF converter that is very easy to use. It also allows you to split-merge the PDF files when you need to do it. It gives free 1GB cloud storage for all operating systems except Android.
You have to pay $29.99 per year for the premium version, and then you can enjoy an easy connection of up to 9 devices at once. Moreover, it is Ads free. However, certain issues are faced by users. The Linux users complain that they have to install the fonts separately. For Android users, the installation of this WPS Office is quite troublesome. It is not that much lightweight software for Android users.