Top 4 free alternatives to Microsoft Office

In this DCP insight video, I will show you my top four alternatives to Microsoft office.

Alternatives to Microsoft Office

If you are studying at university and you want to create a new document for your course work, or you just started a new business and you want to set up document editing software, then paying for Microsoft Office might not be the most cost-effective solution.

Thankfully there are lots of free alternative software applications that you can download and install on your Windows computer, Linux computer or even your Apple Mac.

Some of the software applications described in this video do not even require you to install them on your machine so you can simply access them for free directly through your web browser.

Top 4 Alternatives to Microsoft Office Video

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Alternatives to Microsoft Office Overview

LibreOffice

Go ahead and open up the web browser, so the first website we're going to check out is LibreOffice.

If you've been following my youtube channel, you know that I've made lots of tutorials on LibreOffice. I really like this software it's very similar to Microsoft Office, you can create text-based documents, spreadsheets, presentations and you can create charts. There are lots of different applications you can access when you download LibreOffice software. LibreOffice is available for Windows, Linux and Apple Mac, so there's no reason why you can't download this software give it a good test and see how it performs for you.

The interface is very modern and very clean compared to something like OpenOffice, so if I was to choose between LibreOffice and OpenOffice, LibreOffice would be my choice. Best of all it's 100% free.

Okay, let's go ahead and move to the next application.

Google Docs

Google has a suite of applications. Go to docs.google.com, you need to log into your Google account to create text-based documents.

Creating text-based documents is very similar to Microsoft Word. I often use Google Docs software when I'm away from my main computer, so if I'm working in another office or on a different machine then you can easily log into Google Docs and create some text-based documents. Google Docs also gives you options for creating spreadsheets, creating slides and forms. 

The best thing about Google Docs by far is it has a speech to text recognition. You can actually talk and the software will type out what you're saying. which can speed up your workflow for creating blog posts or some written content. You can literally just talk and within google docs, if you select the right options you can simply speak and the software will type out what you're saying.  You don't have to install Google Docs on your machine, any of the Google suite applications can be accessed from the web browser. This is great if you're using someone else's machine or if you're on a Chromebook where you can't download and install LibreOffice. 

Okay, let's go ahead and move to the next free application.

FreeOffice

So I was doing some research and I was trying to find an alternative to LibreOffice and I came across this piece of software it's called FreeOffice.

I download and install the application and the design of the interface is very modern and it's a very stable application. I was able to open up word documents and open up excel spreadsheets, so it's not a problem with compatibility if one of your colleagues in the office or if someone else is sending you an excel spreadsheets or word documents, you can still open them quite easily within this software application. The best thing of all of course is it is 100% free.

The software is available for Windows, Mac and Linux, so I would definitely advise that you go and check out the software maybe download it, install it see what you think. I still prefer LibreOffice because that's my go-to free software application for creating documents and spreadsheets, but it's always nice to have an alternative.

Okay, let's move to the last application.

Microsoft Office On The Web

So this one is a bit controversial because we're talking about free software alternatives to Microsoft Office, but believe it or not, Microsoft also offer a free solution as well, you can use Word, Excel and Powerpoint for free with the office on the web application.

You can sign up for a free account and start to use these tools directly in your web browser, so it's a bit like having Google Docs and Google Sheets but you've got the Microsoft version.

Microsoft released these different applications that are web-based, not desktop-based so you can just use them directly in your web browser and they seem to operate and function very well. If you want some really good compatibility with your Microsoft Word Documents and your Excel Spreadsheets, and you want to access them online then this might be a good option. Although it's made by Microsoft it's still free and it's still an alternative to having to pay for the Microsoft Office Applications. I've tested it out and it works well. This is the final option out of the four different alternatives for paid Microsoft Office.

Hopefully, you find these Microsoft Alternatives useful. If you're running a start-up business or if you're planning on doing some course work for a university project, or you just want to simply write a document, or create some spreadsheets then these are four alternatives for the Microsoft office paid version. 

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Article by Pankaj Shah: DCP Web Designers