Free Office tools alternative

So many people need productivity software, weather it is for work or just being organised. Many people think the only solution is available from Microsoft Office, well not quite. It is the most popular and widely used business wise so it makes sense for everyone to adopt to only one productivity suite right? I am not all for that, I think that all productivity suites that I have tried as an alternative to MS Office suite, work quite well weather you are a beginner or advanced user. I will name a couple of them and will provide details on how you can get yourself set up with them.

• Let me start with a very easy, light weight and handy tool from Google: I especially like and use this because there is no installation required, you can work anywhere that has an internet connection, you can download the document created there and use/edit on your local machine using MS Office without needing  to do any conversion for compatibility, two or more people can work on the same file, and the list goes on and on. I highly recommend everyone try it even if it is simply to backup your documents. The service can be accessed via docs.google.com I will now give you a small demo on how to use the service. Click the following link to access the dedicated tutorial/howto page: Google Docs (to be linked)
• Another good free solution available is open source (meaning it is free) it is called Open Office, this tool does require you to download and install their software from their website: http://www.openoffice.org/ This is included in Ubuntu and other flavours of Linux, what I like about this software is that it provides you with most of the basic and advanced features available on MS Office. It is compatible with most documents from Office and vice-versa (if you save correctly selecting the option should be compatible). I will provide you with instructions on how to get this installed and running in the next update.
• Windows also has a great tool, quite basic but works similar to Google Docs, even though it was meant to be  better as it’s a Microsoft product, it still lacks of many features and is still in Beta (this means that it is still in testing stage and bugs are present). I will provide you with more information on Windows Live documents at on a future update.

If you have any other software or service you use to get your work done please do recommend and I will add them to this page.

Posted in: Software and Services