​Microsoft Office Alternatives

By BD Bondy
 
As I write this on the free version of Microsoft 365, I am aware of the irony of what I’m doing here.

It used to be Office 365, and Microsoft Office, now it’s Microsoft 365. I’ve used the MS product since the 80’s, perhaps you have too? It’s changed quite a bit. It was a standard in the workplace, certainly for most of my career, though Carol used to use Word Perfect.
These days Microsoft Office 365 seems to be the standard for an office suite. There are other choices though, and I was reading about one in particular, MobiOffice, that sounded pretty good.

First though, the alternative that has been around the longest probably, Apache OpenOffice, is still available for download, and it is still FREE. It is a “complete” office suite with what the vast majority of us would want or need. To me it looked like an old version of MS Office, like, years old. But it’s free, and it’s fairly complete. It can save documents in the same format of MS, if you remember to, and it can read them as well.  Click Here for Open Office  

The successor to OpenOffice? I read that and I don’t know what it means exactly, is LibreOffice. I haven’t tried it, but by its description, it looks like it would be similar to OpenOffice. So that seems like a worthy offering. Also FREE, it’s a downloadable version of an office suite.  Click Here for LibreOffice.  
​
Google also offers office products in their browser. Like the free version of MS 365, it requires an internet connection. Those 9 dots in the upper right of the Google browser, click on that. You’ll find some great apps there, in particular, Docs, Sheets, and Slides, which is like ‘word’, ‘excel’, and ‘power point’.

So if you don’t want to use Microsoft 365, for whatever reason, you can still manage your office needs, and generally, for free.

Now, back to MobiOffice. I have not used it, and it is not free, but it is relatively cheap. You can read about it HERE. 

While it is a paid program, it sounds like it is rich in features, and has a modern interface, like MS 365, so it may be the perfect alternative. Read about it and see.