SUITE YOURSELF @ Other than Microsoft Office, Free Cloud-based Alternatives
Gone are the days when Microsoft Office was the only productivity suite worth considering. Here are some fantastic free cloud-based alternatives
If you’re a student, an amateur writer, or just simply flat out broke, paying for a Microsoft Office license or subscription may not make it too far up your priority list of essential expenses. Or maybe you’ve been using Office for years and are ready to try something else. The great news is that there are plenty of great productivity suites out there, many of which take advantage of cloud storage to make your work accessible anywhere and on virtually any device, as long as you have a working internet connection.
Below we’ve compiled our picks of the best cloud alternatives to Microsoft Office, each of which at least offers the basic three elements – word processing, spreadsheets, and presentations. Oh, and best of all, they’re all free, so feel free to try them all and use your favourite to either complement Office, or migrate from it altogether.
GOOGLE DOCS, SLIDES, SHEETS
It’s on the cloud, it’s tied to your Gmail account and it’s got fantastic multi-editing collaborative features. The magic all happens in your browser (on PC/Mac), and while it does not have the staggering options that Office does, it offers a minimal layout, with most of the basic features that you would need. In addition to the word processor Docs, you get the presentation tool Slides, and the Excel-like Sheets. All three are also available as individual apps for iOS and Android tablets and smartphones. So you can write and edit on the go, switching between devices along the way. The collaborative features are the best, letting several people edit the same file in real time, while constantly auto-saving them to Google Drive so you never lose a thing.
LIBRESUITE
Built on OpenOffice.org’s framework and a project of The Document Foundation, Libresuite is one of the most featurepacked, truly free office suites you will find. The suite contains Free Writer for word processing, Calc for all your spreadsheet needs, Impress for presentations, Draw for those vector graphics and flowcharts, Base for databases, and Math for formulae. While Libresuite does not have apps like Google’s services do, it does have a reader app for iOS and Android as well as a presentation controller. It’s a full-featured suite that’s open source and free, with a great set of editing tools. It also comes in a small-footprint portable version, so you can carry it on your pendrive. An alternative to this is Apache OpenOffice, which has the same basic suite of tools.
OFFICE ONLINE
For creatures of habit who are too accustomed to Microsoft Office and find it difficult to move to something unfamiliar, Microsoft offers a free alternative. Not many people know this, but there are Office editing tools available for free online through the cloud. Office Online packs fully-featured and free cloud versions of Word, Powerpoint, OneNote and Excel, along with collaboration as well as tools like OneDrive, Mail, Calendar and more. If you happen to have the desktop apps, you can transition to Online easily. The iOS and Android apps require a subscription, but you can use them as document viewers (no editing capability) without paying.
iWORK FOR ICLOUD
If you own a Mac, then look no further than Apple’s very own iWork suite for iCloud that can be accessed on the web, along with collaboration features to work with other people easily. Apple’s variants of Word, Excel and Powerpoint – called Pages, Numbers and Keynote respectively – are fully featured. In fact, Keynote is the very same presentation software Steve Jobs used and Apple executives continue to use in their globally broadcast keynote presentations. As expected from the masters in product design, this suite is supremely well designed with minimal interfaces and powerful tools that just sense your context and work.
DROPBOX PAPER
If you are a Dropbox user and want something quick to write documents, then Dropbox Paper is a beautiful alternative to Word or Pages. Wonderfully simplistic yet powerful, it allows you to not only write documents but also paste pictures that seem to snap together wonderfully. While this is not a featured suite, Dropbox seems to want to go the way of Google Drive, and there’s a good chance the company will add presentation and spreadsheet elements in the future.
WPS OFFICE
A freemium option, WPS Office comes in paid and free versions with a mobile option. While not as feature-rich as Libresuite, WPS does have a basic word processor, presentation tool and spreadsheet app. Microsoft Office users will be at home with the design of WPS Office, and it also includes a handy tool to convert PDFs into an editable format. There’s also the Docer library, which offers a variety of paragraph layout options to let you arrange your documents in many different ways.
Source | Mumbai Mirror | 4th June 2018
Regards
Mr. Pralhad Jadhav
Master of Library & Information Science (NET Qualified)
Senior Manager @ Knowledge Repository
Khaitan & Co
Mobile @ 9665911593
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