If you are looking for a Free alternative to Microsoft Office, then Open Office will be the best solution for you.
Why To Use OpenOffice ?
Besides other advantages of using OpenOffice, some good characteristics and features of using OpenOffice are:
- Its Free
- It supports different platforms like Windows, Linux (Ubuntu) etc.
- It feels you like you are in the Microsoft Office environment
- It supports the ISO/IEC standard OpenDocument Format (ODF)
- It supports most of the Microsoft Office files format like XLS, XLSX, DOC, DOCX, PPT, PPTX etc.
From some of the commonly used programs of Microsoft Office, OpenOffice has also introduced related software like OpenOffice Word Processor as a competitor of Microsoft Word, OpenOffice Spreadsheet as competitor of Microsoft Excel, OpenOffice Presentation as a competitor of Microsoft Powerpoint etc.
OpenOffice Word Processor
Similar to Microsoft Word, OpenOffice Word Processor aka OpenOffice Writer can be used to write documents, which can be read and saved in the file formats like DOC, DOCX, ODT etc.
Even the documents can easily be exported to PDF format, without need of any third party tools or plugins.
OpenOffice Spreadsheet
Similar to Microsoft Excel, OpenOffice Spreadsheet aka OpenOffice Calc can be used to maintain worksheets or spreadsheets, which can be read and saved in the file formats like XLS, XLSX, ODS etc.
From most of the basic features of Microsoft Excel, OpenOffice Spreadsheet can be used for preparing spreadsheets or worksheets, drawing charts, inserting objects etc.
OpenOffice Presentation
Similar to Microsoft Powerpoint, OpenOffice Presentation aka OpenOffice Impress can be used to create different types of presentations, using several templates, which can be read and saved in the file formats like PPT, PPTX, ODP etc.
Even the documents can easily be exported to PDF and SWF formats, without need of any third party tools or plugins.
Download OpenOffice
You can download OpenOffice from the following website:
http://download.openoffice.org/index.html
For more details on OpenOffice, check out the official website of OpenOffice:
http://www.openoffice.org/
Mozilla Thunderbird
OpenOffice has not released any software as competitor of Microsoft Outlook yet. But there are other free software, which can be used as an alternative to Microsoft Outlook. Mozilla Thunderbird is one of the best alternatives to Microsoft Outlook, for Windows, Linux etc. For more details about Mozilla Thunderbird, you can check out another of my post at:
http://www.webtechquery.com/index.php/2010/03/mozilla-thunderbird-free-alternative-to-outlook/