16 Best Free Microsoft Office Alternatives You Must Try

Updated on July 2nd, 2018 by Quertime Team in Software

When it comes to word processing, data analysis, and other documentation tasks, Microsoft Office is not the only solution. There are many free and open-source office productivity suites available on the web, both web-based applications and desktop software you can use without paying a penny.

Instead of purchasing costly Microsoft Office suite, you may download open-source Apache’s OpenOffice to your computer fulfilling your daily documentation needs. Web-based office suite like Google Docs can be used directly on your web browser, no installation required. The beauty part of it is that you can easily store saved document files to Google Drive, which is good for online collaboration works.

Today we would like to showcase 16 Microsoft office suite alternatives that are absolutely free for use. These office productivity applications work similar to Microsoft Word, Excel, and PowerPoint. You’ll get familiarized with them without any difficulty in minutes!

Google Docs
Google Docs is a suite of office products that enables you to create different kind of documents online. You can work on them in real time with other people, and store them online for free. To use Google Docs, sign in to your Google Drive and then click the red “Create” button. Now you can choose Documents, Spreadsheets, Presentations, Forms or Drawings.

Zoho Office Suite
The Zoho Office suite is a web-based office suite containing word processing, spreadsheets, presentations, databases, notebook, wiki, customer relationship management (CRM), project management, invoicing, and other applications. It also has plugins into Microsoft Word, Microsoft Excel, an OpenOffice.org plugin, and a plugin for Firefox.

Adobe Buzzword
Adobe Buzzword is another online word processor for writing reports, proposals, and other online collaboration works. It looks like a desktop application, but operates inside a web browser. No installation required.

Apache OpenOffice
Apache OpenOffice is an open-source office productivity software suite containing word processor, spreadsheet, presentation graphics, drawing, equation editor, and database management. OpenOffice’s default file format is the OpenDocument Format (ODF), and ISO/IEC standard. It also supports file formats from Microsoft Office.

LibreOffice
Similar to OpenOffice, LibreOffice is a free, powerful and open source personal productivity suite for Windows, Macintosh and GNU/Linux. The office suite gives you six feature-rich applications for all your document production and data processing needs: Writer, Calc, Impress, Draw, Math and Base.

IBM’s Lotus Symphony
IBM’s Lotus Symphony is a richly-featured set of productivity tools that are intuitive and easy to use. The free office suite is comprised of three applications which are Lotus Symphony Documents, Lotus Symphony Spreadsheets, and Lotus Symphony Presentations. Its ODF standard file formats also support for Microsoft Windows and Office file types.

ThinkFree Online
ThinkFree Online service provides a free web office suite with 1 GB of online storage. You can use computer, smartphone or tablet to access and manage stored documents easily.

NeoOffice
NeoOffice is a full-featured set of office applications for Mac OS X. It implements most of the features of the corresponding OpenOffice.org version for the Apple PC, including a word processor, spreadsheet, presentation program, and graphics program.

AbiWord
AbiWord is a free word processing program that’s suitable for a wide variety of word processing tasks. It enables you to collaborate with multiple people on one document at the same time, allows you store documents online, and performs format conversions.

KOffice
KOffice is a free open source office suite available for Windows, Linux, FreeBSD, and Mac OS X. The office suite is comprised of word processor application with desktop publishing features, spreadsheet application for creating spreadsheets with charts and graphs, feature-rich presentation program, vector graphics based drawing tool as well as diagramming and flowcharting application.

Mozilla Thunderbird
If you are looking for replacement to Outlook, Mozilla Thunderbird can be your solution. It is a free email application that’s easy to set up, customize and loaded with tons of features including personalized email addresses, tabbed email, one-click address book, attachment reminder, multiple-channel chat, quick filter toolbar, search tools, message archive, activity manager and many more.

GnomeOffice
GnomeOffice is office productivity application designed for the Gnome desktop environment. Some of the applications also can run on Windows or Mac OS X, providing powerful, efficient office productivity capabilities.

Bean
Bean is a free, small, and easy-to-use word processor that is designed to make writing efficient and comfortable. It starts up quickly, has a live word count, and is easy on the eyes.

Jarte
Jarte is a word processor based around the Microsoft’s WordPad engine. Generally speaking, it sits between the features laden Microsoft Word and other more basic word processors such as Notepad.

Atlantis Nova
Atlantis Nova has all the tools you might need to design simple formatted documents – letters, resumes, memos, etc.

SoftMaker Office Suite
SoftMaker is another free office suite for Windows and Linux that comes with a word processor, a spreadsheet and presentation graphics.