Libre Office

The Free Alternative to Microsoft 365

By far the majority of people who require office productivity software use Microsoft 365. Of course you can’t go wrong with Microsoft 365 - except that it’s very expensive. Of course you are not actually purchasing the software, you are buying the right to use it under license. And with the exception of the Office Home & Student version, you are paying an annual license fee every year instead of a once-off payment. Look here for current prices for the different versions of Microsoft 365. And the pain is only just beginning….   The Home and Student version does not have Outlook. To obtain the next package which does have email you need to purchase the Microsoft 365 Personal which also gives you Access and Publisher. Do you really need Access and Publisher? If you want Outlook for your mail then you must buy everything else that goes with it, even if you don’t want it…. So let’s look at free Office Productivity software.   One of the important issues is email. There are plenty of good quality free email programs available. eM Client is free for personal use and it is very similar to Outlook. Mozilla Thunderbird is probably the most popular of the freeware email programs. Microsoft provide their own free version called Windows Live Mail. There are many others, some without a calendar but all quite adequate email programs. We also want a Word Processor and a Spreadsheet - fortunately really good quality office productivity suites with functionality similar to Microsoft office programs are available at a reasonable cost or free. Libre Office and Open Office are two of the most well known free office productivity suites. Another excellent free alternative to Microsoft Word and Excel can be found at Google Docs.  You will need a Google account, and it’s free with no strings attached.  A sophisticated word processor and spreadsheet is available which can download in MS format *.docx as well as the Open Document format *.odt as well as PDF and other formats.  A presentation program is also available which allows your document to be downloaded in the MS format *.pptx as well as PDF and other formats.  Google Docs allows your documents to be stored in their server or downloaded, and allows for multiple users to edit documents. A very comprehensive list of alternative Office Productivity suites can be found on Wikipedia. Free or much cheaper may imply inadequate - but the average user will not find things that cannot be done in Libre Office but can be done in Microsoft Office.   When you are used to Microsoft Office you might encounter some frustration with Libre Office (or any of the other alternatives) while you are becoming familiar with it, but the more you use it the easier it gets. The same applies to alternative email programs, and before long you will wonder why you were addicted to Microsoft… Take a look at the mass deployment of Libre Office.