Finally a full-featured office program you can take with you
Those of you who have Microsoft Office know what a long and arduous process installing it can be. It makes hundreds of changes to your registry and it can be a pain to uninstall. Yet most people agree it’s the best full-featured office program, and certainly the most popular – even though it’s the most expensive.
If you need a full-featured office program – one you don’t have to install – and one you can uninstall just by deleting its folders – one you can take with you, and one that is totally free, you might like the portable version of LibreOffice. It includes all of the programs of most other full-feature office suites, but this one you don’t have to install – in fact you can take it with you wherever you go.
Well, let’s have the LibreOffice folks come in and say a few words:
LibreOffice Portable is a full-featured portable version of LibreOffice – including a word processor, spreadsheet, presentation tool, drawing package and database – packaged as a portable app, so you can take all your documents and everything you need to work with them wherever you go. It is packaged in PortableApps.com format so it can work with the PortableApps.com platform and its automatic updater and app store, work with other portable menus, or work by itself from a USB, cloud or local drive. And it is open source and completely free.
Many of you have written to us asking for free alternatives to Microsoft Office and LibreOffice is a good one. Its portable version makes it even better since you don’t have to install it and you can take it with you. Is it as good as Microsoft Office – not really. Is it a good, full-featured office program that can read and work with most MS Office documents, spread sheets, databases and more? Yes.
It’s a 124 MB download so those of you with slow connections, bring a picnic lunch. Those of you with fast download connections won’t have time to drink a cup of coffee.
You can read more about and or download LibreOffice Portable here.
We tested it on April 16, 2016 and found it to be an excellent free office suite – and the only office suite we know of that is portable.
EB thinks she is my office sweet, but she is not I tells ya!
Is it compatible w/ Microsoft Office?
If you already have Microsoft Office you don’t need LibreOffice. However, if you’re asking if LibreOffice open and modify and save as MS Office files – the answer (for the most part) is yes.
Because I accidentally uninstalled Microsoft Office (DUH!), then couldn’t find my CD to re-install, I looked around for an alternative.
LibreOffice has turned out to be a superb replacement. Easy install, & a pleasure to use. I highly recommend it.
I’m confused, I went to download OfficeLibre and was presented with a choice to download, i.e., LibreOficeFresh and LibeOfficeStill. What to Choose? I don’t know.
The link in our article leads to a page with 2 choices – version 5.0.5 and version 5.1.1 – and also has files you can download if you want to make a DVD or USB. So I’m not sure what page you’re looking at. The page our article links to is this one.
Can a document in OfficeLibre sent to a computer with MS Office be read by the recipient?
Yes – I sent you and email with more details. You can read MS Office documents and you can create MS Office compatible documents with it.