{"id":667,"date":"2011-03-12T10:03:31","date_gmt":"2011-03-12T15:03:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/?p=667"},"modified":"2011-03-12T22:49:36","modified_gmt":"2011-03-13T03:49:36","slug":"bill-wants-replacements-for-ms-office","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/bill-wants-replacements-for-ms-office\/","title":{"rendered":"Bill wants \u2026 replacements for MS Office"},"content":{"rendered":"

Bill wants to know what we suggest as replacements for \t\t\t\tMicrosoft Office
\n<\/strong>I know you guys have written about this \t\t\t\tbefore, but I can’t find everything in one place. Do you have a \t\t\t\tlist of suggested replacements for Microsoft Office? I’d \t\t\t\tappreciate it if you could post it in your newsletter. Thanks \t\t\t\tfor all your help over the years. Many thanks! Bill.<\/span><\/p>\n

Our answer<\/strong>
\nThanks, Bill. This week alone we had at \t\t\t\tleast a dozen letters from readers asking for substitutes for \t\t\t\tMicrosoft Office, or for the programs included with it. While \t\t\t\tMicrosoft does offer free “viewers” for most documents created \t\t\t\twith Microsoft Office, but it’s not very convenient to have to \t\t\t\tdownload a separate viewer for each type of Office document. All \t\t\t\tof the programs below can open most Office documents, and most \t\t\t\tcan save files in Office formats.<\/p>\n

Here in one list are some of the programs we’ve looked at \t\t\t\tthat can open and create most Office document formats:<\/p>\n

List of free downloadable or online desktop office suites
\n<\/span><\/strong>
\n Open Office<\/a><\/strong>
\n<\/strong>The most often recommended alternative to MS Office by you \u2013 our readers. \tWe\u2019ve tried it and think it\u2019s a great replacement for MS Office. It can read \tand create almost any Office document format and you can\u2019t beat the price. \tIf you\u2019re looking for Office compatibility and a really all-around good \treplacement for MS Office you can\u2019t beat Open Office. <\/span>Get \tmore information about Open Office \u2013 and\/or download it here<\/span><\/a>. \tDialup users? It\u2019s a 148 MB download. Keep that in mind. \tYou can read more about Open Office here<\/a>.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

IBM Lotus Symphony<\/a><\/strong>
\n<\/strong>Not much MS Office compatibility here \u2013 except with MS Word. It contains all \tof the programs you\u2019d get with MS Word but many are in proprietary formats \twhich only those using Lotus will be able to read. Not a good choice unless \tyou don\u2019t care who can read your files. It\u2019s a great office suite but if \tyour files aren\u2019t readable (except MS Word Doc format) by MS Office users \tthen it\u2019s not a real alternative to MS Office. We\u2019re listing it here because \tit is free and it is an office suite. It is also a download over 200 MB. \tDialup users please note that. If you\u2019re interested in learning more about <\/span>Lotus \tSymphony (Free) visit this page<\/span><\/a>.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Online (in the cloud) office suites<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Though these online (in the cloud) suites don’t \trequire you to download them, if you’re using dial-up you’ll find they may \tnot work very well for you – so keep that in mind. If you have a high-speed \tconnection, you’ll find that working on the web is just about as fast as \tworking on your desktop.<\/span><\/p>\n

Google Docs<\/a><\/strong>
\nComplete MS Office compatibility \u2013 and lots of space to store\u00a0 your files. \tReads all the standard MS Office formats and creates them too. Google Docs \thas become the most popular of all online office suites \u2013 well it\u2019s by \tGoogle for one thing \u2013 and its compatibility with MS Office doesn\u2019t hurt. \tYou can upload and download the documents you create or have created to and \tfrom your desktop computer. Want to learn more about Google Docs? \tVisit this \tpage<\/a>. If you have a Gmail account you can login with your Gmail login info. \tOnce you log into your Gmail account click “Documents” at the top of the \tpage.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Zoho<\/a><\/strong>
\nZoho is another online office productivity suite. It features MS \tOffice-compatible word processor, spreadsheet and presentation apps. Zoho \talso includes online project management, web conferencing, online database \twith reports, online planner, group chat, wiki, and more. Requires \tregistration and a high-speed Internet connection. If Zoho sounds \tinteresting to you, <\/span>you \tcan learn more about it here<\/span><\/a>. You can sign-in with \tyour Yahoo or Google information, but we don\u2019t advise you to do that. Zoho \tprobably has the nicest online word processor we\u2019ve ever seen. Zoho is free \tfor personal\/home users.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

ThinkFree<\/a><\/strong>
\nThinkFree is a unique online office suite that is free \u2013 you can also buy it \tfor your computer. If you could only buy it wouldn\u2019t be listed under our \tfreeware picks section, but since you can use all its applications online \tfor free \u2013 it is. Features include all the standard office apps plus \tcompatibility with MS Office apps. You can use ThinkFree in one other way. \tIf you don\u2019t have MS Office installed, you can open any kind of Office doc \tusing ThinkFree without signing up for an account. Another pretty nifty \tonline office suite you can use free. <\/span>To \tlearn more about ThinkFree visit their web site<\/span><\/a>.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Bill wants to know what we suggest as replacements for Microsoft Office I know you guys have written about this before, but I can’t find everything in one place. Do you have a list of suggested replacements for Microsoft Office? I’d appreciate it if you could post it in your newsletter. Thanks for all your help over the\u2026 Read More »<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[478,483,482,480,481,479],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/667"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=667"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/667\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":691,"href":"https:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/667\/revisions\/691"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=667"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=667"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=667"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}