Alternative to 365/office etc.

Generally, is there an alternative to MS 365 which will give the same ease of use without cost? I have no wish to change OS, happy with Win 10 64bit.

Nathan.

Try Libre Office. It is almost indentical to MS Office and requires very little relearning to use it. It's free and available as 32 bit or 64 bit.

Peter

Agreed!

and another vote for libre office

Edited By duncan webster on 14/12/2020 22:58:45

... and if you get really brave, try out using an excellent alternative to Windows, which is Linux Mint. "free"

https://linuxmint.com/

It can run off a ram-stick - so it will not upset your Windows installation - until you are ready to install on a PC/Laptop.

The only real issue is if you have some special Windows based programs which will not run on Linux Mint, through its Windows emulator................ trial and error!!

You can always run your "special" Windows Apps on Windows and all the common ones on Linux e.g. Libra Offfice [MS Office alternative], Thunderbird email and the Firefox Web Browser ... plus lots of other stuff that I have not yet explored.

Good luck!

There is an on-line version of MS Office available at no cost. At a glance, the features look okay for the average user (no sign of VBA or add-ins in Excel if that sort of thing floats your boat).

LINK to Free MS Office

As I'm not familiar with Libre Office, as mentioned favourably by others, I did a quick bit of research. I found the web site below useful as it goes into a lot of detail regarding the differences in functionality between the two products.

LINK to Libre and Office comparison

Each product has some features not supported by the other so it would be useful if you do use any advanced features in Office to check they are supported by Libre.

That said, just based on the functionality listing of Libre I can see why it has its fans.

Libre office a definate contender! I used MS Office for many years professionaly but since retiring didn't have access, but had many files - Word, excel etc.of my own stuff.

Libre lets you open & use them pretty much as you would in MSoffice and the interface is very similar. There are a few little oddities which I assume are probably to do with Microsoft's proprietry code, but I haven't found any of them a hurdle.

Is Libre Office useable on a Mac computer, have been running MS Word for Mac but it is no longer supported by MS so looking to the future.
Dave W

Libre Office gets my vote, too. The facility I appreciate a lot is its ability to load, create and manipulate PDF files as well as directly exporting Word etc, files as PDFs. I only use it for writing text in various forms, letters, printing xmas card labels and such. Very rarely use it for spreadsheet so can't comment on that side of it, but but I have no reason to assume it's not perfectly capable in that respect. It also has the rudimentary integrated 2D drawing program, which I used for a few years for part design, before progressing through a "proper" 2D CAD to Alibre Atom 3D.

John

My P²

P.S. Samsaranda - Yes, it's available for MACos 64bit.

Edited By John Hinkley on 15/12/2020 09:17:34

I've just installed MS OfficeXP on windows 10. Don't ask me how please.

i use MSOffice on a laptop and Libre Office on a desktop and regularly swap files between both programs, text and spreadsheets mainly.

i have have had no problems in about 5 years of use.

Open office is another free contender.

Martin C

John - that reminds me, for the benefit of those not familiar with it - the included CAD is called (not surprisingly) LibreCAD and is basic with limited documentation but works quite well for routine drawings and its totally free (unless you want to be a good egg and make a voluntary contribution to support development) with no nasty catches.

Also, by the way their version of MS powerpoint  - 'Impress presentation' - is brilliant. If anyone is ever doing a presentation for their club or whatever and wants to appear really flash look into this! Easy to pick up even if you've never done anything similar before. Regards

Edited By Mike Hurley on 15/12/2020 09:39:45

Edited By Mike Hurley on 15/12/2020 09:40:51

And another vote for Libre Office. There is another free programme of theirs Libre Cad which is more sophisticated than the bundled drawing programme with Libre Office. I found it a bit clumsy after Draftsight and there were problems reading .dwg drawings. All had to be converted to .dxf.

The .dwg was a work in progress according to the guys running it. I did get it to work after a fashion but opening a drawing gave a microdot on the screen not always in the same place and you had to zoom way in before starting work.

They may have fixed it now of course but I am a big fan of QCAD for what it costs. Can't remember the original lifetime licence fee but I had two. Not more than 45 quid with the e-book I think. I have just paid a second year of update fees and it was 25 quid for all the updates and I can now install on any number of machines but only one can be used at any given time.

Yes.

FC

I think Libre Office is a fork of Open Office and seem to remember LO making a bid for OO's user base.

I used MS Word for many years - pre-ribbon - and am now perfectly content with LO.

Another vote for Libre office. I haven't found anything I want to do that I can't. I'm sure MSoffice is more capable but so far, for me, I haven't strayed beyond the 80/20 rule and Libre office covers that and more

Mostly word processing but I keep all the accounts for my (small) business on spread sheets, too. Nothing desperately complicated in way of formulae but it works fine.

Mike

John and FC, many thanks for your reply, will definitely investigate as a replacement.
Dave W

I've used Libre Office since retiring (10 years ago).

I'm just playing with FreeCAD, a 3D modelling program - open source so free. It will generate G-code so I'm hoping to use it with my CNC mill. It looks very promising but 3D modelling is totally different to 2D drawing. I didn't think much to Libre CAD - not compared to my paid for Windows TurboCAD

When I had my own small business I used a very good open source finance program called GnuCash.

Oh yes - I'm virtually gone over exclusively to using Linux Mint. I've kept the ability to boot into Windows should I need it - like to use TurboCAD.

Many thanks to all who replied. I'll move to LO after my 365 subs run out next year.

Nathan.