office MS Office Alternative?

[AsrielDew128]

I've been looking around for a free alternative to Microsoft Office suites for my general student work. Words, PowerPoint, and Excel. I was wondering if anybody knows a good alternative?

I heard LibraOffice and Open Office are a good choice, but I wanna know what this forum of tech lovers have in mind.

[Skiiwee29]

Open Office is my go-to. Google has great free ones built into them as well. 

[minibois]

2 minutes ago, AsrielDewitt52 said:

I've been looking around for a free alternative to Microsoft Office suites for my general student work. Words, PowerPoint, and Excel. I was wondering if anybody knows a good alternative?

I heard LibraOffice and Open Office are a good choice, but I wanna know what this forum of tech lovers have in mind.

Generally I just use the Google office suite. Google Docs, Slides and Spreadsheets.

But LibreOffice is fine too.

[Dujith]

You can also ask a family member or other persons if they have Office 365. Most people do not know you can add 5 "family" members that can use the full office then. (they lifted device limits and now its per ms account)

[lewdicrous]

WPS Office looks the closest to MS Office, to me at least, but I haven't used it much, so I don't know how well it compares to it.

I believe MS Office has an online version that is possibly free, otherwise you have Google variants which are free, but are also online. (No standalone app)

[TetraSky]

I use both Libreoffice and Office365 (free from my school as long as I'm a student there)

 

To be honest, I like Libreoffice more. The interface of the new Office (ribbon style I think they call it?) is frankly garbage to me, hard to find anything I want. While with libreoffice, just pop in the top menus and see all you need.

That said, for compatibility issues, whenever I need to send a word document, I usually just use Word, because I've noticed that even if I use the docx format with openoffice, sometimes the formatting of the page looks wrong when you open it in Word... And unfortunately, that's what most people in the "business" and education world, uses. That's why I also ask a lot if I can just send a PDF, that way I know that what I see is what they will see, no matter the software they use.

[LjjlijJ]

4 minutes ago, James Evens said:

There is no. Nothing is fully compatible with MS office so just get MS office or fight with bugs and incompatibility down the road.

If you need a good alternative to word and powerpoint try LaTex.

wps office 

you'll be surprised  

[divito]

Really depends on what you want out of it specifically. All alternatives are fine for very general things, whether Libre, WPS, Google, etc...

However, if you want it for the purposes of actual compatibility, Libre might get you the closest for a suite of features, but there will always be compromises.

[Lord Vile]

I just use apples stuff

[kelvinhall05]

Gsuite is underrated, and Libreoffice is equally "powerful" (to MS Office), just less user-friendly and refined.

[TrainFan475]

Google docs

[Zodiark1593]

Ten years ago in college, I used OpenOffice. The non-techie teachers were none too keen on grading my homework, though sending files in pdf usually killed off any excuses. Textbooks and tuition were expensive enough without adding a bloody Office license on top (this was before the subscription too, so full price for the student edition was at about $100). 
 

Even back then, Microsoft pretty much gave away Windows keys to anyone in courses remotely resembling anything computer related. But they were/are stingy AF about Office. 

[AlexOak]

onlyoffice  

https://www.onlyoffice.com/desktop.aspx 

[orbitalbuzzsaw]

Google stuff is fine. That said, look into student licencing, IIRC theres's a deal for people with university emails

[Nano Adam]

Usually I use Google Drive. But the Apple iCloud Suite is pretty good too. 

[DSD27]

The best alternative to Microsoft Office is... Microsoft Office Online, it's free and has all the features for personal use.

[Lakobrija]

1 hour ago, kelvinhall05 said:

Gsuite is underrated, and Libreoffice is equally "powerful" (to MS Office), just less user-friendly and refined.

I found it so buggy, gotta use linux to have it work properly

[kelvinhall05]

2 minutes ago, Lakobrija said:

I found it so buggy, gotta use linux to have it work properly

Not sure why you wouldn't use real Office on Windows, lol

[js23]

If you are using it for school, I would stick to MS office for compatibility issues since docx files are pretty much universally used by larger organizations such as schools and business. Bonus is that the subscription comes with 1TB of cloud storage which is nice for offsite backups, main reason that I use it.

[Lakobrija]

2 hours ago, kelvinhall05 said:

Not sure why you wouldn't use real Office on Windows, lol

I really had to use LibreOffice, that was in school because professor also used it and make us use it

[LjjlijJ]

7 hours ago, James Evens said:

Tried them all.

LibreOffice is the worst and the best alternative is still not good enough.

here's the cold truth. if you are looking for something that behave the same as ms office, you are bound to be disappointed because none of the alternatives *are ms office.

 

Having saught ms office alternatives myself in the past here's what i can say.

 

In terms of offline compatibility, wps imo takes the crown. afaik it's the only ms alternative which can edit ms formats directly.

 

it's been a long while since i used libre so take these with a grain of salt: libre could convert its own formats into ms formats but the results weren't that great. formatting gets messed up happened all too often. it may have improved over the years but you'll have to assess yourself.

 

if you can accommondate online office suite, ms online is no doubt the most compatible. even so it has a smaller function set and also due to browser limitation, you should still be prepared to be frustrated at many turn.

 

google is the next best online alternative. it's much snappier and conversion to ms formats is miles above that of libre (of the past).

 

so.. the biggest take away is this. either tone down your expectation and put in the effort to learn the quirks of an alternative (and you may end up liking the alternative ), or fork out the money to get a student version of ms office or source it another way somehow.

 

[LjjlijJ]

2 hours ago, Lakobrija said:

I really had to use LibreOffice, that was in school because professor also used it and make us use it

imo that's better than forcing you to use ms office which practically everyone does

[Guest willies leg]

Libreoffice is really good. Get the latest version, it pretty much does everything now.

[AsrielDew128]

13 hours ago, willies leg said:

Libreoffice is really good. Get the latest version, it pretty much does everything now.

How's the UI stuff? Because I'm sooo used to the ribbon design

[linkboy]

On 5/21/2020 at 9:22 AM, AsrielDewitt52 said:

How's the UI stuff? Because I'm sooo used to the ribbon design

LibreOffice does have a Ribbon style interface.