Free alternatives to Microsoft Office

If you occasionally create a letter or spreadsheet, you may not need to purchase Microsoft Office – a $100+ suite of bundled programs which include Word, Excel, PowerPoint and others. Instead there are several computer programs and web apps that don’t cost a thing.

1. LibreOffice: You can download and install LibreOffice on your computer, which includes a word processor (similar to Microsoft Word), spreadsheets (similar to Microsoft Excel), presentations (similar to Microsoft Powerpoint), databases (similar to Microsoft Access), and a drawing program similar to Adobe Photoshop.

LibreOffice will open Microsoft Office and Word Perfect Office compatible files, and can be configured to automatically save files in those formats. A few common file formats supported include:

.doc/.docx – Microsoft Word document format

.xls/.xlsx – Microsoft Excel spreadsheet format

.ppt/.pptx – Microsoft Powerpoint presentation format

.wpd – Corel WordPerfect document format

.pdf – most files can be exported to the Adobe Acrobat PDF format

2. Gmail/Google Docs: If you just need to be able to read a document or spreadsheet, if you use Gmail you can open the attachment from within Gmail’s web interface and view the file with no special software required to be installed on your computer. If you’d like to be able create and edit documents, spreadsheets, presentations, forms and drawings, you can use Google Docs. Google Docs lets you work on your files in real time with other people (if you choose), and store them online for free.

3: Office Web Apps/SkyDrive: Similar to Google Docs, Microsoft also lets you create, store and share (if you choose) Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote files online for free in your personal SkyDrive using Microsoft Web Apps. If you have the desktop version of Microsoft Office 2010 installed on your computer, you can also edit the files on your computer and transfer them between SkyDrive for a secure back-up method.

4: Microsoft Office Starter/New computer: If you’re in the market for a new computer, Microsoft Office 2010 Starter Edition comes pre-installed on new computers these days – which includes most of the features of the paid versions of Word and Excel.