Best Microsoft Office alternatives

OpenOffice.org 3.3.0

OpenOffice has had some ups and downs recently, with Oracle's buyout of Sun, and the forking of LibreOffice from the project due to concerns about how Oracle would treat the project and community.

Officially named OpenOffice.org, it was launched in May 2002 as an open source alternative to Microsoft Office. Sponsored and contributed to by Sun Microsystems for much of its history, big names such as IBM, Google, Novell and Red Hat have also given their time to the project. It now belongs to the Apache corporation, something that has eased the minds of many open source advocates. Whether LibreOffice and OpenOffice will come under the one roof again remains to be seen — for now they will remain separate.

While opinions vary, most regard Microsoft Office 2010 as more sophisticated and feature-heavy than OpenOffice. This is unsurprising considering the massive time lead and financial advantage Microsoft Office has over the OpenOffice developer community. As a rough guide, expect to find the features in OpenOffice 3.3.0 roughly on par with Microsoft Office 2003.

As OpenOffice was designed as a direct rival to Microsoft Office, the interface and applications allow for easy migration. Expect to find several OpenOffice applications to be almost complete clones of their Microsoft Office 2003 counterparts. There are, however, some important differences that should be noted.

The first is that OpenOffice uses the ODF standard rather than the OOXML used by Microsoft Office. That means that, using standard settings, documents saved in OpenOffice Writer will have the ".odt" file extension rather than the ".docx" we all know from Microsoft Word.

While Microsoft Office and OpenOffice are now both mutually compatible in terms of file extensions, opening ODF files in Microsoft Office may break document formatting, as may opening OOXML files in OpenOffice. This may cause a major headache to users if they are regularly emailing attachments outside the business. In addition, more pragmatic administrators may expect compatibility gaps as both applications go through incremental upgrades.

As standard, OpenOffice offers six different applications. They are Writer (equivalent to Microsoft Word), Impress (equivalent to PowerPoint), Calc (equivalent to Excel), Draw (a vector-drawing program), Math (an equation editor) and Base (a database program). For the purpose of this round-up, we'll focus on the most commonly used programs: Writer, Calc and Impress.

A notable feature of all three applications is an easy "Export to PDF" function. When first using Writer, you may notice a lack of green and red underlining; while OpenOffice contains both a spelling and grammar checker, it does not actively underline in the same way Microsoft Office does.

Another interesting addition to Writer is a bibliographical database that may be a lifesaver to those writing a thesis or other long academic work. For those upgrading, version 3.3.0 includes noticeably improved graphs and charts thanks to new anti-aliasing features.

These features also translate into Impress — OpenOffice's presentation program — which received improved slide handling with the 3.3.0 release. This makes it a little prettier and a little more intuitive than PowerPoint 2003, but otherwise expect it to be very similar in its use and function. For those migrating to OpenOffice for the first time, one thing you may be looking for are templates; the OpenOffice template repository is well worth a look.

Calc should meet the needs of all but the most demanding users. While it features fewer charts and graphs than Microsoft Office 2010, it allows greater customisation of those it has. The latest version of Calc saw the introduction of support for 1024 columns, an equation solver and custom error bars for charts.

Scope is OpenOffice's biggest appeal: it supports almost all operating systems including Linux (32- and 64-bit), Windows (XP, Vista, 7), OS X and even Solaris. It's also available in over 110 languages and allows third-party extensions, which can add file compatibility and language support.

The latest version of OpenOffice, 3.3.0, was released with the motto "fit and trim". Fit and trim it is indeed, with the Wintel download only 144MB, and installation is quick and painless.

As a free program, OpenOffice obviously offers incredible value. However, as user bases become large, minor incompatibilities may become major headaches. Further, the consistency of documents shared outside the company may be a point of concern given the ubiquitous nature of Microsoft Office. Its free nature means it is also unsupported beyond general help via the OpenOffice.org forum.

The good Free Very broad language and OS support Packed with features and add-ons Open source Small, fast and easy to install Includes equation editor and drawing program Easy export to PDF

The bad Unsupported Less featured than Microsoft Office 2010 ODF to OOXML conversion not always perfect No email client

The bottom line If you're after a free, fully featured alternative that allows easy migration from Microsoft Office, then OpenOffice is for you. Editors' rating: 8.5/10Price: Free

Contents

1. Introduction
2. Corel WordPerfect Office X5
3. Google Docs
4. IBM Lotus Symphony 3.0<</li>
5. Apple iWork '09
6. Microsoft Office Web Apps
7. OpenOffice.org 3.3.0
8. ThinkFree Office 4
9. Zoho Docs
10. Conclusion