Five Free Office Programs

The software in this series has been tested, checked and found to be worthy of a place in this post. Should you feel there is a more worthwhile FREE alternative, submit the title and a link to me for testing and if approved, it will be added to the list.

Go-OO

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Go-OO is an Open Office special development build with some improvements. It has built in OpenXML import filters and it will import your Microsoft Works files. Compared with up-stream O, it has better Microsoft binary file support, and it will import WordPerfect graphics beautifully. If you are reliant on Excel VBA macros - then Go-oo offers the best macro fidelity too. If you expect your spreadsheets to calculate compatibly, or you get embedded Visio diagrams in your documents, you'll want Go-oo.
Features:

• Faster than OpenOffice.org
• Good functionality in a nice user interface
•Can import Microsoft Works files and Word Perfect graphics.

KOffice

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KOffice is an integrated office suite for KDE, the K Desktop Environment. KOffice currently includesKWord, KSpread, KPresenter, Krita, Kexi, Karbon14, KFormula and KChart. KSpread is a spreadsheet application, KPresenter is a presentation application, Karbon14 is avector drawing application, Krita is a bitmap drawing application, KWord is aFrameMaker-like wordprocessor application, KChart draws charts and diagrams, KFormula is aformula editor and Kexi is a database management application.

Features:
• Good Functionality
• KPlato project planning
• Karbon graphics tool
• Krita image editor

LibreOffice 3.3

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LibreOffice 3.3 includes numerous new features when compared to its OpenOffice parent. To my mind, the most important of these for modern office workers is that it has much better import and export tools for Microsoft Office 2007 and above OpenXML formats.

Features:
• No language barriers - new languages constantly added.
• LGPL license - you can use it, customize it, hack it and copy it with free user support and developer support
• Compatible with all major competitors' file formats

Lotus Symphony

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Based on the OpenOffice code, but fitted with a completely different user interface that combines menus, tabbed documents, toolbars and floating or dockable tool panels. There’s a standard menu at the top of the window, below which appears a row of tabs showing all your open documents, with a big friendly “New” button at the left to create a new document

Features:
• MS Office format support
• Document conversion
• Tabbed user interface
• Section 508 compliant

OpenOffice.org

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A credible rival to MS Office, OpenOffice.org includes powerful applications for making text documents, spreadsheets, presentations, diagrams, and databases, as well as HTML and XML documents. Not only does it let you edit basic documents, such as letters and faxes, it also handles equations and complex and multipart documents with bibliographies, reference tables, and indexes.

Features:
• Compatable with MS Office
• PDF converter built in.
• Single interface
• Open source
• Highly programable

 

Modified to the new format.