Best Free Office Suite

Desktop Suites

LibreOffice formerly known as OpenOffice, still remains  the prime choice when it comes to freeware office suites.

For both the average and the more advanced user the writer is easy to use and very productive, and it offers all the tools they will ever need. The spreadsheet editor, just like the writer, is very easy to understand. The only downsides to LibreOffice is that a few of the more basic options can be hard to find for users that are not that advanced and are looking for a good alternative to Microsoft Office (for instance, double spacing).

Overall the good outweighs the bad and all modules of LibreOffice are spectacular alternatives for those that don’t wish to fork out the big bucks.

For those of you that mainly use spreadsheets, rather then word processors or slideshow editors and greatly value speed, SSuite Office - Excalibur Release  (SSO-ER) is a good suite to look into.

The spreadsheet editor supports the .xls file type (although sometimes has formatting issues) and has all the basic functions you will need. The real gem of SSO-ER is the small size and speed of the program. SSuite will start up in seconds (speeds similar to Microsoft Office 2010) and only takes up around 35mbs as an installer!

Sadly, for all the great things in SSO-ER there are many faults. Anyone that is interested in using a word processor should turn away as the word processor bundled in SSO-ER only allows for basic formatting and ONLY supports .rtf format. (SSuite says its supports .doc but I tried opening 7 different .doc formats on my machine and none of them worked; maybe I need an add-on?)

The SSuite – Excalibur bundle also pre-loads many other programs that if you do not want you need to manually uninstall. It would be nice if in the installer you could choose what you wanted.

So, with a very old fashioed GUI, SSuite – Excalibur will only be suitable for people interested in mainly using a spreadsheet editor that is both fast and not distracting, but sadly nothing else.

One very nice office suite that I have never heard of before is IBM Lotus Symphony (IBMLT).

IBMLT is another office suite based on the OpenOffice source code meaning that it is compatible with almost every file format you throw at it. The best feature, that separates IBMLT from the others listed here, is that it supports a tabbed workspace. This is a great addition as it offers a great boost in productivity while not cluttering up your task bar.

However, IBMLT is a very complicated office suite. Many of the most simple of jobs done in other office suites are very complicated to perform. I personally really like IBM Lotus Symphony despite the complication of use and slow performance; however, many with only limited computer experience may not.

Cloud Suites

In a world were the Internet can be found almost everywhere and productivity is highly praised, it's no surprise that office suites have migrated into the cloud.

What is better than having the accessibility to open up your document at home, head out to work, open your doc up on your laptop/smart phone on the bus, and get to work where you can then open up your document again with all the corrections you have made. By migrating into the cloud you can experience the relaxation of knowing your precious documents and spreadsheets are only an app or URL away.

The first office suite I tested was Google Docs.

The suite, showing off google's well known speed and integration was both fast to load and easy to use. Uploads are very easy to start and supported uploading many files at once. However, files need to be converted to the google doc format in order to be edited online and the only files that can be converted are: .doc, .docx, .rtf, and .txt. Thus, missing out the very important .odf format.

Besides converting files you can save documents into almost any file type you need. The interface for both the word processor and spreadsheet are very clean and non-cluttered. Many formatting options are not found in the doc editor such as, the ability to manually place pictures with your mouse which can be irritating.

My second choice is an online office suite called Zoho.

At first glance the office space looks very cluttered but after a little while of using it, you can come to notice how easy and fluid the cloud office suite is. Zoho supports all file types (.odt, .doc, .rtf exe) for editing online without the need to convert the documents and waste valuable time. The document editor is very well laid out, sporting a toolbar menu that looks similar to Microsoft Office 2010. Saving and uploading documents is very fast and easy to do and with a tabbed office you can be sure that editing all your documents will be as easy as possible. With 1GB of free storage and many collaboration options Zoho is sure to be many people's top choice.

My third and last choice is Office Web, the cloud office suite from Microsoft.

Like Google Docs, Office Web has a very clean work environment, and offers document sharing. One major plus for Office Web is the sheer amount of free space you are offered for free. As Office Web is integrated with Windows Live Skydrive you get 25GB of free storage space. The editors adopt the same layout and many of the same features as Microsoft Office 2010, which for many people is a plus.

Beyond that there isn't too much special about Office Web. You can only save documents online for editing in .doc format and Office Web does not support online editing of .odf from what I could find.

The Cloud Office Suite reviews shown here are reviews for the web based office suites only and is not a review for their mobile phone counterparts.

You might want to check out these articles too:

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• Best Free Software Suite
• AbiWord, Word Processor
• Gnumeric Spreadsheet

This software category is maintained by volunteer editor iGirlTech. Registered members can contact the editor with any comments or questions they might have by clicking here.

office software, office suites, desktop office, cloud office suites, word, excel, powerpoint, open office, libre office, Oxygen Office