{"id":3973,"date":"2015-09-21T09:10:29","date_gmt":"2015-09-21T15:10:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ramblindan.org\/?p=3973"},"modified":"2015-09-22T07:36:39","modified_gmt":"2015-09-22T13:36:39","slug":"office-suite-alternatives","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ramblindan.org\/?p=3973","title":{"rendered":"Office Suite Alternatives"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"freeadvice\"<\/a>Now that I am retired I have moved away from needing<\/b><\/i> \u201creal\u201d MS Office suite tools. I do have MS Office 365 installed on my home \u201coffice\u201d computer but I also have two equivalent \u201csuites\u201d of office software available.<\/p>\n

I am NOT doing any bashing. I like MS Office and they have a free on line Writer<\/u><\/i> <\/i>version in Windows Essentials<\/u>. But it only runs in the Windows operating system. I use my Linux box about 50% of my time.<\/p>\n

The one I am using now is called LibreOffice<\/a>. It is available for Windows, Linux and OSx computer operating systems. I am using it on my Linux box. It has all the same features as MS Office and it is free.<\/p>\n

There are several more. OpenOffice is very similar to LibreOffice and in fact derives from the same source. I have that on my rover netbook computer as well as Office 365. Google docs is another suite but I carry a prejudice against many things Google. Google tries way too hard to \u201cown\u201d me, like AOL used to do in the early days. I have always despised AOL because of their early takeover tactics. There are several other office suite or text only offerings, but the first two are what I recommend.<\/p>\n

Just do a search on \u201cfree office suites\u201d if you want to see them all.<\/p>\n

They all will convert between Word formatted files if necessary to exchange files with others. But I find it is best to share files in the Adobe Acrobat<\/u> format when just sharing a document you don’t expect to be edited. It is not safe to assume the whole world can open and read .doc and .docx files, or needs to. On my blogs and public websites I always publish with Acrobat. It is the De facto standard.<\/p>\n

I like to use a word editor like MS Word or LibreOffice Writer for blogging as it provides a way to write off-line rather than while connected. I have lost too much writing by accidentally hitting a wrong key or other fat finger mistake and wondering what happened to all my text. I use a simple text mode while off-line to get the words down and then will use the on-line tools to do some formatting after pasting in the text.<\/p>\n

If you are still working in a large corporate office with standard tools like MS Office, I don’t recommend a change to a free office suite just to be a rebel. First, they probably have rules against it. There is nothing wrong with MS Office except the cost for personal ownership.<\/p>\n

If I am paying, then free is good and the free software suites actually are excellent. I use free Mozilla Thunderbird for email and to schedule things. I used to use Outlook but I find it is a bit of an overkill and again, not a universal (between OSes) program. That’s another story…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Now that I am retired I have moved away from needing \u201creal\u201d MS Office suite tools. I do have MS Office 365 installed on my home \u201coffice\u201d computer but I also have two equivalent \u201csuites\u201d of office software available. I am NOT doing any bashing. I like MS Office and they have a free on line Writer version in Windows Essentials. But it only runs in the Windows operating system. I use my Linux box...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[38],"tags":[147,100,96,55],"class_list":["post-3973","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-computersoftware","tag-business","tag-publishing","tag-sofware","tag-writing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ramblindan.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3973","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ramblindan.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ramblindan.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ramblindan.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ramblindan.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3973"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/ramblindan.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3973\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ramblindan.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3973"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ramblindan.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3973"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ramblindan.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3973"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}