I found Libre Office is really good and has the ability for dark background and light text so you don't have that eyestrain you get with the standard look. 😊
I'm retired and I don't need a full office suite these days so I use a stand alone word processor (Abiword) and spreadsheet (Gnumeric). They take up far less disk space than a full suite and are compatible with Microsoft file formats. I even used Gnumeric at work - I'm an accountant - when our standard work installation of MS Office was out of date and wouldn't open massive spreadsheet files created in a later version of Office used by a consultant. Gnumeric opened, edited and saved the file which was then perfectly usable by the consultant.
I have to say, Brian, relying on cloud support leaves your sensitive documents at the will of the hosts holding that data. This is a controversial issue, I know. They can say "anonymity', but is that the case in every situation? We truly do not know without full transparency. I will probably get flack for this post, but, I am just saying. Each person has their own opinion on cloud based support.
The issue with cloud storage is, if you have no internet connectivity, you have no access to your documents. I'd rather have all my documents on my personal system, with storage options now, you have no excuse to need cloud storage....hard drives, SSD's, and flash drives are very affordable, so you can throw another drive in your system purely for document storage, which is what I did with my machine....my laptop which was recently stolen, didn't effect any of my documents as I always had the documents on a flash drive that I carry with me. Long term storage for seldom accessed documents is on my desktop anyhow, I just carry the most common daily use documents around with me on my flash drive so I can access them whenever I need, whether at work, home, etc. Having things on the cloud may seem nice, but if you lose that access, your documents are gone forever, just as not having a backup of your home PC, when the hard drive fails you lose all that data....so the same is true for cloud access, change your password, and forget it, and you lose those documents anyways....plus its always wide open to data theft and black market sales....yep that stuff gets sold, no matter how many ads these cloud storage companies claim to be secure, how do you think they make their money...offering free storage, they're making money off your data on the black market, and sure they won't tell you that, otherwise they'd have no business at all. Get your data into your own hands and keep it there....your home PC is far more secure than you think, especially if you are keeping things backed up, and protected with passwords as you should be doing anyhow.
Tip You can get around some document compatibility issues by printing to file and then opening the printed file in whatever program you want to edit it. This works well for extracting text from locked pdf documents, you can also use screen shots to extract images.
The only office alternative I have used is Libre Office but I still prefer Microsoft Office because it is industry standard but each to their own. Another fantastic video and review of Office Alternatives.
Hi Brian, thank you for posting this video. I will be looking at a couple of these as I am just a home user and don't need to pay for all the features of Microsoft Office.
Try Libre Office. Is derived from OpenOffice, with the difference Libre is very well maintained, where OpenOffice is very poor maintained. The others are not so good.
I've used Microsoft's Office 365 (online version) for a few years now - which is very convenient and completely free. I can create any sort of Word.doc or Excel spreadsheet that I need by using it. Although it was a great comparison of different MS Office alternatives, using one of these would just be adding more clutter to my PC - when the online MS Office suite is readily available for free.
Nice to see linux as option on many software sites. Microsoft should offer it as defined by anti-trust laws in EU. And with Microsoft disabling Kernel level apps, goodbye to that linux bugbear kernel level anticheat software.
The posting clearly says you can use Office but not pay for it. You then go on to say, just don't use it. I saved $1,000,000 on my Ferrari by not buying it? Can't really say that.
The only problem I have with the free spreadsheets is that, from what I have seen, they are limited to 1024 columns. That will not be an issue for a great many who are looking for an Excel alternative, but it was an issue for me.
I thought onlyoffice would have made your list. It is like free office and wps office but I say the best compatibility with ms formats. Also a very familiar user interface.
i am libre office user almost 2 years now, i've tried only office wps , openoffice is old very old no updatealong time ago, but thanks for this awesome video i will try this free office and see how good it is. Btw excel from microsoft i why i have to use ms office still
I tried OpenOffice years ago, but honestly the Google suite covers most everything fine, and is web based in Google Drive, which is convenient if you switch devices / systems a lot. I used Microsoft Access extensively for work before retiring, never found a decent alternative for it.
Personally Brian, I use Libra. I use it for writing e.g. letters, fan fic etc... Calc for creating tables and spreadsheets to keep track of bills etc... however I don't use or really trust cloud so I keep all my files on two flash drives any way. Why 2, just like they always say in IT, "remember to back it up". Used to use Open but it stopped spell checking so I switched a long while back to Libra. Libra does everything I need it to.
I don't do cloud storage either....and its much easier to just keep things locally stored with backups of course....and you know where your data is, unlike the cloud where it may be stored on several different servers, with some nice backdoor black market access/sells of your data that you'll never know about because those cloud marketing companies are never going to tell you they sell your data. Don't trust them whatsoever, and with the cost of storage devices being so affordable, there's no reason to use that cloud storage.
What's a good office suite that also includes an alternative to Outlook? I know there are stand-alone alternatives like Thunderbird, but I like the simplicity of an all-in-one solution.
I'm a Linux and a Chromebook user. I use Libre Office on my Linux machine and on Chromebook I use Libre Office and Google docs. Google docs is quite good and I use it to share things like lists easily across my Android devices. I used Open Office for years. I use Libra Office now as it usually comes already loaded on Linux. I use Linux Mint and Debian. Also there's isn't anybads with Libra Office.
One requirement one should have is, no cloud storage or cloud anything. That, and that alone, is why I have left all major software brands and settled for alternatives.
I'm still using Office 2001. Aside from a patch to read docx files, it's fine. Honestly, those programs haven't significantly changed in form or function in 20+ years, so why "upgrade?' In point of fact, at some point along the way, some mumbnuts decided it would be helpful for the title&menu bar to keep disappearing instead of staying visible. I consider 2001 to be a significant improvement over any of the successors.
Thank you for the video. What about the people who use outlook? These software apps that you mentioned don't have an email app built in. I know there is Gmail and Thunderbird but are there any other free email apps available?
Libre office for me, I use it on several desktops & laptops etc even supports VBA scripting - makes a nice convenient way of packaging some of the little programs (written in basic) that I use as a development engineer. As it's free it means that I can install it on laptops etc when I need to without the I.T. & accounts departments gettig involved.
i tried a few alternatives a while back, for some reason i just couldn't get used to them, even though mostly they look pretty much the same, went back to microsoft office, currently using office 2021.
@@Britec09 The definition of clickbait (in Merriam-Webster) is "something (such as a headline) designed to make readers want to click on a hyperlink". Your title is "Never Pay For Microsoft Office Software Again", which suggests that you can get Microsoft Office software for free. The thumbnail says "Stop paying 4 Office" and shows Microsoft file extensions. Looks like @DimpleDeBruyn has a point. I'm sure you didn't set out to mislead anyone, but you might want to think twice before snapping at someone like that in future.
@@Britec09 I've been viewing your channel awhile. I have learned much from you, which I truly appreciate, but I'm disappointed with your reply to @DimpieDeBruyn. There was nothing inappropriate with his initial complaint, as he made a valid point.
@TheRedPolyhedral The thumbnail says "Stop Paying 4 Office" the title says "Never Pay For Microsoft Office Software again" meaning stop buying Microsoft Office and use FREE. So as you see, the thumbnail and title delivers what's in the video. So no, its not clickbait. Go over to some of the top RU-vids and your see plenty of clickbait getting millions of views, this video has 12k views, so I would hardly say that's clickbait.
@Britec09 I though you said these replace Microsoft Office? I don't see any replacement for Outlook which is a Microsoft office product and is included with ever version of MS Office either standalone or 365.
I've been using Softmaker's Planmaker. It's frustrating. I set the spreadsheet to the font I want, and it doesn't keep it. Any formatting gets dropped. I once used Apache Open Office and liked it, but when I had a question I found it had been discontinued. I'm confused by the info out there - has it been discontinued or not? When I left Open Office I tried Libre Office but didn't like it. I'd gladly go back to Open Office if it hasn't been discontinued.
I use Libra Office Writer. However, it hangs for ages if I edit a text only document more than around 300K. never found an answer, so may give Open Office a go.
I've found that Libra Office is very slow to open initially, and is quite sluggish in overall operation, even on a new PC its slower than it really should be....its also finicky on what it'll open and what it will edit regardless of file size. You get what you pay for with these free programs though.
When I first started using word, PowerPoint and excel, they each cost $99.00. Price has come down given office 365 or professional one time cost. Plus’s more people can use in household. Not considering the cost of privacy!
I tried most of those mentioned and found WPS to be the only one that sorta got fonts correctly spaced and doc layout to be closest to one made in MS OFFICE. It maybe free...but, if it can't open properly, and spaced as the original MS....you are really going to be frustrated!!!!😢
Have my doubts about Open Office, not sure if it still is maintained. On Linux Mint I just use LibreOffice which works fine for my needs. Installed Microsoft fonts and documents looks the same and are editable between my Windows office and Linux set ups. Tried Only Office also. Looks nice as well but haven't used it much.
- to @Nelson_T : libre office supports macros in four different languages including python and VBA , which is what use it for.... I had a bunch of macros written in VBA that I ran inside excel spreadsheets , I now run them in libre office sheets instead.
If you work alone, or with people using the same alternative, go for it. Otherwise be ready to accept the fact several elements of the documents will be butchered as soon as you click on "save".
LibreOffice supports a dialect of BASIC in its feature set. So does Open Office. They are both descendants of Star Office which had StarBASIC within it.
I used to use Libre Office many years ago, but went back to MS Office. I had upgraded Libre Office, and then all my documents were all unreadable than MS Office couldn’t read them - all garbage characters. I then decided to downgrade Libre Office to my previous versions with no luck in opening the documents.
I see that you block comments that point out flaws and are not useful to you. We have a saying "There is no good or bad advertising". You should also be open to criticism. I have been subscribed to your channel for years. But can you give me a reason to stay subscribed to the channel?
I do NOT block comments, what is blocked are URL because people spam and post nasty stuff. Also some nasty words are blocked. Also so you know, some comments get randomly block by RU-vid. Hope this answers your question, I am sure I answered this before.
@@Britec09 This was my second comment. In your first comment I pointed out that you did not include OnlyOffice, the best free Office Software. I did not include a URL. It may be an omission, but as I said, there is no such thing as good or bad advertising. My comment was not published.
The bigger problem is that RU-vid deletes comments even if there are no offensive words. I can attest that it happens to me frequently and finding which sentence causes the deletion is very time consuming and challenging.
Libre office is better than Open Office in my opinion. But it's just my opinion. I don't like giving any $$$ to MicroSlop So glad I no longer need Windows or Office any longer.
Awesome Thank you for Sharing! 💯✴ Nothing is free in this life. If it’s not costing money, it’s costing something else. If you got it for free! someone paid for it. Nothing is free. Everything has to be paid for. Usually your private credential to third-party seller without your knowledge!!
Wasn't open office bought over some years ago I remember some people saying not to use it because of spyware or something or other or was it someone's conspiracy theory?
@@john20100 Owned by Apache now. It's origin Star/Sun Microsystems StarOffice, then Oracle where it became OpenOffice. Hope not as Libre still uses parts of it. o
I particularly hate “Free” software that locks most of the functionality behind a paywall. Anything that pesters you with ads is especially abhorrent and I suspect a security risk, and I would never touch free cloud storage unless I wanted to say goodbye to all my privacy, places that can arrest people and seize assets capriciously are not somewhere you want anything to do with.
There are many software that create, and edit MS Office file formats, but... There's no "alternatives" or "replacement" of MS Office. ... Not really! Those are just some other software/office suite..... MS office has no replacement in terms of usability, features, user friendless and productivity.
WPS - built with Chinese money? Online storage - hosted where? Who other than yourself can access it? Mmmm, I thought about installing it several times but the Chinese connection really doesn't work for me.
