It took some convincing, but earlier this year, I finally ended a years-long relationship with Microsoft 365. I'd like to say I ditched the office suite for some nuanced reason, like I don't want Microsoft's AI assistant Copilot because I find it unhelpful and distracting, but my motivation was far simpler. I wanted to save money, and I found a free alternative called LibreOffice.
LibreOffice can trace its roots back to 1985 with the release of the word processing program Star-Writer I. In 2010, the independent, non-profit German foundation The Document Foundation officially launched the free, open-source software suite LibreOffice. Since then, the foundation said government offices around the world have saved money by migrating to the office suite.
In addition to being free and open-source, LibreOffice offers other benefits, like more document privacy than Microsoft 365 or Google Docs, but there are also some drawbacks, such as no native cloud access to those documents. Here's what to know about LibreOffice if you're considering switching from Microsoft 365 or Google Docs, as I did.
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LibreOffice has similar programs to the ones you already use
LibreOffice includes six applications, and most of them will feel familiar to anyone who has used Microsoft 365 or Google's suite of office apps like Docs and Sheets.
Writer, Calc, Impress, Draw and Base are analogs to the Microsoft programs Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Visio (for creating flowcharts and diagrams) and Access (or designing business apps and templates), respectively. LibreOffice also has a mathematics program called Math that allows you to create and edit formulas to be used within other LibreOffice programs.
You can easily edit PDFs and other file types in LibreOffice. LibreOffice/Screenshot by CNET
LibreOffice runs on a variety of devices
You can install LibreOffice on Windows, MacOS and Linux devices. So you can download this onto a MacBook, a Microsoft Surface laptop and many other desktops or laptops. But there's no mobile app.
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