I’m a fan of Microsoft Office, but there’s no doubt that it’s expensive. My yearly subscription to Office 365 costs $100. You can use limited versions of Office online but you’ll have to stay online to use them. A great, free option for your PC, Mac, or Linux computer is the LibreOffice suite.
LibreOffice is developed by users and is a project of the not-for-profit organization, The Document Foundation. LibreOffice is free and open source software, originally based on OpenOffice.org (commonly known as OpenOffice).
The suite features the Writer word processing program, Calc spreadsheet program, and Impress presentations software. You also get Draw, a program for making diagrams, Base, a database program, and Math, a formula editor. These programs can read and edit program created with Microsoft Office and you can read and edit documents created with LibreOffice in Word and Excel.
Let’s look at how to download and install. Start by going to https://www.libreoffice.org/download/download/
First, click on Download Now.
Then select your operating system.
Click Download. You’ll need about 1.5 GB of hard drive space to install the entire suite.
There’s an option to donate, but it is not a requirement.
The download might take a few minutes. Then go to your downloads folder and launch the LibreOffice Installer.
You’ll need to give it permission to run.
Once the installer wizard opens, just follow the instructions.
You can choose between the typical or a customized installation. I’d suggest just going with the typical.
You can choose whether or not you want a shortcut on the desktop.
Installation can take several minutes
Click the desktop shortcut to open.
I do have MS Office (not a subscription, a desktop version because I am not a cloud fan) because it’s professionally kind of universal. However, I also have LibreOffice, which I use on my laptop, and I have also downloaded it to desktops and laptops for family and friends who sometimes need an office suite but don’t need MS Office or maybe don’t have much by way of software budgets. I have found that documents and spreadsheets transfer seamlessly between MSOffice and LibreOffice. I do have some cloud storage, but I don’t use OneDrive. (Actually, I hate MS.) However, most documents, unless huge, can be transferred between computers just by emailing them as attachments.