How many of us go out and buy an expensive office suite and then sit back and use it to write a few letters, perhaps an invoice or two? Microsoft Word, for example, is a application that is most commonly shipped with new PCs and has become the default choice for editing our documents. When considering an alternative, we fear for compatibility. Will those old Word documents work within our document editor? Can we import an old Excel spreadsheet and, if we produce a document in an alternative editor, can we export for others to use in Word? The answer is yes, as most rival office suites are full Microsoft Office compatible (bar Office 2007).

OpenOffice 2.3.1 is a free alternative to Microsoft Office that ships with a document editor, spreadsheet tool, and presentation application amongst other utilities. Compatible with the Office 2003 (and earlier) format, there aren’t any issues when it comes to saving and editing documents.

05 Dec 2007