Lots of people use Microsoft Office as their office suite. Word, Excel, and Powerpoint are all part of most people’s vocabularies.
Why is that? Because there aren’t any other programs that do the same thing?
Nope.
That's why I'm writing this blog.
Free Microsoft Office Compatible Software That Runs on Windows, Mac, and Linux
OpenOffice.org is another office suite like Microsoft Office. It does the same kinds of things. There’s OpenOffice.org Writer, which is like Word text documents; OpenOffice.org Calc, which is like Excel spreadsheets; and OpenOffice.org Impress, which is like Powerpoint presentations.
And OpenOffice.org is free. Microsoft Office is not, very very not.
(Why haven't you heard of it? The people who started OpenOffice.org are terrible at marketing. Microsoft is really good. That's pretty much it.)
Get the Software Today
You can download and install OpenOffice.org right now. Whether you use Windows, Macintosh, Linux, Solaris, even OS/2, there's a version for you. Or if you want to get a CD, go to www.cafepress.com/getopenoffice
StarOffice is Sun's version of OpenOffice.org. The software is pretty much the same but costs $40 to $80 since they offer some extra templates, filter, and support. Get it from www.sun.com/staroffice
OpenOffice.org and Microsoft Office
OpenOffice.org can open and create Microsoft Office files. Microsoft Office can’t do anything with OpenOffice.org files. OpenOffice.org opens all the Microsoft Office formats—Word, Excel, and PowerPoint. And you can save any file in any of those formats, too. You can create a new Microsoft text document, spreadsheet, or presentation without ever using Microsoft. So you can do a lot more if you’re using OpenOffice.org than Microsoft Office.
The Programs in OpenOffice.org
With OpenOffice.org you can create text documents and Web pages, spreadsheets, slide presentations, and drawings and images.
- Writer for text documents
- Calc for spreadsheets
- Impress for slide presentations, and the drawing elements of Draw so you can easily make professional looking drawings.
You also get a bunch of features that make life easier, built into some or all of those applications. Here are some of them.
- AutoPilots to guide you through creating new documents and doing easy mail merges
- Easy-to-do charts
- Easy conversion to and from Microsoft Office and other types of files
- Animation so you can make objects or slides appear the way you want in presentations
Who’s Using OpenOffice.org?
Whether it’s the city of Munich in Germany or Ernie Ball music in the US, you’ll find millions of people using OpenOffice.org. A company that contracts directly to NASA uses Staroffice. Several cities in Florida, included St. Petersburg and Largo, use OpenOffice.org. The city of Northglenn, Colorado uses OpenOffice.org. Legal Aid, Manitoba uses OpenOffice.org.
They’re using it for the reasons we’ve mentioned, and because with all these users, all sorts of services have grown up around it to make using OpenOffice.org easy. Support, training, books, consulting, and more.
Frequently Asked Questions
It's actually free?
OpenOffice.org is free. No qualifications, no additions. It's open source software. And it's a good product. It's part of a growing movement all over the world to make software open to everyone, not just controlled by a few companies, and priced anyway they please.
It actually lets me open and create Word, Excel, and Powerpoint files?
Yep. The conversion is really pretty good, and conversion enhancements have been added in 1.1. Sometimes the layout will switch a little in a Writer document, sometimes you'll need to change print settings, sometimes you'll need to apply different bullets. Overall interoperability is really good.
Is it hard to learn?
OpenOffice.org is quite similar to other office suites, including Microsoft Office. Calc and Excel are particularly similar since with spreadsheets, you're dealing with a lot of math, which doesn't change depending on your software.
Excel:
OpenOffice.org Calc:
Who else is using it?
10 million users worldwide, and growing And those are just the ones who have told OpenOffice.org that they're using it. Read at http://news.com.com/2008-1082-5065859.html how a company ditched Microsoft for OpenOffice.org, and is loving every minute of it.
Can I use it for my business?
Absolutely. It'll save you a lot of money in Microsoft Office licenses, today and every day going forward. Get your employees a little training ahead of time, throw them a party with some of the money you'll be saving, and you'll be good to go. You can still interact with businesses that use MS Office since you can save in MS Office format using OpenOffice.org.
Why haven't I heard of it?
If you're interested, but you're kind of worried because you've never heard of OpenOffice.org before, don't worry. It's been around for years; a German company called StarDivision has been selling it for years, for several hundred dollars. Then Sun Microsystems bought it and set it free for anyone to use. And frankly, Sun has always been really good at making good products, but less good at telling people about them. If Bill Gates blows his nose, he does a product launch; but you hear little or nothing about OpenOffice.org or StarOffice.
However, with the announcement from Google and Sun about how they're teaming up on OpenOffice.org, things are going to change.
I know it runs on Linux and Solaris, but does it run on Windows? Or Mac?
OpenOffice.org runs virtually identically on Windows and UNIX, and a Mac version is in beta/prerelease.
How do I learn to use it?
The core features of Writer, Calc, and Impress are very similar to Word, Excel, and Powerpoint. You'll be able to get started with the basics pretty easily. For the rest, you can get training,books, and workbooks from www.getOpenOffice.org.
Is it the same as StarOffice?
OpenOffice.org is virtually the same as StarOffice, which sold and supported by Sun Microsystems, but without the templates, Adabas database, some filters, and a few other features. We personally don't think most people need StarOffice; try OpenOffice.org and see how it works for you. If you want Sun behind you giving support and other consulting, then go ahead and use StarOffice or the Java Desktop.
It's free, but is it good?
It's a fullfledged office suite, as big as MS Office. It's got a great set of features—everything you need to do word processing, spreadsheets, and presentation slides. Plus extra programs for drawing that you don't get with Microsoft Office: OpenOffice.org Draw is like Canvas, with a bit of Visio thrown in.
Does it connect to databases?
Absolutely. If you've got Access databases sitting around, you can connect to them using OpenOffice.org's data source setup tools. Then you can suck that data into OpenOffice.org documents to do mail merges, pivot tables, and more. You can connect to just about any database under the sun; you can even use a plain text file or spreadsheet as a data source.
How does anyone make any money if it's free?
OpenOffice.org is open source software. Open Source is a very cool approach to open source which means that developers sometimes get paid in money, and sometimes get paid in recognition, job satisfaction, or the other intangibles that make a difference. (How many people do you know who earn good salaries and hate their jobs?) To learn more about Open Source, you can read the well respected works on this topic by Eric Raymond (see http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0596001088) and Richard Stallman (see http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0596002874).
Another factor is that Sun bought StarOffice outright. Back during the bubble when everyone had huge amounts of money.
And the other main factor is that people still make money from services. Giving away the product and making money from services is just an extreme extension of the common practice of selling a product cheaply, and then making money on support and other services.
Why should I go with open source?
In a post-Enron, post-Worldcom world, Open Source is looking better and better. Big corporations have a lot of money, but what else do they have that makes great software you can trust? It varies. Being backed by a big corporation doesn't necessarily get you anything.
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hello,
my instructor at school uses powerpoint slide presentations. i can't figure out how to print 4 to 6 slides on to 1 page. my screen shows what i want to print, but when i print the screen all i get is 1 slide on the paper.
Posted by: steve ford | November 26, 2005 at 04:28 PM
Hi Steve,
You've asked one of the top all-time questions! You're right to find this confusing. In OpenOffice.org 1.x it's very complicated; in 2.0 it's a little better but still not as clear as it could be.
I've put together a post on this topic; see the new post on Wednesday, Printing Handouts in Openoffice.org Impress.
~ Solveig
Posted by: Solveig | November 29, 2005 at 07:06 AM