How to Find Free Alternatives to Installing Microsoft Office Applications

One alternative to Microsoft Office is Google Apps.

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An eHow user asked for an article explaining how to install Microsoft Office products for free. Sadly, it's not possible to get Microsoft products free. But there are alternatives that are just as good.

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Instructions

Difficulty: Moderately Easy

The Alternatives

Step1

The first alternative to check out is Open Office. (See the Resources list at the end of the article for links for all software mentioned.) This is completely free software developed by the Open Source community.

It contains a word processing application, a spreadsheet application, a presentation application and more. All Open Office applications can open and use Microsoft Office documents. Likewise, a document created in Open Office can be used by anyone who has Microsoft Office. Open Office acts and works very much like Microsoft Office, so the menus and options will be familiar to anyone who has used Microsoft Office.

Open Office works on Windows and Mac.

Step2

Also consider Google Apps. Google provides free word processing, spreadsheet, and presentation applications. All you need is a Google account. These are free software tools.

A distinction for users of Google Apps is that the files are stored online (not on your computer). This means you can work on your documents from any computer. And, since it's online, it isn't dependent on any particular operating system such as Windows or Mac.

Step3

The final alternative is not free, but it's under $70. It is Star Office.

Like the other two, Star Office integrates perfectly with any document you might want to exchange with a Microsoft Office user.

Star Office is only for people running Microsoft Windows, Linux, Sun Solaris SPARC or Sun Solaris x86 Platform Editions.

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Comments

Veesites said

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on 5/19/2008 zoho.com has earned a good reputation. Thanks for mentioning it.

canesbr said

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on 5/11/2008 Look at www.zoho.com

dalady said

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on 2/26/2008 Yuck, Okay, well it was worth asking about. Thanks.

Veesites said

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on 2/26/2008 dalady, It's a bit hard to do something without a CD and the license information. You can sometimes transfer software from computer to computer with a Firewire or some similar connection or network, but when you try to open and use it, you have to come up with the registration info and serial numbers.

dalady said

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on 2/25/2008 Awesome information, soo useful. Thanks. You wouldnt happen to know how to get MS office off one computer and put it on another without a CD would you?

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