Today, Everybody is Talking About #BackToSchool not only in Nigeria but other affected Countries.
Different publications focused more on Back To School in Nigeria.
This time Nairablink is not talking about school resumption but Back to Office as we are going to talk about the best applications as an alternative to Office.
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Microsoft Office is perhaps the best known office suite in the world, but it is by far not the only one. There are several other options on the market as alternatives to Microsoft software.
Three alternatives for word processing, spreadsheets and slides
Either because you do not have a license or to try other alternatives, Office is not the only option to carry out office tasks, such as word processing, spreadsheets or slides, which can be considered as the main ones: Libre Office, Polaris Office and Google Docs are other powerful tools to consider, each with its own characteristics.
Free Office (LibreOffice):
Free Ofice Impress Presentations Slides
Impress, the Libre Office tool for presentations
Libre Office is perhaps the best known desktop alternative to Office. Free and open source, Libre Office is made up of several applications for different tasks:
- Writer for texts,
- Calc for spreadsheets,
- Impress for presentations,
- Draw for drawing and flowcharts,
- Base for databases,
- and Math for editing mathematical formulas.
Libre Office 7.0.1 is the latest version of this tool, and it is available as a download for Windows, macOS, and Linux. This is its main limitation, as there is no version available for mobile devices or that allows work online, since everything is carried out locally.
- Libre Office Writer Text Processing
- Libre Office Writer for word processing
However, despite its limitations, Libre Office is a simple alternative that can meet the requirements of many people.
Polaris Office:
Polaris Office is an option that stands out for its mobile applications for Android and iOS, as well as its own for Windows and macOS.
However, its limitation is elsewhere, Polaris Office has a free version, which allows the handling of the following:-
- Text documents,
- Spreadsheets,
- Presentations,
- and PDFs.
Its possibilities are limited, leaving the most complete options to versions of payment.
In the free basic version, Polaris Office allows the use of up to three devices (1 desktop and up to two mobiles), unlimited viewing of documents, but only allows a certain number of changes directly linked to only 60MB of files per month, 1GB of space in the cloud to save files and be able to work with them online from any device.
Other options allow greater benefits, such as the removal of the publication, more space in the cloud and it even has an enterprise version that allows collaborative work online, with their respective prices:
Polaris Office Free Benefits
The different versions of Polaris Office, with their benefits, can be downloaded from its website.
Google Docs:
Just as Gmail is its own email client, Google Docs is Google’s own office automation tool, and all users with the simple fact of having an email account can access the tools for free:
- Documents,
- Spreadsheets,
- Presentations
- and Forms.
Google Docs is a very complete tool that allows you to create and edit documents from the web on your desktop and in your mobile applications, and even share them very easily for collaborative work, but an internet connection is always necessary , which is its main limitation.
Google Docs Microsoft Office Alternative
However, it is possible to work documents offline, with the help of the corresponding extensions for Chrome or Edge, or to activate offline access in the apps.
On the other hand, it is important to take into account the storage space in the cloud for Google Docs, directly linked to the 15GB in the cloud free for all Gmail users. This amount may be enough for some people, given the low weight that documents, spreadsheets and presentations usually have, but for those who do not, the solution is to buy more space on Google One.
Finally, it is important to mention that there is a business version of Google Docs that offers more options to complement the multiple options that the standard version offers.