Microsoft Word is perhaps the world’s most popular and famous word processor. The software is designed to help users create text documents, edit and format documents, save documents in different formats, and do many more. Despite the powerful features, many people would like to look for a free alternative to Microsoft Word to work with. This may be due to its expensive subscription plan or some other reasons.
Luckily, there are indeed some free software programs working similarly to Microsoft Word. According to the main capabilities of Word, this post introduces the best 6 free alternatives to Microsoft Word. Here is the list of them.
- AbleWord
- SSuite WordGraph Editor
- Apache OpenOffice Writer
- LibreOffice Writer
- Google Docs
- Zoho Writer
1. AbleWord
AbleWord is a totally free alternative to Microsoft Word that has most of Microsoft Word features. It lets you open and write Word Doc, DOCX, PDF, rich text, plain text, and HTML files. Like Microsoft Word, this free word processor supports tables, headers and footers, images, and spell checking. You can use it to save your text or Word document as a PDF. The software is one of the best free alternatives to Microsoft Word for Windows.
Like you can edit a PDF in Word, AbleWord also shares the same ability as Microsoft Word to allow you to open and edit a PDF document. The ability makes the software a kind of free PDF editor. The menu and toolbar layout is extremely close to Word compared to many other replacements for Microsoft Word. With the familiar UI and all the powerful features, AbleWord deserves the best free alternative to Microsoft Word.
2. SSuite WordGraph Editor
A powerful and easy-to-use free alternative to Microsoft Word is SSuite WordGraph Editor. The best free word processor and text editor incorporates features to read, create, and edit various types of documents. It’s compatible with Word DOC, TXT, RTF, and many other file formats. Tables and charts creation is allowed. As one of the best free alternatives to Microsoft Word, WordGraph has a small footprint and user-friendly interface compared to similar freeware.
This free alternative to Microsoft Word can export created documents to PDF, JPG, PNG, or its own presentation format. It offers you common formatting options for text and other content in your documents. You can download and run the Word alternative for Windows PCs and laptops to use for free.
3. Apache OpenOffice Writer
If you want a free program like Microsoft Word to write documents, Apache OpenOffice Writer is one of the best choices. The software program is an open-source and free Microsoft Word alternative that provides all the basic features included in Word. This free alternative to Microsoft Word has its default ODF file format. It can read and write older Word files. Opening DOCX files created with Microsoft Office 2007 or Office 2008 for Mac is no problem.
As with most free alternatives to Microsoft Word, OpenOffice Writer allows you to apply different styles and templates to your documents. Multiple output formats are supported, such as PDF and ODT. The outstanding part is this office productivity software and Word alternative is developed for Mac, Windows, Linux, and all the major operating systems.
4. LibreOffice Writer
If you’re tired of paying for Microsoft Word features you never use, try the free alternative to Microsoft Word, LibreOffice Writer. Writer is an open-source word processor and desktop publishing software. It’s part of LibreOffice office suite which is a successor to OpenOffice. Most writing, reviewing, and editing techniques in Writer and MS Word are alike. Like other free alternatives to Microsoft Word, the software has many features similar to Microsoft Word.
OpenOffice Writer, along with most replacements for Microsoft Word, enables you to create and edit PDFs without Adobe Acrobat or other PDF software. The free Microsoft Word alternative enjoys the same broad OS compatibility as Word and can be used for Mac, Windows, and Linux. It’s capable of producing and saving to a variety of documents including its default file type (ODT), Word DOC, DOCX, RTF, and XHTML. It has a clean interface.
5. Google Docs
Google Docs developed by Google is a widely used online and free alternative to Microsoft Word. Everyone with a Google account can access it from any device to process text documents for free. The substitute for Word lets you open and save Microsoft Word, standard OpenDocument, Rich text format, HTML, and other types of files. Therefore, you will have no trouble importing and editing these documents.
Google Docs is one of the few free alternatives to Microsoft Word with an excellent document collaboration function. With it, multiple users can share and edit documents simultaneously and can see the changes other collaborators are making if needed. Exporting documents to PDF and EPUB formats is supported. The free Microsoft Word alternative is also downloadable as a mobile app on Android and iOS, just like Microsoft Word.
6. Zoho Writer
Zoho Writer is an online document editor and word processor. It serves as a free alternative to Microsoft Word with the vast majority of features you expect from Word. It’s also a great collaborative tool. What makes it one of the top free alternatives to Microsoft Word is the ability to import Word documents with no formatting loss. It can also create Word-compatible documents. The free alternative for MS Word has similar file format compatibility to Word.
Among all the free Microsoft Word alternatives, the cloud-based Zoho Writer stands out with its Zia AI writing assistant. The smart writing assistant can come up with suggestions to polish your document readability, and style. The document editing program is completely free and has no ads. Affordable plans are available for business and team users. The Word alternative also has its document writing apps on App Store and Google Play, like Microsoft Word.
The Best Software to Compress and Convert Word Documents
When you saved a Word document using a free alternative to Microsoft Word, you may sometimes need to compress it. Maybe you want to make it easy to share or store. SwifDoo PDF is a feature-rich document management application that lets you compress Word documents directly. It offers 9 compression levels for you to choose from. The compression process takes just a few clicks.
Almost all the free alternatives to Microsoft Word can export Word as PDF and convert PDF to Word. However, they have no batch processing ability. When you need to convert lots of Word documents to PDF files or save PDF as Word, the powerful SwifDoo PDF converter makes things simpler. Use any free alternative to Microsoft Word to save your created Word files, add them all to the converter, and start converting. That’s it.
SwifDoo PDF is a comprehensive productivity tool that helps you tackle nearly everything related to documents. It can also convert Word to image format, and combine, split, and compress PDFs.
Conclusion
If you are wondering what other software to use to write your documents instead of Microsoft Word, this post gives you wonderful answers. The listed 6 free alternatives to Microsoft Word do some or most of the same things as Microsoft Word. Many of them are accessible from multiple platforms. You don’t have to pay any subscription fee to use them. Among the alternatives or replacements for Microsoft Word, you can choose desktop apps or online tools.
