

It was released in November 1990 and included Microsoft Word, Microsoft Excel, and PowerPoint.

The package office suite that rose to dominance was Microsoft Office. Costing less than the sum total of a mixed set of similar packages, the office suite took off and never looked back. Instead of a set of unrelated standalone packages, an office productivity suite had a consistent look and feel, with easy integration between those packages. Office productivity suites completely changed the software landscape for the corporate PC. Notably, Microsoft even made a word processor for kids called Creative Writer. The dominant programs at the peak of the pre-suite period were the Lotus 1-2-3 spreadsheet, the WordPerfect word processor, and the dBase database program. Gone were the days of running a disparate collection of software on your desktop. These bundled the most-used types of office software into coherent families of software. The office suite came hot on the heels of the success of the earliest word processor and spreadsheet programs. But can a free product go toe-to-toe with one of Microsoft’s flagship applications? How Office Productivity Suites Began

Give it a try and you might never pay for office software again.LibreOffice is the premier open-source office suite, and it’s the default office package on most Linux distributions. There are also plugins to add features like advanced grammar tools, extra language packs, improved accessibility options (such as export for braille embossers), and plugins for other programs like mind-mapping tool Freemind. LibreOffice's selection of templates might seem a little limited compared to Microsoft's, but this is easily remedied by the huge collection of downloadable options available in the project's online repository (opens in new tab). The open source suite lacks Office's built-in cloud storage option, but that's easily remedied by installing the Dropbox desktop software (opens in new tab), which gives you instant access to your account as though it was a folder on your PC. Both have their advantages the NotebookBar will make switching from Microsoft Office more natural, while the old-school layout means everything is visible at a glance, and you can navigate easily using a keyboard rather than a mouse if you prefer.īeyond that, there's little difference between Microsoft's productivity toolkit and LibreOffice. LibreOffice offers a choice of interface styles: a traditional system of icons and toolbars, and an optional NotebookBar (similar to the ribbon used in Microsoft Office since 2007). One that makes it very hard to justify paying a lot of money for the competitor. That makes it not so much a free alternative to Microsoft Office, but an actual rival.
