A qualifying Office 365 subscription is required for Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Outlook. The powerful Excel spreadsheet app lets you create.
If you work in a traditional office environment that runs on Excel and Word, you might have to bite the bullet. But if you’ve outgrown that world and still need to edit and send Office documents every now and then, you have alternative options.If you’re not ready to buy Microsoft Office, here are your best Microsoft Office alternatives for Mac that are free.
Google SuiteIf you’re going to let go of the Microsoft world, your best bet is to join the Google alliance. Google Docs, Sheets, and Slides are the three alternatives to Microsoft Word, Excel, and PowerPoint. There’s no real alternative to Outlook beyond Gmail, and you can get OneNote on Mac for free.Google’s suite is really good and integrates well with your Google account.
You’ll be able to open an Excel file you received via Gmail in Google Sheets with a quick button press. You can easily import Microsoft Office files to work on them, then export them again in Microsoft Office formats to pass them around. And if what you’re doing is fairly basic, with standard fonts and formatting, you can get away with it. The other party will never find out that you’re not using Microsoft Office proper.In some ways, Google Docs is more powerful than Microsoft Word.
There’s an extensive add-on gallery, beautiful templates, superior research tools built-in, and Google search capabilities to boot.Plus, there’s the advantage of Google’s cloud prowess. Collaborating with multiple users simultaneously in a document is a pure joy. It’s a little benefit, but it does wonders for productivity.The entire suite is free and you get 15GB of storage included. The only problem is that there’s no real desktop app for any of these (though you can work offline on documents in Chrome, using the Offline mode). Accompanying apps for iPhone and iPad are great too. To make the deal even sweeter, LibreOffice recently added an online component.
So you can sync files from Google Drive or OneDrive and edit them right in LibreOffice (there’s no collaboration feature, though).LibreOffice also does a good job in regards to formatting when importing Microsoft Office documents. Even complex Excel spreadsheets imported into LibreOffice Calc work like they should.LibreOffice actually grew out of OpenOffice, which used to be the de facto alternative to Microsoft Office. But OpenOffice hasn’t seen any meaningful updates recently, and its management is considering retiring the project. So we advise you to stay away from OpenOffice. Conversely, LibreOffice’s track record in the recent past has been great.Download: (Free). IWork SuiteIncluded with your Mac is the iWork Suite: Pages, Numbers, and Keynote.
These are Apple’s own alternatives to Word, Excel, and PowerPoint. Pages, for instance, is the best Word alternative for Mac.As these are Mac-centric apps, the UI is quite different. Instead of being top-heavy, the options show up in a contextual menu on the side. And you don’t have as many options as the Microsoft Office suite.
Since all three apps are now matured, all the basics are covered.Once you get used to them, they’re actually pleasant to use (something we can’t necessarily say about Microsoft Office). While customization options are limited, everything that’s available is quite polished. When you create a presentation in Keynote, chances are you’ll end up creating something beautiful.
The same goes with Pages—moving text, images, and graphs around is a seamless experience that doesn’t make you want to pull your hair out. The iWork Suite lets you import and export documents in Microsoft Office formats (it will save to the default iWork format, though). And as long as you don’t use a Mac-specific font, doing a back-and-forth with Office documents shouldn’t be a big problem.iWork also has online collaboration options but frankly, I wouldn’t recommend using them. They’re nowhere near as reliable as Google’s offering.Download: (Free) 4. Office OnlineWhen nothing else will do, just open Office.com. It essentially gives you access to free Office for Mac. Office Online is Microsoft’s free and basic Microsoft Office service that works in any browser.While the feature set is limited, the basics of document editing, spreadsheet formulas, and presentation options are all covered.
You’ll get access to Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and OneNote.Visit: 5. Edit Office Documents in DropboxDropbox’s partnership with Microsoft means you can open a Word, Excel, or PowerPoint document shared with you on Dropbox.
You don’t need an Office 365 license, but you’ll require a free Microsoft account. Using this option opens your document in Office Online. Ditch PowerPoint for Better Online ToolsPowerPoint is powerful, but it’s also pretty old-school. If you want to stand out with your presentations,:.: This is my personal favorite for creating beautiful presentations easily.
The free account lets you create and present documents online. To export, you’ll need to upgrade to a paid account.: While this service is geared more towards startups, the visual tools offered by Prezi are beyond anything you can get with PowerPoint.: Canva is an online image editor, but it has an extensive library of presentation templates. Plus, Canva gives you all the important tools for creating a customized presentation.7.
Embrace MarkdownHere’s an idea purely out of left field. If you given up Windows and embraced the Mac platform, you must have started appreciating macOS’s simplicity by now. If you want more of that for creating and editing plain text documents, you should try using Markdown.like HTML, but it’s much simpler. When you use a Markdown app to write, you don’t get lost in dozens of menu options. All the formatting happens using shortcodes.So for example, to make a word italic, you wrap it with asterisks.
You can create a complex formatted document without ever lifting your fingers from the keyboard. Plus, Markdown exports as clean HTML and you can generate beautiful PDFs using apps like. If Needed, Use Microsoft Office Without Paying for ItBuying the latest version of Microsoft Office will cost you a few hundred dollars (or a subscription for Office 365). Most of the time, the options listed above will suffice for you. Google Docs works as a great alternative to Word, and the same goes for Sheets and Excel. If you’re looking for offline alternatives, LibreOffice should be more than enough.But there might be times where you have to use Office for a particular task or for a limited period of time. There are a couple of ways to do this without paying, including using Office Online or one of the mobile apps.
We’ve outlined all your options in our guide to, as well as.Explore more about:,.Affiliate Disclosure: By buying the products we recommend, you help keep the site alive.
There are now a available, with Microsoft’s Excel leading the market share with. In 2007 Apple released Numbers 1.0, adding to the growing rivalry between the two technology giants. Microsoft Excel has 400 functions in 11 categories compared to Apple’s Numbers possessing only 262 functions in 10 categories (categories for both spreadsheet programs include date/time, text, statistical, financial and engineering, etc). Before any comparison can be made between the two spreadsheet programs, it must be first considered which computer they are being accessed from. Apple Numbers was specifically made for Mac users whereas Microsoft Excel functions on both Mac and Windows computers.Overall Excel provides an overwhelming amount of functions in comparison to Apple’s Numbers, but it can be argued that they both appeal to different spreadsheet users. Excel supports advanced charting and plotting features not available in Apple Numbers, however, Apple’s charts are more visually stimulating (as seen below).3D Chart in Microsoft Excel3D Chart in NumbersNumbers makes it much easier to create spreadsheets with visual impact compared to Excel, with also the option of a wider variety of templates available when the program is first opened – a feature that lacks in Excel.For overall functionality, Microsoft Excel has a multitude of pre-loaded formulas and functions. Numbers consequently lacks some of the more advanced formulas and functions of Excel, such as pivot tables.
While Excel has more built-in functions, on the whole, only users who employ very advanced analytical techniques would miss these missing functions in Numbers. Numbers has always been second to Microsoft Excel, with Microsoft appealing to a wide range of users through their Microsoft Office package, which has more programs with more features for business and home users compared to Apple’s iWork alternative. However, Apple’s Numbers saw larger growth with the introduction of their mobile app on their popular iPhone and iPad range in, allowing users to collaborate on their spreadsheet documents across a variety of their Apple platforms.The lack of mobile presence was Microsoft Excel’s only downfall. New Microsoft, announced shortly after his appointment earlier this year that Microsoft were in plans to move popular Microsoft Office programs, and to an app based format.
All three Microsoft apps (Excel, PowerPoint and Word) shot to number one in the App Store, taking away Numbers’ competitive edge.With Microsoft Excel now adapted specifically for smart phones and tablets, Excel will continue to dominate the spreadsheet market. It is fair to conclude that Numbers may be difficult for die-hard Excel enthusiasts to adapt to because of the difference in the Apple and Microsoft Excel user interfaces. However, it may be a better program for the casual or the home-based spreadsheet user, who requires a user-friendly program with a wider variety of templates to assist their basic spreadsheet requirements.Accountants and other financial experts often choose Excel because of the versatility of the program and its speed in completing complex functions and calculations, matched with the extensive list of reliable features available to the sophisticated spreadsheet user.The EwB Team.
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January 2023
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