You are about to start a new job and your soon-to-be boss has already warned you about the need to manipulate text documents, presentations, spreadsheets and other office files. Since you don’t have any Office programs on your computer yet, you want to remedy this before you are unprepared, which is why you are here on my website hoping to get help with this.
Well, if that’s the case, I’m happy to report that you’re in the right place, at the right time! Below, in fact, I’ll list the best office suites for Windows, macOS, Android and iPad/iPhone, giving you an overview of the features of each of them and some good directions to download them.
So, without waiting any longer, sit back and read in one go what I have to explain to you on the subject: I am sure that, at the end of reading this guide, you will be perfectly able to identify (and download) the most suitable programs for your needs. Good reading and good work!
Office programs for Windows 10
There are really a lot of programs for Windows 10 and later versions of the Microsoft operating system that can be used to create, edit and archive the documents most commonly used in business: below I list those that, in my opinion, represent the best.
Microsoft Office
It is really hard not to have heard of Microsoft Office: it is the most widely used suite in the world for managing and processing office documents.
To be precise, it includes a large number of software, each of them delegated to a specific purpose: Word is the program that lets you create and edit more or less elaborate text documents; Excel is the software designed for the elaboration of spreadsheets, equipped with extremely advanced management features; PowerPoint is an excellent software dedicated to the creation of presentations and slides of various types: Publisher, then, is used to create drawings and printable documents; and Access, finally, is the software specifically dedicated to databases.
Excuse me? Were you hoping to find an Office program for organization charts specifically dedicated to this purpose? Don’t worry: you can add SmartArt elements (the counterparts of organization charts) in most Office programs by simply going to the Insert tab and clicking on the appropriate button.
Microsoft Office is not free, however, and you can get it by activating a subscription plan to Microsoft 365: this is a service offered by the big Redmond that, at the starting price of 7 € / month for the Personal plan or 10 € / month for the Family plan, allows you to get access to all Microsoft programs, unlock the premium features of Office for smartphones and tablets, get up to 6 TB of storage space in the cloud and enjoy 60 minutes of free Skype calls per month.
To be precise, if you subscribe to the Microsoft 365 Personal plan, you are entitled to 1 TB of additional space on OneDrive and a single personal license, usable on a maximum of 1 computer at a time; the Microsoft 365 Family plan, on the other hand, grants access to up to 6 people, with the possibility of using the subscription on up to 5 devices at the same time, as well as 1 TB of cloud storage space per person. More info here.
Alternatively, you can purchase a one-time license of Office Home & Student or Office Home & Business: these versions are purchased only once, can be installed on a single computer, and do not include premium benefits for mobile apps, nor storage space on OneDrive, let alone free minutes on Skype.
The official cost of the two licenses is 149€ and 299€ respectively, without any free trial period. If you are interested in learning more, I refer you to my guide on how to download Office, in which I explained everything in detail.
LibreOffice
One of the most valid free alternatives to Microsoft Office is LibreOffice. It is a complete office suite, born from a “rib” of Apache OpenOffice, which integrates a whole series of programs capable of managing and manipulating different categories of documents: Writer, for text files; Calc, for spreadsheets; Impress, for presentations; Draw, for drawings and printables; Math, for mathematical formulas; and Base, for databases.
Although the interface of the various LibreOffice components isn’t exactly the best in terms of aesthetics, all of the programs included in the suite integrate a large number of features, making them almost equivalent to their more emblazoned Microsoft counterparts.
LibreOffice allows you to open, manipulate and save documents both in the native Office formats and in the open formats provided for the various categories of documents; moreover, thanks to the strong support of the development community, the suite is regularly updated and can be expanded in terms of available functions, thanks to practical plugins that can be freely downloaded. For more information, please read my tutorial on how to download LibreOffice.
More Office programs for Windows 10
If you feel that the programs I have mentioned so far are not suitable for your needs, you can consider one of the alternatives that I am going to list below.
Microsoft Office Online: if you don’t have the ability to install programs on your computer, you’ll be pleased to know that Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote can be used directly through your browser, without the need to install anything. The “online” versions of the software offer a limited set of features compared to their desktop counterparts, but they can be used for free – as long as you have a Microsoft account.
Google Drive: the famous Google productivity suite, perfect for making collaborative documents, but not only. It works directly from your browser, is free and includes great tools to create documents, presentations, spreadsheets, forms and more. Learn more here.
OnlyOffice Desktop Editor: excellent collection of office programs that can be downloaded for free and dedicated to the creation of texts, presentations and worksheets.
Office programs for Mac
And what about on the Mac? Again, you’ll be pleased to know that there are numerous Office programs that can satisfy all your needs, some of them distributed for free by Apple itself. Read on to learn more.
iWork
If you have never heard of it, iWork is the office suite produced and distributed by Apple, designed as an alternative – albeit quite basic – to Microsoft Office. It consists of three applications: Pages, Numbers and Keynote.
Pages is the program dedicated to word processing, equipped with an intuitive interface that lets you customize your work, thanks to its built-in and easily accessible tools. Pages doesn’t have some advanced features present in Word, but it is more than sufficient for a non-professional use.
Numbers, on the other hand, is dedicated to spreadsheets: the program’s strong point is its very simple interface, although it has the bare essentials for processing data and mathematical models of various kinds. It is not a software comparable to Excel in terms of functionality, but for a basic use it is more than fine.
Keynote, finally, lets you create presentations of various types: unlike its “brothers”, Keynote has decidedly advanced design and creation features, superior, in some ways, to those found in the more famous PowerPoint. This, however, doesn’t make the program complex to use, on the contrary: thanks to its interface, it is possible to access all the most important features (but not only) within a couple of clicks.
All the programs listed are able to handle most of the native Microsoft Office file formats and can be downloaded for free from the Mac App Store; it should be noted that Pages, Numbers and Keynote are able to store and synchronize files via iCloud. For more details, you can take a look at my guide on how to download iWork, in which I explained everything in great detail.
It would have been unthinkable until a few years ago, but Microsoft Office for Mac is now a well-established and well-established reality in the scene of office programs: the Redmond bigwig, in fact, allows you to use most of the programs belonging to the suite (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook and OneNote) also on macOS; the latter, moreover, have features in every way similar to their counterparts for Windows.
Even the purchase modalities of the various programs are similar to what we have already said: you can subscribe to Microsoft 365, with prices starting from 7€/month for the Personal plan (license valid for one computer), or 10€/month for the Family plan (license valid for 6 computers). In both cases, you can activate a 30-day free trial.
You can download Office apps directly from the Mac App Store (either as separate packages for Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote, Outlook, and OneDrive or as a single Microsoft 365 package; knowing that the individual apps still require an active Microsoft 365 subscription to be used), or from Microsoft’s website. For more details about downloading Office for Mac, you can check out the specific tutorial I dedicated to the topic.
Even LibreOffice, the same free and open source productivity suite I told you about in the chapter dedicated to Windows, can be installed on macOS with ease.
Except for small graphical differences, the LibreOffice software for macOS works in the same way as those already seen for Windows and are practically the same: Writer (documents), Calc (spreadsheets), Impress (presentations), Math (formulas), Base (database) and Draw, the office program for designing flyers, posters, brochures, business cards and so on.
The LibreOffice suite for macOS can be downloaded for free from the official website; if you need a step-by-step guide showing you how to proceed, take a look in the dedicated chapter of my tutorial on free writing programs, in which you’ll find everything explained in detail.
More Office Programs for Mac
Have you found the solutions I’ve proposed so far interesting, but you’d like to know about additional ones that you can take advantage of when needed? In this case, you can consider the alternatives that I list below.
iWork/iCloud online: this is the Web version of the aforementioned iWork suite, accessible through any compatible Web browser. If you have activated the saving of documents on iCloud, you’ll be able to open them in a single click.
Apache OpenOffice: this is the free office suite, managed by the Apache Software Foundation, from which LibreOffice is derived. Unlike LibreOffice, OpenOffice programs are updated less frequently. More info here.
Calligra: this is a complete office suite that can be downloaded totally free of charge, with software for word processing (Words), spreadsheets (Sheets), presentations (Stage), vector drawing (Karbon), projects (Plan) and database management (Kexi). Calligra is also available for Windows and Linux.
Office programs for Android
Do you usually work from your tablet or Android smartphone and would you like to have a dedicated application for document processing? Then this is the section best suited for you, in which I will list some of the best solutions of this type.
Google Applications
If your device is equipped with the Play Store and Google services in general, you can quickly create text documents, spreadsheets and presentations using the Google apps dedicated to this purpose: Google Docs, Google Sheets and Google Presentations. The latter can be used absolutely free of charge, as long as you have a Google account with which to sign in.
All three apps are able to process files in native format or from Microsoft Office; the strength of the Google apps is the deep integration with Drive: the documents created are saved directly in the cloud, updated in real time and can be shared with other users or downloaded to memory, at any time.
Google apps are generally pre-installed on all Android devices equipped with “Big G” services but, if needed, they can be downloaded for free from the Play Store. To learn more, I refer you to my guide on how to create a Google document, in which I explained the topic in detail.
If, on the other hand, you need full compatibility with documents generated through Microsoft Office, you’ll be glad to know that Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Outlook are also available in the form of apps for Android, which can be downloaded for free from both the Play Store and alternative markets on devices not equipped with Google services.
They allow you to work both offline and in the cloud (in combination with OneDrive or Google Drive cloud services), individually or in collaboration with other users and have a very intuitive user interface, very similar – especially on tablets – to that of Word, Excel and PowerPoint for desktops.
It should be noted that the apps in question can be used for free on all devices whose screen size does not exceed 10.1″ diagonal; in order to overcome this limit, as well as to unlock some premium features on devices with small screens, it is necessary to subscribe to one of the paid plans of the Microsoft 365 service.
I’d also like to point out the availability of the complete Microsoft Office for Android package, which allows you to get all the Office apps in one go and take advantage of additional features such as scanning documents via the camera, signing and converting them to PDF documents and much more. To learn more, I refer you to reading my guide dedicated to Office for Android.
AndrOpenOffice
Another excellent office suite dedicated to Android smartphones and tablets is AndrOpenOffice: in practice, it is an adaptation for Android of the already mentioned OpenOffice suite, from which it inherits the flexibility and power.
Although AndrOpenOffice is a complete and totally free application, I must point out that its interface may not be very comfortable when used by devices with small screens (as it is extremely similar to its desktop counterpart) and that, on some devices, it may not be particularly stable.
Using the applications included in the suite, you can create, view and edit text documents, presentations, spreadsheets, formulas, databases and drawings; it is also worth mentioning the availability of add-ons, downloadable directly from the Play Store, which allow you to get additional features, such as importing documents in PDF format or multilingual spell checking.
More Office Programs for Android
In addition to the applications I’ve mentioned so far, you should know that on the Play Store, as well as on alternative markets of proven reliability for Android, there are many other solutions dedicated to the management of office documents. Here are some of them.
WPS Office: is a free suite that lets you create and view Word, PowerPoint, Excel and PDF files. Files can be opened from memory, from popular cloud storage services (OneDrive, Google Drive and Dropbox, just to name a few) and from WebDAV/FTP servers and saved in the same locations, using multiple formats.
Polaris Office: this is another productivity application that is totally compatible with documents in Microsoft Office format. It’s available in two versions: a free one, with basic functionality, and a paid one (with prices starting at around €6.50/month), which allows you to edit PDF files, password-protect your documents and activate app synchronization on up to 15 devices.
OfficeSuite: another application compatible with documents in Office format, characterized by a user interface completely in Italian and easy to use. You can upload and save files both locally and to the cloud, even without registering with the app. OfficeSuite is available in two versions: a free one with basic functionality and a paid one, which has additional features (e.g. the ability to install other fonts or sign documents).
Office programs for iPad
If you use your iPad for work, you’ll want to know that the App Store is teeming with office apps and suites, each suited for one purpose rather than another. Here are some of the best-in-class apps (which can also be downloaded and used on iPhone).
I’ve already told you about the iWork suite in the section dedicated to Office for Mac, but what I haven’t told you is that the Pages, Numbers and Keynote applications are also available for free on the App Store for iPad (and iPhone) and clearly follow the graphical interface, functions and ease of use of their desktop counterparts.
All of the apps in question are compatible with Office files and can be used either offline or after integration with iCloud; in addition, apps from the iWork suite are compatible with other cloud storage services such as Google Drive, or Mega.
In addition to Android, the Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote and Outlook applications, along with the Microsoft Office package that contains them all, are also available for download from Apple’s App Store and compatible with both the iPad and iPhone. The documents created with them can be stored and shared on OneDrive, even in a collaborative manner, or on cloud storage services such as Dropbox and Box.
Again, all applications in the bundle can be used for free on Apple-branded tablets and smartphones with a screen size smaller than 10.1″; to overcome this limitation, as well as to get a number of additional premium features, you need to subscribe to one of the available Microsoft 365 plans. More info here.
More Office programs for iPad
As an alternative to iWork and Microsoft Office iPad, you can consider using other apps available, even in free form, from the App Store installed in Apple-branded devices. Here are some of them.
Polaris Office: is one of the most popular applications for iPad and iPhone, which allows you to view, edit and save the vast majority of documents stored in Office format (.doc/.docx, .xsl/.xlsx, .ppt/.pptx and so on). It is available in two versions: free, with basic editing functions, and paid, which adds some additional features (including the ability to synchronize data and settings across multiple devices).
WPS Office: the tools offered by WPS Office allow you to easily create, edit and save Word, PowerPoint, Excel and PDF files, both in memory and in the cloud over the Internet. WPS Office is basically a free app, but you can unlock additional features by signing up for a paid monthly, quarterly or yearly subscription.
Google Apps: if you need to access and edit documents stored on Google Drive (but not only), you’ll be pleased to know that the Google Docs, Sheets and Presentations apps can also be downloaded for free on iPad and iPhone.