Free Office Software article discussion

Former_MSE_Penelope

This is the place to discuss the free office software offers, as seen in the guide:

Free Office Software

This guide is full of alternatives to Word, Excel, PowerPoint.

If you've got any suggestions or questions about free office software, please join in the discussion


Many thanks,
MSE Becca

Tailzer

Please update links for OpenOffice.org to libreoffice.org as there is not much work being done on Ooo due to most developer now working on LibreOffice. Also a quick plug for Software Freedom Day on Sat 17th Sept 2011, find your local Linux User Group or Computer club for help installing and using free software. If you are in the Southend area I will see you @ Soslug.org
:O)

ScratchandSniff-->[X]

whmf00001 wrote: »

With the :eek: VERY HIGH cost of motoring these days, is there a free Motoring Expenses programme out there.

www.Fuelly.com does it for you.

jpmcc

The people behind OpenOffice.org were upset when their main corporate sponsor was swallowed by by another IT giant, Oracle. Oracle wouldn't give them the OpenOffice.org trademark, so they rebranded the software as LibreOffice.

Confusingly, Oracle have kept up the OpenOffice.org site as a spoiler, but as they have fired all their developers, the action is now taking place at LibreOffice.

John

wisteria

For a good accounting package that works on Windows, and under wine in Linux, search for osfinancials. (I can't post the link directly, but it ends in .org)

I find it a very flexible, powerful program that does debtors, creditors, stock control and VAT to name a few features.

david100351

I have been looking for a good browser-based website construction system, which is either free or free-opensource. There is little around which does not immediately hook you in to their own format, and where you need to pay to do anything useful.

I have tried Joomla! which is extraordinary and versatile, but makes my eyeballs bleed, and then I discovered what you can do with Wordpress.

Both require a database or two on your webhosting package, eg mysql. Or, you can use "free" hosting on a wordpress site, wordpress dot com. It is paid for by the ads they put on your site, and it is a subdomain name that you gat "yoursite.wordpress.com" so I don't recommend it, but it works, and you could try it out that way for nothing.

Wordpress v3 can be used to make a very presentable and easy-to-edit website, and definitely NOT just a blog. In fact, you don't need a blog on your site to use it at all.

With a mix of free and commercial plug-ins covering everything from online shopping/selling to search-engine optimisation, and also with a range of tutorial sites offering free setup advice and free videos as well, I chose it, and I recommend you look at it too.

And the huge advantage is that once it is set up it can be run entirely through a webbrowser. Fantastic.

defairmans

Does anyone know if this free packages come with an e-mail programme like Outlook Express? If not, is there a similar free programme?

I am always trying to convince my husband that we should take advantage of free software but he is wary and wants software compatible to what he has used before.

Thanks for the article MSE and all the helpful posters.

fwor

There are quite a few Open Source email programs that are like Outlook/Outlook Express.

One of the best (IMO) is Mozilla's Thunderbird, which if you use it with the Lightning calendar add-on, is functionally similar to Outlook.

Stompa

defairmans wrote: »

Does anyone know if this free packages come with an e-mail programme like Outlook Express? If not, is there a similar free programme?

Thunderbird would seem the obvious choice:

http://www.mozilla.org/en-GB/thunderbird/

steveE2

defairmans wrote: »

Does anyone know if this free packages come with an e-mail programme like Outlook Express? If not, is there a similar free programme?

I am always trying to convince my husband that we should take advantage of free software but he is wary and wants software compatible to what he has used before.

Thanks for the article MSE and all the helpful posters.

No free e-mail with Libreoffice but I find thunderbird very good
https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/thunderbird/features

debitcardmayhem

fwor wrote: »

There are quite a few Open Source email programs that are like Outlook/Outlook Express.

One of the best (IMO) is Mozilla's Thunderbird, which if you use it with the Lightning calendar add-on, is functionally similar to Outlook.

Nothing better as far as my opinion is trusted