The Best Three Applications for Users to Replace MS Word Now

Many of us often have to work in a text editor, and Microsoft Word is one of the best because of its extensive format support, integration with other Office applications, as well as a massive range of high-quality templates.

However, this power and convenience are not cheap – even the annual Microsoft Office 365 package is not affordable. But thank God, in recent years, many free programs have appeared, and now you can find excellent alternatives for Microsoft Word, which do not cost a penny.

Three Applications That Can Outclass MS Word in Terms of Features

Lightweight and straightforward programs are popular, but here we are looking for a full-featured text editor with template support, advanced formatting, and compatibility with Microsoft file formats. You can find any of these programs in the public domain and immediately get to work.

WPS Office

The best free alternative for Microsoft Word with a smart interface, full compatibility with the application above, backup cloud, as well as a free mobile application.

The delicate design of the WPS Office is very similar to the current version of Microsoft Word, with a ribbon interface and almost the same icons. If you enjoy using Office 2007 or later, then you will also like the WPS Office.

There is support for tabs for several documents (this function is not in Word, but I liked it), WPS Office will be able to open almost any format of a text document. It has its file format (WPS), but new documents are saved in the Docx format by default for a more comfortable sharing of documents with Word users.

WPS Office includes built-in cloud support with free 1 GB of memory (comparable to Microsoft Onedrive) for secure backup and synchronisation. There are also free mobile apps for Android and iOS that are fully compatible with Microsoft file formats and allow you to edit and synchronise documents on the go.

WPS Office also offers a good selection of pre-installed templates, and even more, templates are available in the public domain.

Unlike LibreOffice and OpenOffice, WPS Office works through advertisements, but they are unobtrusive and will not stop you from doing serious work. There is a premium version of the WPS Office that removes ads and adds tools for working with PDF, but the free version is no worse.

LibreOffice

When it comes to Microsoft Word alternatives, it is not hard to find applications that have the same features or functions. The best open-source alternative to Microsoft Word is LibreOffice, which offers regular updates and new features.

If you enjoy using older versions of Microsoft Word, you will love LibreOffice. Its interface is very similar to Word until the new scandalous version appeared in 2007, so if you are familiar with the old interface, you can understand this application in a matter of seconds.

LibreOffice offers full compatibility with Microsoft Word documents (including doc and Docx), it also reads other standard text formats, so you will not have any problems exchanging files with friends or colleagues using different software.

LibreOffice also integrates with other tools in the LibreOffice Suite, so you can easily import tables from Calc or graphs from Charts – just like with Word.

What sets LibreOffice apart from other free alternatives to Microsoft Word is its vibrant community of users and developers who have created hundreds of free plugins and templates that are freely available. LibreOffice itself receives regular updates that add new features to it, allowing it to keep up with Microsoft Word.

The only thing missing is integrated cloud storage support, but you can easily sync files using Dropbox or Onnedrive, so this is a minor flaw.

Apache OpenOffice

This is another open-source alternative. This is not the same fresh offer as LibreOffice, but it is still a great option.

Apache OpenOffice is a branch of LibreOffice, they have the same underlying code, so it is not surprising that there are no particularly fundamental differences between them. Both offer excellent compatibility with Microsoft Word documents and work with its spreadsheet, database, and presentations efficiently.

There are practically no differences between the functions and interfaces of the programs – both offer a convenient sidebar and formatting options.

The main difference is that OpenOffice receives only one or two updates per year, while LibreOffice is updated every couple of months, thanks to its large team of development volunteers. This means that errors and vulnerabilities are likely to be fixed much faster in LibreOffice, and new features will be added sooner.

Conclusion

As you can see, many applications can easily replace MS Word in a few seconds. All mentioned programs have an extensive list of features that allow users to work with all documents at once.