Welcome to Apache OpenOffice - Your Free Office Suite Solution

PRESENTATION OF OPENOFFICE BY free1apk.com

OpenOffice is an office suite which belongs to the Apache foundation and which was developed from the year 2000 by Sun Microsystems. This solution includes many tools such as word processing, spreadsheet, presentation or database. All in open source to position itself as a free and open source equivalent of the Microsoft Office 365 suite (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, etc.).

Initially, the OpenOffice suite was launched by Sun Microsystems before being taken over by the Oracle group. A first split gave rise to 2 separate branches: OpenOffice which was supported by the company Oracle on one side, then LibreOffice which was managed by the community on the other. It was in 2011 that the first branch was sold by Oracle to the Apache foundation before it integrated its incubator under the name Apache OpenOffice.

Download OpenOffice (or OpenOffice.org) and enjoy a completely free office suite from your computer. This is not the case for its counterpart Microsoft 365 which is paid for via a licensing system. It is one of the world's most popular open source projects in this sector with over 350 million downloads. If you don't want Microsoft, OpenOffice.org is a good choice.

How OpenOffice works

Before downloading OpenOffice, it is interesting to know how the software works. As you have understood, this office suite itself brings together several tools: all of them can be used for personal or professional use. The names differ from those of the Microsoft Office 365 tools, but the operation remains similar in all cases, which is quite practical.

If you were using Microsoft 365 and need to switch to this office suite, you won't have too much trouble downloading OpenOffice and then using it on a daily basis. With the latter, we first find a word processing tool called Writer (as an alternative to Word). Its functionalities are very close to those of the proprietary software, so that you benefit from numerous fonts and all the styles available to lay out your text.

OpenOffice.org also includes the Calc software which, as its name may suggest, is positioned in the same segment as the famous Microsoft Excel tool. There are also spreadsheets that allow you to perform data analyzes using advanced features. In addition, you are entitled to already laid out templates that you just have to complete with your own data to save time.

With OpenOffice, Impress presents itself as the equivalent of PowerPoint. Here you have the perfect tool for creating neat and personalized professional presentations with text, but also multimedia elements and links. Once again, you also have pre-existing versions that you can rely on so you don't start from scratch.

Downloading OpenOffice gives you access to other software. Although they are less popular than Writer, Calc and Impress, they have the merit of being present in the office suite, which is relevant in a professional setting.

In detail, OpenOffice includes three other tools, namely Base, which is a database module (Microsoft Access). On the other hand, we find the Draw drawing module (Microsoft Publisher) and the Math mathematical equation editor.

As you can see, OpenOffice has nothing to envy of its competitor Microsoft 365 in terms of options. The office suite can also count on the fact of being open source and free, two elements which allow it to continue to appeal to the public, including people who are keen to support open source projects.

To this, we can add that the OpenOffice.org software integrates specific file formats such as ODT, ODS or even ODP, but that it is interoperable with others such as DOC, DOCX or even XLS. You also have the ability to save documents as PDF, all of which also helps to allow users to do without Microsoft 365.

To conclude on this point, know that you can download OpenOffice, but also install extensions or features not included natively with the office suite. This can allow you to push the customization of each tool to the fullest. To do this, you must go directly to the official Apache project website dedicated to the office suite. Please note that some modules added as supplements are free while others may require payment.

OpenOffice is entirely available in French, it is possible that some add-ons are available in English only, it depends on the developers. In the meantime, you benefit from the entire office suite in the language of Molière, free of charge, we will come back to that.

Compatibility

You can download OpenOffice.org on Windows, macOS and Linux. If you have a device that runs Windows, you must have a version XP, 2003, 2012, Vista, 7, 8, 10 and 11. On Apple's side, you must have a macOS X version from 10.7 (Lion) or later (macOS). OpenOffice doesn't leave out Linux users either: the office suite is compatible with many distributions, such as Debian, Ubuntu or Fedora.

To date, OpenOffice is not available as a mobile application for Android and iOS.

Price

Downloading OpenOffice is free. If you choose this complete office suite otherwise known as Apache OpenOffice.org, you can benefit from all the tools for free and without advertising. There is no paid version and monthly subscription, this is also the advantage of turning to an open source license.

Alternatives to OpenOffice.org

OpenOffice is easy to download and install, the suite has the advantage of being completely free and of including numerous software dedicated to productivity. However, you should know that there are alternatives to this tool, including LibreOffice. If both are open source and free of charge, there has been a rivalry between them since their respective creation, to the point that they do not hesitate to sometimes launch small attacks on each other through blog posts.

If you don't want to download OpenOffice, LibreOffice is clearly the best option to stay on the open source side without being doomed to put your hand in your pocket to use an office suite. Like its counterpart, it is compatible with computers running Windows, macOS and Linux.

OpenOffice and LibreOffice have many points in common, so much so that the latter includes software of the same name in its office suite. More clearly, we also find a word processing tool, a spreadsheet, a presentation service, a database and others, where the modules are titled the same way, namely Writer, Calc, Impress and Base. Overall, LibreOffice is updated a little more regularly than its counterpart, so it encounters fewer bugs.

The second alternative to OpenOffice is obviously Microsoft 365. We immediately point out that the two do not play on the same ground, because Microsoft's office suite is paid for. Compared to the open source version, the latter is compatible with computers running Windows and macOS.

In the same way as its OpenOffice counterpart, Microsoft 365 brings together many tools such as Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote. It goes even further with the integration of Outlook messaging and the Teams videoconferencing service, where you also find OneDrive for cloud data storage.