OpenOffice also saves your documents in the open document format (ODF) meaning that they can be opened within other free office suites, such as Lotus Symphony. Everything you need to run your business. OpenOffice ships with a document writer, a spreadsheet, a presentation maker and many other modules. The Mac and Windows versions of Microsoft Office are very different beasts, with completely different user-interfaces, making it hard to become experts across both suites.

If you get used to OpenOffice at work, on your PC, move across to the same version on your Mac and the user-interface is fairly similar. This will write and open most of the Office formats and is cross-platform, too. However, there are many free Office alternatives and few are better than OpenOffice. The Mac Office couldn’t open Office 2007 documents until recently, either. The Office 2007 suite produces documents, by default, that wasn’t compatible with older versions of Office, still widely used across many corporations. Besides, everyone just assumes that they automatically require ‘Office compatibility’, but even Microsoft do not help themselves here. It includes tools for creating documents, spreadsheets, presentations, and more. However, we forget that this suite can costs many hundreds of pounds, which makes it cost prohibitive for an individual or small business. OpenOffice for Mac is a free office suite designed for Mac users. If a friend or colleague asks you to recommend an office suite, our first thought is often Microsoft Office.

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