Is Open Office a valid alternative to Microsoft Office?

Nearly everyone used MS Office once. In this article i try to evaluate if you could also use Open Office.

Versions:

I will compare Microsoft Office 2016 to Apache Open Office 4.1.5.
As there are a lot of Microsoft Office versions around, i will pick the most trending for private users - Home & Student and Home & Business.

The difference between Microsoft Home & Student and Home & Business is that the student version has no E-mail Program whilst the business version has Outlook 2016 included.

Price:

• Office 2016 Home & Student: $149.99
• Office 2016 Home & Business: $229.99
• Apache Open Office: $0 (Open Source)

Compatibility:

• Office 2016 Home & Student: available for Windows and Mac (Linux only with emulator named CrossOver 17)
• Office 2016 Home & Business: available for Windows and Mac (Linux only with emulator named CrossOver 17)
• Apache Open Office: available for Windows, Mac and Linux, also a few ports (see Open Office Porting)

Product contents:

Office 2016 Home & Business:
Word 2016, Excel 2016, PowerPoint 2016, OneNote 2016 and Outlook 2016
Means: Writing program, table program, presentation program, note program and email program.

Office 2016 Home & Student:
Word 2016, Excel 2016, PowerPoint 2016 and OneNote 2016
Means: Writing program, table program, presentation program, note program and email program.

Open Office:
Writer, Calc, Impress, Draw, Base and Math
Means: Writing program, table program, presentation program, note/drawing program, database program and formula/extended math program.

This point goes to Open Office with two (three) more solutions (similar programs are available in more costly solutions of MS Office - see Office Professional - $399.99). There are also open source mail programs like Thunderbird as an addition to Office Home & Student or Open Office.

Graphical Interface (GUI):
Word 2016

Open Office Writer

This point clearly goes to Office 2016. All of the GUIs are more beautiful, and with the tabs called Ribbons it is easier to locate functions for text editing. You have the option to install your own themes to Microsoft Office. This feature is available in Open Office too, but i didn't test it.
The look of Open Office is more like early 2000's program design.

In terms of features, both office versions have comparable traits of text editing:

Text size, text highlights, font, text alignment, text colors, background colors, numbering, indexes and tables, header/footer, footnote, comment, spell check, word count, find, print, export to PDF, extensions, autocorrect, macros, and many more.

Conclusion:

If you prefer nice graphics, fancy designs, big buttons and you are not timid to spend some dollars on an office version, your favorite is probably Microsoft Office. The downside to Microsoft is, you are depending on a company giving away licenses and caring for security updates, aswell as collecting user data. If Microsoft chooses to not continue support for their office solution, you will have severe security problems in terms of exploits not being fixed.

If graphics and cool menus don't have the highest priority to you, or if you are a student, you probably want to check out Open Office. Its biggest upside is you can download and install it for free. As it is open source, lots of developers are involved to make the program even greater and fix issues. The code is available to anyone for reviewing and sending additional code. Most features are similar to Microsoft Office and a growing number of forum posts and user hints lets you discover the capabilities of the software.

There are many more programs for office use, here are a few examples:

• FreeOffice
• LibreOffice
• WPS Office
• Google's Suite
• iWork (MAC only)

I hope i could give you some insights on an alternative to Microsoft Office and would love to see you trying out an open source program.

Have a nice day,

Chris

Sources:
http://www.openoffice.org/why/index.html
https://products.office.com/de-de/home-and-student
https://products.office.com/de-de/home-and-business
https://products.office.com/en-us/professional
https://www.digitaltrends.com/computing/best-microsoft-office-alternatives/