Free Office Program For Mac

CNET's Cheapskate scours the Web for great deals on PCs, phones, gadgets and much more. Questions about the Cheapskate blog? Find the answers on our FAQ page. And find more great buys on the CNET Deals page.

Free Office Program For Macbook Pro
Office Program For Apple
Free Office Software For Mac Os X
Free Microsoft Office Software For Mac
Free Office Program For Mac

The free office suite is also one of the best open source software for Microsoft Windows, so Windows users might want to consider it in place of the closed source MS Office.
Download free office suite - download LibreOffice for Windows, macOS (Mac OS X), Linux. Originally based on OpenOffice.org.

Quick housekeeping note: If you grabbed the VPN deal I mentioned the other day (or its even better successor) and you're having trouble with activation, the folks at StackSocial have assured me they'll help get you straightened out. Just e-mail support@stacksocial.com.

A few years back, I dubbed Kingsoft Office the best free Microsoft Office alternative. Then the developers renamed it WPS Office, built in a bunch of clunky online features and added a watermark to all printed and PDF documents. Talk about ruining a perfectly great freebie! (To be fair, developers gotta eat, and the free version really was almost too good. I'm guessing few users bothered to pay for the pro version.)

So what's the alternative to that alternative? Ladies and gentlemen, the 2016 Cheapskate Award for Best Free Office Suite hereby goes to LibreOffice 5.1.

Office for Mac FileHippo is home to some of the most popular Mac PDF, office and news apps, including Apple’s iWork, Keynote, Numbers and Pages apps. Another popular app is LibreOffice – a power-packed Open Source personal productivity suite for Macs (plus Windows and Linux) with six feature-rich applications for all your document.

This is, of course, a decidedly old-school option. For many a user, word processing, spreadsheet management and presentation creation work just fine in a Web browser, thank you. Tools such as Google Docs and Microsoft's own Office Online afford plenty of basic features, without extra software to install or money to spend.

So why bother with a desktop office suite? I can think of any number of reasons: mail-merge, text boxes, change-tracking, custom styles... shall I go on? Plus, and let's be honest, Google Docs is a really ugly place to spend your time. Interface isn't everything, but it's something.

LibreOffice, for its part, borrows heavily from Microsoft Office circa 2003 -- and that's just fine. (I know plenty of folks who despise the Ribbon interface that's prevalent across newer versions of Office.) I do wish it offered a tabbed view for multiple documents, though, of course, Microsoft Office doesn't, either. Which is ridiculous.

That gripe aside, I like pretty much everything about LibreOffice. It's fully file-format compatible with Microsoft Office (read: it can open and save .docx and all the other 'x' files), and it offers some of the more obscure features (macros, track changes, etc.) not typically found in freebie suites.

If you're a regular Cheapskate reader, you know I'm a bit conflicted about this. I like Microsoft Office, and in fact I rely heavily on Outlook because it's the only desktop mail client worth a damn. (Yep, I said it.) But I still think it's overpriced, and Microsoft shenanigans like this drive me insane.

That's just me. If you're looking for a free (technically, open-source) office suite that can handle the big-three productivity tasks with aplomb, look no further than LibreOffice 5.1. Your thoughts?

Bonus deal: I almost made this today's featured deal, because it's singularly awesome. But I also know many of you are probably sick of password managers, because they're a regular fixture around here. Just in case you haven't yet adopted one, though, here's your chance to get a lifetime subscription to Password Boss for $19.99. Regular price: $29.99 for one year. Password Boss is a relative newcomer, but as PC Mag pointed out in its very favorable review, 'it's full-featured enough that you'd hardly guess it's version 1.0.'

Bonus deal 2: Calling all Mac users! Roadmap Planner is a highly rated project-management app that normally runs $24.99. Ending tonight, you can get Roadmap Planner for free! This 'strategic communication tool [lets you] build your marketing, business development and product vision roadmap, and show off it to your team and stakeholders at a glance. It will take you where you want to be in one, five, or 10 years.'

Bonus deal No. 3: Want to see what kind of local stations your TV can pull in, but don't want to spend a lot to find out? Depending on where you live, a flat antenna can work minor miracles. And today you can get one on the cheap: Dealfisher (via Amazon) is offering the refurbished Mohu Leaf 30 for $14.99, shipped free with Prime. As you'll see from the (mostly positive) reviews, performance definitely varies depending on your location -- but for many, the Mohu is a fantastic tuner.

In computing, an office suite is a collection of productivity software usually containing a word processor, spreadsheet and a presentation program. There are many different brands and types of office suites. Popular office suites include Microsoft Office, G Suite, Apache OpenOffice, and LibreOffice.

1Multi-platform office suites
2Office suites for Microsoft Windows only
3Office suites for DOS
4Office suites for macOS only
5Office suites for Unix/Unix-like operating systems only
6Mobile and tablet office suites
7Online office suites

Multi-platform office suites[edit]

Free and open source suites[edit]

Apache OpenOffice (descended from OpenOffice.org)
Calligra Suite – the continuation of KOffice under a new name
LibreOffice – independent fork of OpenOffice.org with a number of enhancements
ONLYOFFICE Desktop Editors – an open source offline edition of the Cloud

Proprietary suites[edit]

G Suite – has applications like Google Docs, Sheets, and Slides
MobiSystems OfficeSuite – available for Windows, Android and iOS^[1]
SoftMaker Office – The current edition is available for a fee; a slightly feature-limited version is distributed for free under the name 'FreeOffice'. Available for Windows, Linux and Mac(2018)
Hancom Office Suite & ThinkFree Office - Available for Windows and Mac.
WPS Office– Free and complete office suite, includes writer, spreadsheet, presentations, enjoys the features of small-size, easy-to-use and compatible, covering multiple platforms including Windows, Linux, Android, iOS and Mac
Yozo Office (formerly EIOffice (Evermore Integrated Office)) – a Polish / English / Japanese / French language integrated office suite. Available for Windows / Linux operating systems using Java

Office suites for Microsoft Windows only[edit]

Proprietary suites[edit]

Breadbox Office – DOS software, but has been successfully tested with Windows 3.x, Windows 95/98/98 SE/ME, Windows NT 4.0, Windows 2000 and the 32-bit versions of Windows XP, Windows Vista and Windows 7
Framework – historical but also still supported for Windows by the present developer, Selection & Functions Inc.
Gobe Productive – Originally written for BeOS by developers of the original ClarisWorks, GoBe Productive is a lightweight integrated Works-like office suite with a generous 'Hassle-Free License.'
Ichitaro JUST Suite 2008 – a full Japanese-language suite from JustSystems, the most direct competitor to Microsoft Office in Japan. For Windows only.
Microsoft Office – Note that while Microsoft makes both a Windows and Mac version of Office, the Windows only version is named just Microsoft Office and has a slightly different feature set than the Mac version, which is named 'Microsoft Office for Mac'. While both are part of the MS Office family, they are separate programs, as the Mac version is not simply a port of the Windows version. (see Office suites for Mac OS X only section below).

Office suites for DOS[edit]

Proprietary suites[edit]

Breadbox Office – a word processor, spreadsheet, address book and drawing program. It is part of a broader software package called Breadbox Ensemble which also includes programs such as email, web-browser and HTML editor. Breadbox Ensemble runs under the GEOS (16-bit operating system) and effectively requires a version of DOS to be installed on the host system.
Corel WordPerfect for DOS – a word processor, spreadsheet, and presentation software from Corel (containing WordPerfect 6.2, Quattro Pro 5.6, Presentations 2.1, and Shell 4.0c)

Office suites for macOS only[edit]

Open source suites[edit]

NeoOffice – a Mac-specific open-source software development project dedicated to integrating LibreOffice with native features of macOS, in addition to an aesthetic and design language suited to said operating system. While the source code is available for free, developers charge for the binary version of this application.^[2]

Proprietary suites[edit]

iWork – Apple Inc.'s Mac-only office suite. Includes Pages for word-processing, Numbers for spreadsheets, and Keynote for presentations. iWork replaces the now-discontinued AppleWorks suite.
MarinerPak – MarinerPak includes Mariner Write, a fully featured word processor, and Mariner Calc, a fully featured Spreadsheet application.
Microsoft Office for Mac – Microsoft's office suite for macOS. Since Microsoft Office for Mac 2011, the suite requires an Intel-based Mac.^[3]Prior editions ran on both PowerPC systems and Intel based systems using Rosetta.^[4]

Office suites for Unix/Unix-like operating systems only[edit]