Open Word, Excel, PowerPoint files without Microsoft Office
If you need to work with files created in Microsoft Office, or create files compatible a Microsoft Office application, many free options are available.
Offline solutions
There's several free programs that can be installed on your computer to open Microsoft Office documents and other office or rich-text documents. Below is a selection of our favorites.
Microsoft Viewer applications
The Word Viewer, PowerPoint Viewer, and Excel Viewer were discontinued. As such, they will no longer be available for download or receive security updates. To continue viewing Office files for free, we recommend installing the apps from the link below. Or, you may store documents in OneDrive or on Dropbox, where the online versions of Word, Excel, and PowerPoint open them in a browser.
OpenOffice
A free and open-source project from Sun that includes different solutions. It is available for all major platforms including Microsoft Windows, Apple macOS, and Linux. Below is a listing of programs this package includes.
- Base - Database
- Calc - Spreadsheet
- Draw - Drawing program used to create logos and flow charts.
- Impress - Presentation program
- Math - Allows a user to create scientific formulas and equations.
- Writer - Word processor and text editor.
LibreOffice
A popular free office suites that supports Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Publisher documents, and support for ODF (OpenDocument format).
Online solutions
There are also many free online solutions as well. Below is a listing of our favorites.
Google Docs
Google Docs, available from Google, lets you freely open and create files and collaborate and share files with anyone who has Internet access.
Google Docs is compatible with many file formats, including .doc, .docx, .rtf, .sxw, .pdf, .ppt, .pps, .csv, .xls, .xlsx, .ods, and .html.
ThinkFree
Another solution capable of opening and viewing many Microsoft Office and other rich-content file formats.
ThinkFree is compatible with many file formats, including .doc, .dot, .rtf, .ppt, .pot, .pps, .xls, .xlt, .docx, .pptx, .xlsx, .pdf, and .hwp.