Topic: Good free word processor

[Pugnate]

Hey guys. Wifey needs to work on her CV but we can't afford to buy MS Word. Is there any good free word processor or something that doesn't cost an arm or a leg? Alternatively any way we can acquire MS Word more cheaply? Somewhere it can be had at a discount?

[Quemaqua]

OpenOffice.org

It's not as nice as Word, but it's free, and it generally gets the job done.

[gpw11]

Yeah, OpenOffice is the only really complete option I believe.

Otherwise:  https://www.reddit.com/r/microsoftsoftwareswap/

Never used it but it's often recommended.   

[idolminds]

OpenOffice is discontinued, you'll want to check out LibreOffice.

[PyroMenace]

I just use google docs, though I dont know how well it formats itself to other word processors when you save a document to another format.

[Quemaqua]

I didn't know it was officially discontinued. But you can still download and use it. I'll give LibreOffice a go, though, because I was never that fond of the OpenOffice Writer.

[Xessive]

You can also use Google Docs offline now. It's free, good, and most importantly it's reliable. At least, that's been my experience with it.

I believe Microsoft have also made Word, Excel, and Powerpoint web editions to compete with Google Docs which are also free on http://office.live.com. But I don't know if they have offline versions. Oddly enough, all three are totally free on Android and iOS.

They're more or less the same, it just depends on which account/ecosystem you prefer: Google or Microsoft.

My experience with LibreOffice was pretty good too. It's not just a good alternative to MS Office but a well put-together suite overall.

I also tried our Polaris Office (https://www.polarisoffice.com) a while back, it came pre-installed on a laptop, and it was not bad too. They have free version and a paid version though.

[scottws]

I'm surprised by the OpenOffice.org recommendations.  Way back in 2010, most of the developers forked that project and started The Document Foundation and its offspring LibreOffice after Oracle bought Sun Microsystems.  Most people moved to LibreOffice almost immediately at that point.

The developers were pretty clairvoyant, because Oracle has been a terrible steward of virtually all of the open source projects they inherited from the Sun acquisition.  Something similar happened with MariaDB, a fork of MySQL.

I've used LibreOffice for years.  LibreOffice Writer (the word processor in the LibreOffice suite) contains all the major features of Microsoft Word and offers compatibility with Word's OpenXML format.  The the user interface leaves something to be desired, though.

[gpw11]

I'm surprised by the OpenOffice.org recommendations.  Way back in 2010, most of the developers forked that project and started The Document Foundation and its offspring LibreOffice after Oracle bought Sun Microsystems. 

To be fair, I haven't used OpenOffice since prior to 2010

[Quemaqua]

I haven't used it in a few years until recently-ish, as I had working copies of Word. But I'm not fond of the direction they've taken Word in the last while, just overcomplicated it to death. The interface is garbage. I'd never even heard of LibreOffice until this thread, but I installed it last night, will try it out at some point soonishly.

[Pugnate]

Yeah, OpenOffice is the only really complete option I believe.

Otherwise:  https://www.reddit.com/r/microsoftsoftwareswap/

Never used it but it's often recommended.   

Was considering it, but the complaint on the top post is that his key stopped working after 10 months. :p

[ren]

If there is a library near you and you don't want to use a free alternative, consider using that. LibreOffice and the like are great but if you don't have the time, patience or desire to get used to a new tool the library will get you covered with MS Word.

As an added bonus, they often have resume workshops which may be useful. North American style resumes differ quite a cit from both European and Asian CVs.

[gpw11]

Regarding resumes, paying a pro $100 to redo mine was the best move I've ever made.  I know, resumes are easy.  I thought mine was great, and people said it was really good.  And then I paid a guy on a recommendation and it made a huge difference.    I guess the guy who did it is a top level recruiter so he knows exactly what words to use, almost like SEO now the way they do it.  It's worth considering at least...especially if you're going to spend a few hours doing it anyways.