Help Wordprocessor-man!

March 16, 2008 2:41 PM

I'm fed up of Microsoft Word and Works, what freeware can I use instead?

On my new laptop I had the 60 day trail verson of Word, which i didnt realise was a trial. Fine, whatever. Microsoft Works Word Processor is ok but for some reason it wont let me copy/paste into it. Fine, Whatever.
Is there some word-processing freeware I can use?
I need something that accepts word documents as well as other things that ususally open in word.
It would be great if it would be easy to use and student-friendly, by that I mean I'm writing my dissertation (thesis?) at the moment and the loss of my word processing ability is making me want to cry a bit.
thanks!

posted by Neonshock to computers & internet (30 comments total)

documents.google.com will answer your prayers. Upload your word document, and commence to do what you need to do. Any you can access it from anywhere.
posted by jeffamaphone at 2:42 PM on March 16

Open Office.org is the gold standard here.
posted by xetere at 2:43 PM on March 16

I use OpenOffice, which is more or less word and MS office compatible. It meets my needs for writing long technical documents; not sure if it would work for your dissertation.

Good luck!
posted by jenkinsEar at 2:44 PM on March 16

Google Docs is great (although you'll need to be connected to the internet do modify/update your docs)

Open Office is also very popular (and free).
posted by jmnugent at 2:44 PM on March 16

From my experience, OpenOffice takes longer to open than MS Office and sometimes gets weird when opening a doc from OpenOffice in MS Office. Especially the PowerPoints.

Again, from my experience, Google Docs works better. It's totally true that you need an internet connection to access it though.

And not from experience, I hear Zoho is a very nice online office set and has the ability to work when not connected to the web with Google Gears, which oddly enough Google Docs doesn't work with.
posted by aburd at 2:49 PM on March 16

Abiword is a nice word replacement as well. Not quite as fully functioning as OpenOffice's word processor, but easier to use.
posted by willie11 at 2:51 PM on March 16 [1 favorite]

Openoffice Writer is the usual recommendation here. But if you're associated with a university, you can usually pick up a cheaper version of Word at an academic discount.

Personally, I'd stick with Word, if I were you (I prefer Word 2003). Writer is now quite good, but probably not quite as reliable as Word. And, as a doctoral student, the last thing in the universe that you want is to start having problems with file corruption etc. regarding your thesis.

On preview: I see people are recommending Google Docs. I'm skeptical that it can handle the footnotes, section formatting, formulas, etc. that are often part of long complex documents like dissertations. I could be wrong, but I doubt it.
posted by washburn at 2:55 PM on March 16

Open Office is pretty much equivalent to MS Word in terms of feature set (although I love Open Office's word completion too much to ever go back to Word). It's easy to save your files as Word documents (just in case you have to open them on someone else's machine), and despite the ominous warning, you're not likely to lose any data unless you're doing some really crazy stuff. It's also easy to export to PDF, which is nice. If you're using a Mac, don't bother with Open Office - use NeoOffice. It's basically the same, but you don't have to deal with X11.

AbiWord has fewer features, and I believe is just a word processor (i.e., no slideshows, spreadsheets, etc), but is a lot faster. If Open Office is equivalent to Microsoft Office, AbiWord is equivalent to MS Works.
posted by spaceman_spiff at 2:57 PM on March 16

I'm writing my dissertation (thesis?) at the moment

Find out how your dissertation needs to be submitted, and make sure you convert to that format with the right software at the very end.
posted by b1tr0t at 3:14 PM on March 16

As a student you should be able to get a fairly heavily discounted version of word.

Also, check that whatever you use can handle bibliographies appropriately.
posted by sien at 3:40 PM on March 16

Although it is not free, it is inexpensive - try Atlantis. Many nice features, and it will open and close documents in DOC format. The only drawback: no support for tables.
posted by yclipse at 4:29 PM on March 16

OpenOffice Writer is rock-solid, stable, has every feature you need from Word, and saves documents in Word format. It loads about two seconds slower than Word because about two seconds of Word loads when Windows loads. OpenOffice does about twenty things ever so slightly better than Word, which adds up to enough of a difference that I've completely switched over from Word. Try it; I don't think you'll regret it.

AbiWord is a cool project, but it will be a little tricky (as opposed to effortless in OpenOffice) for managing figures, tables, and complicated footnotes/endnotes. It's not out of the question for your purposes, but it's a somewhat eccentric choice and you'll wind up doing some extra work if you go this route.

Google Docs is nowhere near ready for writing a dissertation, even if you could guarantee online access 100% of the time.
posted by gum at 4:34 PM on March 16

I had the same problems with Word and Works, and I'm now using Lotus Symphony, works well for my needs, but sometimes the formatting doesn't translate if you save as a .doc.
posted by esmerelda_jenkins at 4:40 PM on March 16

Writer is now quite good, but probably not quite as reliable as Word

In my experience, this is exactly the wrong way around - especially for long documents such as a dissertation. There have been many, many AskMe questions arising from Word's proven ability to choke on long documents.

If you're writing anything lengthy, style sheets are your friend, and OOo Writer's style sheet support is second to none.

OOo is cross-platform (Windows/Mac/Linux/Unix) as well as being free, which is good for reducing vendor lock-in.
posted by flabdablet at 4:43 PM on March 16

washburn writes "Writer is now quite good, but probably not quite as reliable as Word. And, as a doctoral student, the last thing in the universe that you want is to start having problems with file corruption etc. regarding your thesis. "

Seconding flabdablet, Word's reliability blows when it comes to documents much over 50-60 pages but I've never encountered a problem with OO. Even with Word you should never lose much more than say a hour's or so work if you version your saves.
posted by Mitheral at 5:29 PM on March 16

I must third flabdablet and Mitheral, Open Office's lethargy when opening is almost inconsequential, and is much more stable for longer documents. This will be particularly important for you because you mentioned new laptop.

Although I don't know it is a PC I am assuming so because you said you had Works. Because it is new, I am assuming you have Vista. Vista and the new Office 2007 make for some very, very slow and very, very unstable but unpredictable events.

I would also point out that EndNote's Word add-ins tanked for me when I installed Office 2007's Service Pack (Not Vista SP) as did much mouse control in Word. Apparently this is already a known issue, so you might want to note it just in case.

Other than not being able to use EndNote, I haven't had a problem with Open Office Writer.
posted by xetere at 5:44 PM on March 16

Nthing OpenOffice. The translation from Word is virtually seamless and pain free.

I would very much NOT suggest using GoogleDocs for your purposes. It is just all wrong for all kinds of reasons.
posted by DarlingBri at 6:02 PM on March 16

As someone who completed (and successfully defended!) a dissertation, I highly recommend Word and Endnotes. It will be especially helpful when you need to go back after the review board gets its hands on your work and you need to edit/adjust. Also, I second the recommendation to check the requirements for the dissertation with the Graduate Office. Google docs is terrific, but don't fool around during the dissertation process. Endnotes is priceless and be sure to note the issue with Office 2007. Good luck!
posted by suzeQ at 6:13 PM on March 16

Nthing Open Office's WP as the right choice here, because of your big/important document needs and Word familiarity. This is not the time to try something weird or novel.
posted by rokusan at 6:39 PM on March 16

OpenOffice is great. I would have written my thesis in it, except it doesn't talk to Endnote and I couldn't for the life of me figure out how OpenOffice's internal bibliographic database worked. So, I stuck with Word. I disabled as many of the extra little features, auto-correction, auto-formatting, all that cruft. I tried to stick very strongly to using styles, rather than in-place formatting. Set all figures to in-line, not floating. Tried to keep things as basic as possible. Once all my citations were in place, I killed off all the field codes and converted them to text. Then cleaned everything up by hand. And I managed to get through it all without anything getting lost of corrupted (600 pages, by the way). So it is possible in Word, and if you're relying on bibliographic software, it may well be the only option out there, unless you want to learn LaTeX. Can you pick up a cheap, old copy of Word 2000 anywhere?
posted by Jimbob at 6:47 PM on March 16

I see that many people have disagreed with my recommendation of Word over Openoffice Writer. I'm glad to hear that Openoffice has won the confidence of so many here. I prefer the idea of an open source alternative to Word.

Still, I'll note one more thing: you'll find Word around more often in the world. Your department, your library, hotel work stations, the local copy shop and your friend's laptops are more likely to run Word than Openoffice. In theory this shouldn't be a problem if you save in .rtf or some other neutral formal, or if you never end up editing your diss on a machine other than your own. However for me the possibility of occasionally editing the same document on both Word and Openoffice seemed a little risky. So, the wide adaptation of Word is one point in its favor.

Also, this extends to the availability of (some) bibliographic software--as many have noted, Endnote works much more nicely with word than Writer, and the same is true of some other bibliographic software (RefWorks, for e.g.).

Openoffice Writer has (slowly) become more user-friendly (for years it annoyed me by refusing to put the document you're editing in the center of the screen). Page numbering is easier than it used to be. Still, there are some areas in which Word is better. You can't set your page zoom in Openoffice to view multiple pages at once--a feature that can be useful in navigating and reviewing large documents. And there's no grammar check in Openoffice Writer, either (some might say this is a blessing, but MS Word's grammar check, confused though it often is, still sometimes spots editing errors and such for me).

Anyway, perhaps the best advice would be to download Openoffice Writer (it's free, after-all), and try it out. If you like and it works for you, great. If not, you can always spring for an academic copy of Word.

A final word of advice: I now prefer Zotero to Endnote for managing bibliographic references (though an earlier version of Zotero gave me problems). It's a firefox plug-in that works nicely with both Word and Writer.

And ok, one more (obligatory) thing: whatever word processor you use, remember to save multiple versions of your diss in multiple locations (including online), just in case a fire or something wipes out your computer and workspace.
posted by washburn at 7:35 PM on March 16

It's not actually so hard to learn LaTeX, and at a university you can
definitely find someone who knows it. I have never written a
dissertation, but I have typeset several books and LaTeX made it so much
easier. If you've ever had to insert figures in MSWord, you'll know what
I mean. LaTeX also has flexible bibliography support in the form of
BibTeX, packages (on CTAN) for just about any reasonable task you can
imagine, and really extensive automation. By that, I mean styles at a
whole new level---making all section titles big purple underline bold
right-aligned in a dashed box with roman numerals can be done in a
single command.
posted by d. z. wang at 7:43 PM on March 16

I'm using Openoffice right now and I'm still getting used to it (table behavior I'm not used to is sort of pissing me off). But it's fine.

I recently replaced my computer of 7 years. I called my brother and said, "hey, my computer came and it doesn't have Word on it." He laughed and said, "yeah, no, MS Office doesn't come free with your computer." I was like, it doesn't? People PAY MONEY for MS Word? I had no idea.
posted by peep at 8:13 PM on March 16

Nthing whoever nthed Open Office. And there's a version out there that runs on a USB stick, which would help you get around the potential problem of working on a (Windows) machine without OOo installed.
posted by univac at 9:23 PM on March 16

My experience with thesis and Word was that there is no other choice for ease of formatting to the university's bizarre requirements, indexing, footnotes, etc. Plus, I needed Endnote to organize my citations and references and it integrates perfectly with Word.
posted by OlderThanTOS at 10:57 PM on March 16

Nthing LaTeX. If you're doing your thesis, it'll be the most flexible format. There are plenty of programs that help you write it, ranging from simple editors to things like LyX to environments like emacs.
posted by devilsbrigade at 11:08 PM on March 16

Man, I just couldn't figure out LaTeX. I tried, I really did. I mucked about with it for ages, but I just couldn't understand the system behind it - how to install new "classes", or "templates" or whatever they're called, and where I got them from, and the GUI I was using never seemed to find all the stuff I thought I had installed, and Bibtex was quite simply a pain in the arse to use compared even to the annoying piece of shit that is Endnote. I even gave a small seminar at our weekly departmental meeting about how LaTeX was the future...then I discovered I myself couldn't get anything more out of it than simple documents formatted in one of the default, basic templates that were built in. The documentation spent way too much time describing how to format mathematical formulae, and not enough time describing how to do what I needed to do. And then I discovered that all the journals in my field didn't actually accept LaTeX documents at all - they all wanted Word documents (with the figures uploaded as EPS or WMF). So I gave up. Maybe something can be done with a LaTeX-style system - replace all those curly brackets with <html> style tags, CSS-like files to define the layout, but at the moment I'll leave LaTeX to the engineers and mathematicians who can still get some use out of it.
posted by Jimbob at 6:02 AM on March 17

Never had OpenOffice eat one of my documents. I write in OpenOffice and copy-and-paste to GoogleDocs at the end of the day for backup and remote access.

It embiggens my heart to hear someone suggest LaTeX through LyX or Emacs. *tiny tear*
posted by dosterm at 7:50 AM on March 17

i love latex, but i was introduced to it as a sophomore in college, and have used it for everything from homeworks and papers to resumes and recipe files for over six years. I'm not sure i'd recommend trying to learn it while working on a dissertation, though.

If you've got some time, try downloading OpenOffice.org, AbiWord, and LaTeX (LyX is probably your best bet for an interface here, especially if you're on Windows). They're all free, they all work pretty well, so get 'em all and see which one you like.
posted by FlyingMonkey at 11:38 AM on March 21

What I like is Open Office and AbiWord, both can do the job. Nevr]er been a fan of Micrsoft Office or Works.. The added benefit of OpenOffice and/or AbiWord is both can be run from portable drive. So you have always with you .. check it out at Portable Apps and there are dozens of other applications to add to your portable drive like Firefox and Thunderbird Email..
posted by ljrsphb at 8:39 AM on May 22