I write good business letters; often for other people; sometimes a printed letter gets more attention than an email. The envelopes, formatted and printed in Open Office, are proper business envelopes. At a time when we are working more from home more, Open Office is a sensible alternative to expensive word processing, and spreadsheet programs. I do my company books with an Open Office spreadsheet that I designed myself. It calculates income, expenses, sales and income taxes etc. as I go. When it's time to do taxes, the numbers are all there at the bottom.

I use Open Office for at least three hours every day—usually six. It is my go to word processor. I've written two novels and a collection of short stories with it. I was easily able to format and style the layout for the paperback and eBook files, so they conformed perfectly to Amazon's publishing requirements. Most folks don't know this is possible so they farm it out and pay dearly. I didn't rate the support category above because I have never had to use it. Open Office works fine all the time. It's totally reliable and at a cost 100% less than MS Word.

Figuring out how to do headers and footers on alternating pages was a bit of a brain buster, but I got it. I'm sure it could be more intuitive.

I have had OpenOffice freeze in mid of work and the only way to solve the issue was to restart the pc. you can as well go to save and have the entire application shutdown automatically.

Free and open-source, it can do some of the tasks that are done by other professional software in its category but I would recommend choosing another if you want reliability and better performance.

Mostly on certain systems, you will encounter bugs that can cause you to lose or interrupt your work. The open office has other issues that can as well affect those you work with. It could be adaptable to some and absolute a nightmare to others. If you are familiar with Microsoft office don't think you will be able to use open office easily matter of fact it can be a very big problem to switch.

I've been really happy with it (some concerns with some specific version, but nothing that couldn't be resolved downgrading to the previous one. The lack of support and the creation of LibreOffice made it a deprecated solution, unless you are already a user who doesn't feel confortable with changes (but you would feel much happier with LibreOffice from minute 1).

I have been a daily user of OpenOffice since its earliest versions. It has been THE alternative to Microsoft Suite for many years, and at no cost. Its vast number of developers around the world made it easy to find solutions to your problems in any language, and to install flawlessly a wide number of plugins. But the situation changed in 2010 when concerns arose around the management of the project. Actually Apache is the owner of the project, and also if it is still free, I wouldn't recommend to spend a second on it.

Its development has not been updated in the last years, if not for minor updates, and community support is falling down. Also if a strong community is still existing, it has majorly moved to LibreOffice project, a suite which is the choice if you are looking for an (inexpensive) alternative to Microsoft. Having to chose between OpenOffice and LibreOffice (both based on the original OpenOffice experience), there is very little to discuss: the second one is the only alternative you should consider.

I depend on it daily for writing and spreadsheets and am not disappointed! Cannot beat the free price.

It does everything -- i mainly use word processing and spreadsheets -- without getting wrapped up in Microsoft's intrusive and expensive software. I can open and save as Word, can open CVS, etc. Easy and effective

What's not to like, except they leave phone apps to private developers and i do wish i could search and replace tabs and other formatting symbols, but nobody's asked this since Microsoft Works in the 1990s!

I switched from MS Office to OpenOffice and I must admit, I feel no difference. It is a good thing, though, as Microsoft Office is rather expensive, while OpenOffice is completely free! I would expect a significant quality drop between the two, but I have not found one. I can only recommend everyone to switch over as it has saved me hundreds of dollars so far.

It is good at doing what it advertises. It is a full on suite of programs on par with the mainstream alternatives. I was especially surprised with how easy it was to switch from Microsoft products to OpenOffice and how little difficulty there was.

Sometimes it lags a bit. It feels like it has some optimization issues. Larger actions make my computer lag more than it ever happened with MS Office suite. I also noticed some issues with layouts and formatting - it just won't behave as I would expect it to.

Overall we had a good experience. It's a comprehensive program. I prefer OpenOffice over MS office.

OpenOffice is a versatile Office Suit, less complicated, light, and professional. The setup is done in no time and it loads quickly. Helpful for beginners.

The interface is not that unique but somehow it doesn't matter. The search option isn't that great. Not easy to recover corrupted files.

it's a great software for all your office needs. it's easy to use!

this is the best free office software out there. i use this as an alternative to microsoft office 360. it's free & works just as good, if not better.

microsoft office documents don't always transfer over to open office exactly the same. that's the only glitch i've found with this software.

Huge savings not having to pay for an entire software suite for each computer.

This software is as useful and complete as all other leading paid office suite softwares available.

Slight compatibility problems sometimes with third party interactive links. For example a program exporting information to excel will not recognize the Open Office version of it.

Overall experience is very good while using this application. Needs some more features like high cost applications.

Open source is the one of the great benefit they are offering. Good option among other same category apps. Easy setup. Cost saving application

More templates to be added for each file type. It feels like something is missing as compared to other high cost applications. Rest all good for this application.

I had Microsoft Office for many years, Due to business slowing down, we had to rely on another software, Apache OpenOffice was just as good a software as I had used.

I like this software, any documents made from another compatible software, will be able to export it to this cost efficient just as well.

lack of templates for useful documents to use for implementing a plan. I didn't see much of word art offers

I've used it on numerous occasions to rescue and reformat corrupted files (particularly in its Word version), earning major kudos from students and clients in full panic mode that the CV or project they've put their heart into has been lost forever. Not so! Open Office rescued it. It loads quickly, can save in many different formats (more than MS Office) and is more adaptable. The portable copy has proved a lifesaver when out and about. I can plug it into any Windows computer and get to work immediately.

Open Office reminds me of the old MS Office, with a similar layout and ease of use. It's not as big a resource hog as MS Office and for basic use it's excellent. Being free certainly doesn't hurt! While I do have MS Office as well, I write first drafts in Open Office and then copy it across. Seeing the subtly different layout allows me to see errors that I missed before and since Open Office can be got as a portable app, I can take it anywhere on a memory stick, plug it in and get going. It saves to MS Office formats as well as its own proprietary ones, and you can set it to default to MS Office format if you want. It can often open files MS Office struggles with, allowing you to rescue corrupted documents and put them back into a format MS Office can read, so even if you have the expensive software having this as a backup is worth it for when things go wrong.

Doesn't have all the bells and whistles of MS Office and sometimes you want to do something that in MS Office would be a breeze (like inserting page numbers) and in Open Office is a little more tricky, but there are tons of searchable help files and advice pages which means you can usually find a way.

Absolutely phenomenal software. I don't know where I'd be without it. It is not at all dramatic to admit this software changed my life.

I wouldn't even know where to begin. I've been using (did I say using? I mean in love with) this software for over 12 years. You can create ANYTHING with it. I've landed jobs from creating resumes with this app, wowed fellow creators with artistic documents, made myself calendars and fitness goals lists with all the fancy fonts and borders, and even one classy and sassy resignation letter to a former employer of questionable morals. This software has been the backbone of my progress for so long. Tons of features, easy to navigate, and doesn't slow down your system. Standing Ovation.

The word con has no place with OpenOffice. This software is incredible. I do wish it would not let microsoft word open up my unfinished-and-saved-for-later documents, which I know is just an issue with my PC and not Open Office. Still, it would be great to see it push Microsoft out of the way just once and make it known which one I'm loyal to.

I like it. I tend to use Office myself but that's mostly because it is what is provided. I use OpenOffice occasionally just to keep me up to date with it so I can help students that are using it but this has meant that, with familiarity, I've reached the point where if I were paying the bill myself, I would absolutely look into deploying OpenOffice in my workplace.

The thing I like most about this product is probably the price. It's free and works well. Outside of this though I really like the development that has gone into OpenOffice. When it started out it was hideous, limited and buggy. More importantly compatibility with Office programs (e.g. Word and Excel) was incredibly iffy and lagged behind each update. There was very little reason to use OpenOffice aside from the price. Nowadays it still doesn't look great (it's better though!) but it's such an improved experience in terms of the rest of those issues. For example Writer does everything most will want from Word and I actually prefer the way that it handles pasting images and formatting tables. There are now legitimate reasons to choose OpenOffice in terms of the programs on offer, and if opensource is appealing then I'd recommend it as the default work-suite.

OpenOffice suffers the same issues as most opensource software. It is written by people that have a very good understanding of coding and perhaps are not as good at UI or understanding how to ease relatively new users into an experience that differs to Word. OpenOffice generally works on the function over form approach and so the best that can be said of most of the offerings within is that they are "not hideous anymore" The UI is both stark in aesthetic and a little merciless for newcomers though; options are packed in and occasionally something requires a little more "under the hood" work to get going (e.g. getting the default list of recent documents to be longer can be a bit of a chore)

Since the day office became more expensive, I started to search for an alternative which I found via a website which offered alternatives for paid software packages, I even started to implement this software is other non profit companies and they had to learn a bit but never regret it!

It does exactly the same as any other paid version of office, as a really small company we need to look at every euro, since we switched, we never looked back, because we don't need more than this office suite is giving!

Its not perfect with writing to xlsx or docx, but who needs this? You normally export to PDF and you don't need these more compressed file types anyway.

Offers the same functionality as Microsoft word for free! It also works across platforms such as Windows and Linux. Works fast and runs without glitches or errors. Easy for even my elderly parents to use.

There really is no support besides a user forum, but for free software, what can you expect? You have to remember to convert your document types to MS before transferring to others or they can not open the documents.

I've used Apache OpenOffice for years. I used it when I was a college student until now at my current career. This year actually makes it 5 years that I've used Apache OpenOffice. Happy anniversary!

The best thing about Apache OpenOffice is that it's free, not to mention, that it offers the same office software that it's competitor Microsoft Office does. This software has every feature that you could think of and is so easy to use. I know that it may not be a deal breaker for a lot of people, but I even when downloading this software, it is so fast to download and you are able to select which Apache software to download onto your computer, even if it's just one, for example, OpenOffice Calc.

There's really nothing that I dislike about this software. I would have to sit and really think and just force something. This software is flawless.

For those that love Microsoft Office and its indispensable status as the required software suite for business, but hate having to pay an outrageous price tag. I've been using OpenOffice since back when it was OpenOffice.org, and it was and still is mind blowing how a software suite that basically did nearly everything Microsoft Office could do could also be free of charge.

Compatibility issues are the biggest concern. If you originally created a document in Microsoft Word or Excel and then try to open it in the equivalent software within OpenOffice, you may get a red flag that not everything will transfer correctly. Likewise, those that are used to Microsoft Office and its features may occasionally find that OpenOffice doesn't do EVERYTHING Microsoft Office does, at least for now. For instance, the ability to freeze panes in Excel was a useful feature that OpenOffice Writer didn't replicate until later on.