20

What alternatives exist for editing Microsoft Word documents (docx)?

I know about OpenOffice and Google docs. What else is out there?

1
  • Anyone experienced with WordPerfect? It still haven't been mentioned in the answers!
    – cregox
    Jun 20, 2013 at 12:11

11 Answers 11

22

LibreOffice is the replacement for OpenOffice and does the same job.

6
  • 13
    Just before people rush off and download Libre Office, thinking it'll do so much more than OpenOffice, they should realise that Libre Office is a recent fork of Open Office, contains 99.something percent of the same code at the moment, and doesn't deliver a whole lot more. In future years perhaps they'll diversify but if you have a docx that OO won't touch, LO probably isn't going to help you.
    – Oli
    Mar 30, 2011 at 15:09
  • 10
    @Oli LibreOffice was forked from the Go-OO project, which was the OpenOffice "distro" Ubuntu ships. Go-OO had additional code for WRITING OOXML (.docx, .pptx, .xslx) files, whereas the vanilla OpenOffice.org version didn't (or doesn't) have that feature. But OOXML support is definitely shakey.
    – user12779
    Mar 30, 2011 at 15:52
  • @Oli @Tyler Thanks for the additional info, I certainly didn't know Libre Office is a fork of OO. Recently heard its name, I hardly use docs. :)
    – Ashfame
    Mar 30, 2011 at 17:22
  • 4
    I can give knowledge that several (about 50 Office 2007 Docs) so far have opened CORRECTLY in LibreOffice and NOT in OpenOffice. Am comparing the latest for both so i can give word at least in that part that Office 2007 documents open good with LibreOffice (3.3.2) Vs OpenOffice 3.3.0 What am REALLY waiting is for LO to support amipro .sam documents Mar 30, 2011 at 19:30
  • Being a regular user of LibreOffice, I will have to comment that LO works correctly in 99% cases to open docx files (please not that I do not mean .doc files). For the other 1%, I have seen incorrect section numbers, and incorrect rendering of texts.
    – Masroor
    Feb 24, 2013 at 2:14
10

Abiword

Which is a part of gnome-office also supports docx format.

2
  • 1
    I can vouch for Abiword being a great little word processor.
    – user6658
    Mar 30, 2011 at 19:07
  • and much smaller than libreoffice. thanks for the recommendation.
    – dax
    Jul 13, 2015 at 9:50
6

I can certify you that LibreOffice opens correctly Office 2007 Documents (docx) AND saves them correctly. I have tested till now a little over 50 documents which include tables, pictures, a lot of different margins, paragraphs, etc..

They open, read and save correctly. Tested with LibreOffice 3.3.2 and OpenOffice 3.3.0. With OpenOffice you will have a problem that text will move up or down and maybe even change the way they look. But in LibreOffice you will not.

This is a headache i can say goodbye at least for now.

Use the following to install the latest LibreOffice:

NOTE - When you add the PPA of LibreOffice the option to remove OpenOffice will appear. I recommend you remove it since, trust me, it will be far better.

4

If you want to guarantee perfect compatibility with the docx format you could always run Office 2007 under Wine. Not the best for the open source ethos but it does work well if you already have a copy of office.

3

IBM's Lotus Symphony is a great word processor with full .docx support. It's proprietary, however.

1
  • On 13.04 does not work out of the box due to dependency issues.
    – don.joey
    May 20, 2013 at 10:59
2

Sites like linux alternatives or linux appfinder (my favorite) list applications that do similar stuff. Linux appfinder gives these results for Microsoft Word alternatives under Linux.

Other than looking there, I would say ZOHO Docs is very nice.

2

I've always used Microsoft Office 2007 on Wine. It works perfectly!

Right now, LibreOffice is not mature enough to be considered a replacement to Office 2007 IMO

1
2

Use these office suites:

K Office - http://www.koffice.org/

1

You can also use Softmaker Office. It is not for free, but from time to time they have a special where you can get it for free.

1

I am throwing my hat into the LibreOffice ring also. So far it has worked at least as well as OpenOffice for me, and since it will be replacing OpenOffice in the next release of Ubuntu, it should be well-supported at least in Ubuntuland.

1

You can use wps office which is a Chinese imitation of ms office 2010 for linux and windows (and it's free!!!), if you use LibreOffice sometimes the pictures move etc., but with wps office this dosen't happen and the sty is exacly the same but for ubuntu for now is a Beta1 version, some things need to go beter.

Installation in terminal:

For downloading the deb:

 $ wget -c wdl.cache.ijinshan.com/wps/download/Linux/unstable/wps-office_8.1.0.3724~b1p2_i386.deb

For the installation:

$ sudo dpkg -i wps-office_8.1.0.3724~b1p2_i386.deb

And for changing the language from Chinese to English:

$ cd /opt/kingsoft/wps-office/office6/2052
$ sudo rm qt.qm wps.qm wpp.qm et.qm

Sorry for my spelling.

You must log in to answer this question.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged .