Best MS Office Alternatives for Content Writers

I just installed a new copy of Windows on my laptop recently as the previous version was giving me a lot of problems. So one of the things missing was MS Office. As a content writer, I use MS Word for typing so I needed it. I thought this time why not look for some MS Office alternatives? Well, I did manage to find some of the best MS Office alternatives for content writers especially. 

So as mentioned above, I found out some really good MS Office alternatives for content writers but there were some problems with a lot of them. So here I present you with my best MS Office alternatives. 

As a content writer, I mainly used MS Word so I needed a good alternative for it. So the two important things that a content writer needs are structuring options(headings, subheadings, etc) and word count. I have listed these best MS Office alternatives that are free to use and also provide a good typing experience.

Best MS Office Alternatives for Content Writers 

Winner Overall: Google Docs 

At first, when I just had an empty laptop with nothing except Notepad to type in, Google Docs was the obvious choice to go and write my content. It is just so smooth and effortless to type on Google Docs. Not only that you get cross-device sync. That means if I had to edit something real quick, I could even do it from my phone using the Docs app. Then the sharing of documents is so easy. You can just share your content with a lot of people by just sending them the links to your content. You have the power to give them permission to edit or view the content. As a content writer, you always have to run your content through Grammarly to make sure that it does not have any grammatical mistakes. Well, that is also super-smooth on Google Docs as Grammarly extension works on Google Docs. 

Google Docs is easily the best MS Office alternative. However, the problem is that it does not save your files offline and although you can work offline on Google Docs still you need an internet connection to open Docs and use it. So that is the only downside. Of Google Docs. 

Best Alternative: LibreOffice 

LibreOffice is one of the best MS Office substitutes. It is open-source making it completely free to use. The suite comes with a word processor, spreadsheet, and presentation software. My focus here is just the word processor as I mainly use that. So the UI looks a bit outdated but it is still very good. The word processor displays word count at the bottom which is really essential for content writers. As far as structuring options go, it gives you the option to add 4 levels of subheadings, which is more than sufficient. It also has its own dictionary so if you type something wrong, it underlines it. LibreOffice uses ODF(Open Document Format) and supports a lot of other formats as well. 

If you are looking for one of the best MS Office alternatives for content writers then LibreOffice should be your go-to choice. 

Decent Substitute: FreeOffice

FreeOffice was actually the first alternative that I came across and I installed it on my laptop. It is quite lightweight, has a very similar UI to MS Office which is quite good. It is also free to use. So I started using it and my experience with FreeOffice wasn’t very good. The problem is that it doesn’t display the word count and for some weird reason, it displays the line and column number. So I stopped using it and used Google Docs to write, and then I would copy the content here to save it offline on my local storage. It gave me problems in that too as it would turn a lot of my words into weird characters. It also has only 3 levels of headings which is not that effective if you write a long piece of content. 

However, it is still one of the best MS Office alternatives as it is available for free for both Windows and Linux. It also supports all the formats from MS Office like DOCX, XLSX, and PPTX. So you will not have any problem. 

Must-Try: WPS Office

Well, if you are really looking for a solid alternative for MS Office then WPS Office is something that you should download and install. The reason why I didn’t use WPS Office for long is that I just didn’t want to go through that whole sign-up process and then just the ads were irritating too. However, that doesn’t take away anything from WPS Office. It is one of the best Office Suites available for Windows, Linux, iOS, and Android. 

The suite will also give you 1GB of free cloud storage if you sign up. You also get the option to upgrade to ‘Premium’ to get rid of ads. The point is WPS is good but there are a lot of steps involved in using it properly. 

Conclusion 

So these were my picks for the best MS Office alternatives for content writers. What I do currently is that I use Google Docs to write my content then I copy and save it using LibreOffice to save it on my hard drive or vice-versa. Currently, I am using LibreOffice which is my best pick from the list. If you know about some other alternatives, feel free to comment down.