Edit (15 July 2019): I have tried to make a similar document/template in LibreOffice Writer 6.1.6. Please view the post at https://aajkyakiya.blogspot.com/2019/07/making-libreoffice-documents-look-like.html to view/download the files.
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Original Article Below:
A few weeks ago I was looking at alternatives to Microsoft Office. Why? Because installations of Microsoft Office at my work place is restricted to only those who really need it. Fortunately I do have it on my workstation. But, many do not and are using a variety of other solutions. For example, the Ubuntu workstations have LibreOffice, while some Windows workstations have free WPS office. So, I was looking for an alternative that would have a consistent feature set and be as close to using Microsoft Office.
I am mostly a Word user and I have used Powerpoint intermittently. I am not an expert in using Excel, though I am able to create basic worksheets, but nothing fancy.
And, Office Online doesn't count yet. I was not able to even insert a section break in Office Online. The only benefit of Office Online is the ability to create SmartArt in the online version of Powerpoint that can be then downloaded and inserted as an image in your own presentations.
<<Okay, so why did I mention section break. For those who do not know, you can have different header and footer in sections only. A feature that I use quite frequently>>
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A popular alternative is LibreOffice which is incidentally preinstalled in most modern Linux distros. LibreOffice is free to download and use on Windows and Linux, and it offers a consistent feature set in both. While most of the features are present, LibreOffice has a very different approach to do things. A very good book that outlines this is Bruce Byfield's Designing with LibreOffice (http://designingwithlibreoffice.com) and the excellent articles on the Full Circle Magazine (http://fullcirclemagazine.org) (A link to the Full Circle Magazine's LibreOffice special edition -> http://fullcirclemagazine.org/2015/08/08/libreoffice-golden-anniversary-special-edition/)
I believe both these books/resources are free to at least download and use. So go ahead and try LibreOffice yourself to see if its way of doing things is for you.
I found LibreOffice Writer not very easy to catch on if you are used to the Microsoft Word way of doing things. For example, the sections thing that I mentioned above -> sections in LibreOffice does not do what sections in Word does. It just creates a section 'block' which can be called from another LibreOffice document or can be used within the same document. It does not create a new section pages like section does in Word 2007.
LibreOffice Impress is a good replacement for Powerpoint (according to my limited use at least.) I even found that LibreOffice Calc to be on par with Excel (again, according to my limited use.)
LibreOffice has another great application LibreOffice Draw. This app is the the best flowcharting app that I have found for the price of free. Another free app is yEd Graph Editor. I have found that yEd Graph Editor has its specific uses, like I found making an ER diagram much more easier in yEd than in Draw. But Draw is much better in making flowcharts. Just one issue of labeling arrows is there in Draw. The text just does not appear on the line and is rather placed in an imaginary box made by the arrow connector line.
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The second alternative to Microsoft Office I found is WPS office. This has a free version for Windows that has a limited feature set. And, a free community version for Linux. I do not know whether this community version is the full version or the crippled version. Also this community version is of alpha quality.
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The third alternative I found is FreeOffice. FreeOffice is available for Windows and Linux. FreeOffice is the free version of SoftMaker Office, a paid for office suite. Even then, the FreeOffice suite has a better feature set than what WPS free version has. One major limitation in FreeOffice is that it does not save documents in the Office XML Formats. It can read the documents but cannot save it in those formats.
Installing FreeOffice is not as simple as installing LibreOffice. To download and use FreeOffice, you are required to register and get a key for your copy. This maybe done to know the exact users of FreeOffice or to get you to buy the full version of SoftMaker Office. Anyways, the download is smaller than LibreOffice and it asks for the key only once.
FreeOffice has three apps: TextMaker (alternative for Word), PlanMaker (alternative for Excel), and Presentations (alternative for Powerpoint).
I found TextMaker to have a similar way of doing things that Word has. The section stuff works the same so does many other features that Word has. In defining/editing the styles, I found that the implementation of 'hanging indent' is not done quite right in TextMaker. You have to manually adjust the 'Indents' to get the look of 'hanging indent'.
The PlanMaker and Presentations have not quite impressed me. I find the LibreOffice alternatives a tad better for these two apps. Also, FreeOffice does not have a drawing/flowcharting app.
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The TextMaker app is quite similar to Word in its way of doing things. And, this makes me feel familiar and confident in achieving the same look of the documents in both. But, the default Word 2007 documents have unique styles and colors that are not present in any of the free alternatives.
You cannot magically transform an already created document in TextMaker to look like that of a Word 2007 document. The only real alternative is to create the exact styles and colors in a TextMaker template and then use this template to create the new document.
While you cannot create the styles for all elements (like tables, etc.), but you can create the styles for most other elements (like the paragraph styles). The character styles are more or less the same in TextMaker and Word 2007.
I have tried to create such a template for TextMaker which has the similar styles of the default Word 2007 documents.
You can download this template from this link: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B95bNAog0FOgNVZhZ05kSEFoRlk/view?usp=sharing
This is an English language template. The template uses the default fonts used in Word 2007 - you may have to change the fonts if you do not have these installed on your system. For example, on modern Linux systems, the alternatives are available in the croscore fonts package. Also, the template uses the Letter page size.
You have to save this template in the templates directory. On Windows XP, this is C:\Documents and Settings\<UserName>\My Documents\SoftMaker\Templates 2016\English
To use this template, first open TextMaker, then on the main menu click File->New. Now, in the 'New' dialog box, under 'Template' select the new template and click OK. The new document is ready for editing.
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TextMaker is a very good alternative to Word 2007 and with the TextMaker template above, you can create documents in TextMaker that look just like they would if created in Word 2007.
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Original Article Below:
A few weeks ago I was looking at alternatives to Microsoft Office. Why? Because installations of Microsoft Office at my work place is restricted to only those who really need it. Fortunately I do have it on my workstation. But, many do not and are using a variety of other solutions. For example, the Ubuntu workstations have LibreOffice, while some Windows workstations have free WPS office. So, I was looking for an alternative that would have a consistent feature set and be as close to using Microsoft Office.
I am mostly a Word user and I have used Powerpoint intermittently. I am not an expert in using Excel, though I am able to create basic worksheets, but nothing fancy.
And, Office Online doesn't count yet. I was not able to even insert a section break in Office Online. The only benefit of Office Online is the ability to create SmartArt in the online version of Powerpoint that can be then downloaded and inserted as an image in your own presentations.
<<Okay, so why did I mention section break. For those who do not know, you can have different header and footer in sections only. A feature that I use quite frequently>>
--------------------------------------------------
A popular alternative is LibreOffice which is incidentally preinstalled in most modern Linux distros. LibreOffice is free to download and use on Windows and Linux, and it offers a consistent feature set in both. While most of the features are present, LibreOffice has a very different approach to do things. A very good book that outlines this is Bruce Byfield's Designing with LibreOffice (http://designingwithlibreoffice.com) and the excellent articles on the Full Circle Magazine (http://fullcirclemagazine.org) (A link to the Full Circle Magazine's LibreOffice special edition -> http://fullcirclemagazine.org/2015/08/08/libreoffice-golden-anniversary-special-edition/)
I believe both these books/resources are free to at least download and use. So go ahead and try LibreOffice yourself to see if its way of doing things is for you.
I found LibreOffice Writer not very easy to catch on if you are used to the Microsoft Word way of doing things. For example, the sections thing that I mentioned above -> sections in LibreOffice does not do what sections in Word does. It just creates a section 'block' which can be called from another LibreOffice document or can be used within the same document. It does not create a new section pages like section does in Word 2007.
LibreOffice Impress is a good replacement for Powerpoint (according to my limited use at least.) I even found that LibreOffice Calc to be on par with Excel (again, according to my limited use.)
LibreOffice has another great application LibreOffice Draw. This app is the the best flowcharting app that I have found for the price of free. Another free app is yEd Graph Editor. I have found that yEd Graph Editor has its specific uses, like I found making an ER diagram much more easier in yEd than in Draw. But Draw is much better in making flowcharts. Just one issue of labeling arrows is there in Draw. The text just does not appear on the line and is rather placed in an imaginary box made by the arrow connector line.
--------------------------------------------------
The second alternative to Microsoft Office I found is WPS office. This has a free version for Windows that has a limited feature set. And, a free community version for Linux. I do not know whether this community version is the full version or the crippled version. Also this community version is of alpha quality.
--------------------------------------------------
The third alternative I found is FreeOffice. FreeOffice is available for Windows and Linux. FreeOffice is the free version of SoftMaker Office, a paid for office suite. Even then, the FreeOffice suite has a better feature set than what WPS free version has. One major limitation in FreeOffice is that it does not save documents in the Office XML Formats. It can read the documents but cannot save it in those formats.
Installing FreeOffice is not as simple as installing LibreOffice. To download and use FreeOffice, you are required to register and get a key for your copy. This maybe done to know the exact users of FreeOffice or to get you to buy the full version of SoftMaker Office. Anyways, the download is smaller than LibreOffice and it asks for the key only once.
FreeOffice has three apps: TextMaker (alternative for Word), PlanMaker (alternative for Excel), and Presentations (alternative for Powerpoint).
I found TextMaker to have a similar way of doing things that Word has. The section stuff works the same so does many other features that Word has. In defining/editing the styles, I found that the implementation of 'hanging indent' is not done quite right in TextMaker. You have to manually adjust the 'Indents' to get the look of 'hanging indent'.
The PlanMaker and Presentations have not quite impressed me. I find the LibreOffice alternatives a tad better for these two apps. Also, FreeOffice does not have a drawing/flowcharting app.
--------------------------------------------------
The TextMaker app is quite similar to Word in its way of doing things. And, this makes me feel familiar and confident in achieving the same look of the documents in both. But, the default Word 2007 documents have unique styles and colors that are not present in any of the free alternatives.
You cannot magically transform an already created document in TextMaker to look like that of a Word 2007 document. The only real alternative is to create the exact styles and colors in a TextMaker template and then use this template to create the new document.
While you cannot create the styles for all elements (like tables, etc.), but you can create the styles for most other elements (like the paragraph styles). The character styles are more or less the same in TextMaker and Word 2007.
I have tried to create such a template for TextMaker which has the similar styles of the default Word 2007 documents.
You can download this template from this link: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B95bNAog0FOgNVZhZ05kSEFoRlk/view?usp=sharing
This is an English language template. The template uses the default fonts used in Word 2007 - you may have to change the fonts if you do not have these installed on your system. For example, on modern Linux systems, the alternatives are available in the croscore fonts package. Also, the template uses the Letter page size.
You have to save this template in the templates directory. On Windows XP, this is C:\Documents and Settings\<UserName>\My Documents\SoftMaker\Templates 2016\English
To use this template, first open TextMaker, then on the main menu click File->New. Now, in the 'New' dialog box, under 'Template' select the new template and click OK. The new document is ready for editing.
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TextMaker is a very good alternative to Word 2007 and with the TextMaker template above, you can create documents in TextMaker that look just like they would if created in Word 2007.
You are amazing ty!!
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