Seven of the best free Microsoft Office 365 alternatives for Mac

Ditching Windows is actually quite simple.Just buy a Mac, spend a few days getting used to it, and never look back.But for Microsoft Office users who don't have a Microsoft 365 subscription, buying Office for the Mac again can be an expensive hassle.

If you work in a traditional office environment using Excel and Word, you may have to appease your colleagues.But if you're out of that world and still need to edit Office documents every now and then without buying a Microsoft 365 subscription, here are the best free Office and Microsoft Word alternatives for your Mac.

1.Google Suite

If you're looking to break out of the Microsoft world and find a free word processor for your Mac, your best bet is to join the Google Alliance.Google Docs, Sheet, and Slides are Mac and Windows counterparts, and three direct replacements for Microsoft Word, Excel, and PowerPoint—basically, free Office for the Mac!

There's no real replacement for Outlook other than Gmail, and you can get OneNote on the Mac for free.Google Suite is pretty good and integrates nicely with your Google account.You can open Excel files received via Gmail in Google Sheets, which is essentially a free version of Excel.

You can easily import Microsoft Office files to work on them, and then export them in Microsoft Office formats to pass them on to others.If you're using basic documents with standard fonts and formatting, you can get away with it; the other party will never find out that you're not using Microsoft Office.

In some ways, Google Docs is more powerful than Microsoft Word.It has a rich library of add-ons, beautiful templates, built-in advanced research tools, and Google search functionality.All of these amazing features essentially make Google Docs a free version of Word for the Mac.

In addition, Google also has the advantage of cloud computing.Collaborating on documents with multiple users at the same time is a real pleasure.While this is a small benefit, it can be a huge productivity boost.

The entire suite is free and includes 15GB of storage.The only problem is that none of these have real desktop apps, though you can work on documents offline in Chrome or Microsoft Edge by enabling the offline setting in Google Drive.

Visit: Google Docs | Google Sheets | Google Slides (free)

2. LibreOffice

LibreOffice is widely regarded as the best open source alternative to Microsoft's Office 365 suite.That means it's completely free and available on many platforms.For Mac users, it's by far the best Microsoft Office 365 One of the alternative software.

If you are used to the user interface of Microsoft Office (pre-Ribbon era), then you will be able to adapt to LibreOffice in no time.Unlike Google's apps, the LibreOffice suite comes with a feature-rich offline desktop application with all the professional features you'd expect.

To sweeten the deal, LibreOffice also recently added an online component.That way, you can sync files from Google Drive or OneDrive and edit them directly in LibreOffice (no collaboration features though).

LibreOffice also does a good job of formatting when importing Microsoft Office documents.Even complex Excel spreadsheets work fine when imported into LibreOffice Calc.

LibreOffice actually evolved from OpenOffice, which was once a de facto replacement for Microsoft Office.But OpenOffice hasn't had any meaningful updates recently, and its management is considering pulling out of the project.Therefore, we recommend you to stay away from OpenOffice.On the contrary, LibreOffice has performed very well recently.

Download: LibreOffice (free)

3. iWork Suite

The Mac comes with the iWork suite: Pages, Numbers, and Keynote.These are Apple's own alternatives to Word, Excel, and PowerPoint.For example, Pages is one of the best Word alternatives for Mac users.

Since these are Mac-centric applications, their user interfaces are quite different.Options are no longer front and center, but appear in a context menu on the side.And you don't have as many options as you do with Microsoft's Office 365 suite.Since all three apps are currently mature, all basic functionality is covered.

Once you get used to them, they're a joy to use (we can't necessarily say that about Microsoft Office 365).While customization options are limited, all available features are fairly well-rounded.

When you create something in Keynote, chances are you end up creating something beautiful. The same goes for Pages -- moving text, images, and diagrams around is a seamless experience that won't give you a headache.

The iWork suite allows you to import and export documents in Microsoft Office formats (although they are saved in iWork formats by default).As long as you don't use Mac-specific fonts, switching back and forth between Office documents shouldn't be a problem.

iWork also has online collaboration options, but frankly, they're far less reliable than Google's offerings.

Download: Pages | Numbers | Keynote (free)

4. Microsoft 365 Online

If nothing else, and you still need the free version of Office for Mac, you can visit Microsoft 365 website.Essentially, it lets you use limited features of Microsoft Office on your Mac for free.It's a web version of Microsoft's basic Office service that runs on any browser.

While features are limited, basic document editing, spreadsheet formulas, and presentation options are all included.You can use Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and OneNote for free.Just visit the link below and sign in with your Microsoft account.

Visit: Microsoft 365 Online (free)

5. WPS Office Suite

WPS Office is a visually beautiful and powerful Mac version Microsoft Office 365 alternative software.It includes Writer, Presentation and Spreadsheet, and the user interface is similar to Microsoft Office, which can shorten your learning curve. WPS Office supports multiple formats, including DOCX, HTML, XLSX, PPT, CSV, etc., and also supports multiple languages.

In addition to macOS, it is also available for major platforms such as Linux, Windows, iOS, and Android.You'll also find utilities for converting files, adding watermarks, extracting text from files, and more.If you don't know where to start, WPS Office also has a rich library of creative templates.

WPS Office is free, but with limited features and ads for everyone; however, if you want to remove the ads and unlock additional features like PDF editing, file format conversion, and cloud collaboration, you'll need to purchase a WPS Pro subscription, which costs three months is $9.99 and costs $17.99 annually.

Download: WPS Office (Free, subscription available)

6. Ditch PowerPoint for better online tools

PowerPoint is powerful, but also pretty old-school.If you want to stand out in your presentation, try some more modern online presentation tools:

1. Slides: It's very popular and makes it easy to create beautiful presentations.A free account lets you create and present documents online.However, to export, you'll need to upgrade to a paid account.

2. Prezi: While the service is primarily geared toward startups, Prezi offers visualization tools that PowerPoint can't match.

3. canva: Canva is an online photo editor, but it has a huge library of presentation templates.Plus, Canva gives you all the important tools to create custom presentations.

7. Try using Markdown

This idea is purely whimsical.If you've ditched Windows for the Mac platform, by now you've come to appreciate the simplicity of macOS.If you want to enjoy more simplicity when creating and editing plain text documents, then you should try Markdown.

Markdown is an HTML-like syntax, but much simpler.You won't get lost in dozens of menu options when writing with the Markdown app.All formatting is done via shortcodes.For example, to italicize a word, simply surround it with asterisks.

Create complex documents without taking your hands off the keyboard.In addition, Markdown can also be exported in a concise HTML format.

Access Microsoft Office 365 without paying

Buying the latest version of Microsoft Office can cost you a few hundred dollars (or a Microsoft 365 subscription).In most cases, the options listed above will suffice.

Google Docs is a great alternative to Word, and so is Google Sheets, which you can use instead of Excel.If you're looking for an offline alternative, LibreOffice should be more than adequate.

But sometimes, you may have to use Office for a specific task or for a limited time.In this case, you can probably buy a cheap Office license, or with a little research, you can get Word on the Mac for free.