It provides most of the standard desktop publishing features, such as master pages, column flow, and easy ways to place, move, and lock text boxes and images. If you want that kind of fine control over positioning and output, one alternative to look at is PagePlus Starter Edition, which is free. Microsoft Word has a lot of layout options, but it isn’t really a desktop publishing program. “When all you have is a hammer, every problem looks like your thumb,” or so the saying goes. When I tried it in, I saw some errors in the layout all of the text and images were present, though, and things were just a bit misaligned.) is available for Windows, Mac, and Linux/Unix systems, making it useful in cross-platform situations. (I have a test document containing complex formatting with every bell and whistle that Word offers. The interface is closer to pre-2003 Office, with standard menu bars instead of ribbons, and for the most part it can open Word 2007 documents.

This article focuses mainly on programs that offer a significantly different function set, interface, or purpose than Word, but we would be negligent not to mention the free, an open-source office suite (word processor, spreadsheet, presentation program, database, and more) that provides functionality roughly equivalent to that of Microsoft Office at a 100 percent price reduction. (For links to all of these downloads in one convenient list, see our “Microsoft Word Alternatives” collection.) Whether your main concern is price, complexity, specialized functionality, system footprint, or some combination of the above, you might have many reasons to look beyond Word.

Microsoft Word is ubiquitous: It’s the standard word processor in most places of business, and it often ends up installed on home PCs due to compatibility and familiarity.

Free equivalent to microsoft word