{"id":407,"date":"2021-12-25T02:31:44","date_gmt":"2021-12-25T02:31:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.budgethomepage.com\/blog\/?p=407"},"modified":"2022-01-04T18:35:27","modified_gmt":"2022-01-04T18:35:27","slug":"microsoft-office-alternative","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.budgethomepage.com\/blog\/?p=407","title":{"rendered":"Best Microsoft Office Alternative"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>For the past two years I&#8217;ve been using a Microsoft Office alternative that costs 70% less than a subscription to Microsoft 365. It all started after I was laid off from my tech job. The company I was with provided a free subscription to Microsoft Office for employees to use on their home computers. A few months after I was let go, Microsoft Office stopped working for me. I looked at getting a license to reactivate the software, but it was more money than I wanted to spend. I considered installing an old copy of Office 2000, but that would have made it difficult to open newer docx files. I needed something less expensive that would open files created with the latest version of Office without any formatting issues.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>After looking at several options, I finally decided to go with <a rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" href=\"https:\/\/www.softmaker.com\/en\/\" target=\"_blank\">SoftMaker<\/a> Office NX Home. SoftMaker is a software company located in N\u00fcrnberg, Germany. I wasn&#8217;t sure if I should trust a foreign company, but after installing and testing a trial version of their Office alternative, I decided to get a one-year subscription. For the price of $29.90, you get TextMaker (documents), PlanMaker (spreadsheets), BasicMaker (macros), and Presentations (slides). I didn&#8217;t need Outlook since all of my email is on web-based applications. For that price, you can use the software on 5 computers and 5 Android devices for home use. When it came time to renew my subscription, after the first year, they were offering a free copy of PaintShop Pro 2021. That made it well worth the renewal fee. I had been using PaintShop Pro 7, which does everything I need, but is now 20 years old.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Since the company is in Germany, there is a small transaction fee, but no sales tax. The software provides seamless compatibility with Microsoft Office. They also provide periodic service pack updates. I haven&#8217;t encountered any major problems with formatting. The only thing I did have trouble with was when placing images on a sheet of labels. I did manage to sort that out. I haven&#8217;t tried creating any complex spreadsheet macros. I used to be pretty handy with Excel macros and VBA. It is satisfying to create a macro that manipulates data on a spreadsheet. These days, I don&#8217;t have much need for those skills. Anyway, if you are looking for a good, affordable Office alternative, give SoftMaker Office a try.  <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>For the past two years I&#8217;ve been using a Microsoft Office alternative that costs 70% less than a subscription to Microsoft 365. It all started after I was laid off from my tech job. The company I was with provided a free subscription to Microsoft Office for employees to use<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[2],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.budgethomepage.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/407"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.budgethomepage.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.budgethomepage.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.budgethomepage.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.budgethomepage.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=407"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/www.budgethomepage.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/407\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":413,"href":"http:\/\/www.budgethomepage.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/407\/revisions\/413"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.budgethomepage.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=407"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.budgethomepage.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=407"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.budgethomepage.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=407"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}