Open Office

Open Office is free office software that is developed and maintained by the organization OpenOffice.ORG. The Open Office suite of tools–Writer, Calc, Impress, and Draw– offers comparable capabilities to Microsoft Office’s suite of tools–Word, Excel, and PowerPoint. Open office may be located at http://www.openoffice.org/. The features are:

Writer—word processing program Users have ranked it as being as good as Word. The program has most of the same features as Microsoft Word. Some unique features include a number of backgrounds, a PDF save feature, mathematical formulas and web formatting.
Calc—spreadsheet program Users have ranked it as highly as Excel. It includes a range of functions and has charting options similar to Excel.
Impress—presentation program Users rank PowerPoint as a better program. It provides basic presentation tools. Adding text boxes is difficult.
Base—Database program Has a database creation wizard as well as a query and report wizard. You need to be familiar with database construction to easily use this feature
Math—Equation programs This unique application allows you to construct math equations that may be used in the word processors, the spreadsheet applications and the presentation program.
Draw—Vector graphic editor This is a basic drawing program. Its closest equivalent is Microsoft Paint, which comes with Windows. It lacks a lot of bells and whistles.
Help – Each of the programs has built in help information. This is open source software so formal help is not provided.