Office has become on its own merits the best suite of office applications And looking for alternatives is not a simple task, as long as our needs are not excessively complex, since then we can forget to look for other applications, and I say this with knowledge of the facts.
However, for home users, users who occasionally create a Word document, spreadsheet, or presentation, we have a large number of alternatives. In this article, we are going to focus on offering you the best alternatives to Excel, completely free alternatives.
Office
When I talk about Office, I'm not talking about Microsoft Office or Microsft 365I'm talking about a small application where you can find reduced versions of Office, Word and PowerPoint. This application, which is also available for mobile devices, allows us to create simple text documents without having to pay for the license or use the subscription system offered by Microsoft.
Office is the ideal solution for those users who they don't have many needs when creating spreadsheets. The application is available for download in the Microsoft Store through this link. We cannot only download the reduced version of Excel, but we have to install the entire set of applications, a set that also gives us access to OneDrive, Skype, the calendar ...
Excel through a browser
Microsoft also allows us to use the Office suite of applications through our browser, specifically through our Outlook account, Hotmail ... The web version available through our Microsoft account, It offers us the same functions and limitations that we can find in the Office application that I mentioned in the previous paragraph.
If you do not want to install this application on your computer, because the use you are going to give it is very sporadic, you can use Office via the web accessing your email account. The web version allows us to access the files we have stored on our hard drive, not only those available through OneDrive.
Google Spreadsheets
Google puts at our disposal, through Google Drive, three interesting alternatives to Word, Excel and PowerPoint, baptized in a very unoriginal way as Text Documents, Spreadsheets and Presentations. All these apps that work only through a browser from the Google Drive website, they are available completely free of charge.
El number of options available is very smallHowever, if we have some interesting functions such as the possibility of create pivot tables, drop down lists… The only one that offers us this service is that, which is a service and not an application that we can download to work without an internet connection.
The suite of services for creating Google documents, too is available for mobile devices (iOS and Android). If your needs are basic, to make four simple formulas and little else, Google Sheets is one of the best solutions available in the market available for all desktop and mobile platforms.
Numbers (Mac)
Although it is true that if we talk about applications for Windows, the number is very high, when looking for alternatives, we also have to look within Apple's macOS ecosystem, since, like Microsoft, Apple offers us a set of free applications within the iWork package.
Numbers is the completely free alternative that Apple makes available to all users who have any of its devices. This application is also available for mobile devices, so we can make the same tables and use the same functions from our smartphone / tablet or from our Mac.
The number of options that Numbers offers us is not as high as that offered by Excel, however, with each new update, Apple is introducing new functions that little by little, they have turned this application into a very valid alternative for Excel within the Mac ecosystem.
LibreOffice Calc
The set of applications that we have at our disposal through LibreOffice is made up of Writer, Calc, Impress, Draw, Math ... Calc is the free alternative offered by LibreOffice, a suite of completely free open source applications that is available for both Windows and macOS and Linux. Regarding compatibility, LibreOffice Calc is perfectly compatible with both .xls and .xlsx files.
The number of functions that we have at our disposal through LibreOffice is quite high and little has to envy Excel, at least if we do not intend to use formulas that are beyond the reach of most humans. The design of this application is very similar to what we could find a few years ago in Excel, with an outdated interface for the current era that does not detract from its functionality.
While it is true that LibreOffice is available for your download completely free, not so in the version for mobile devicesSince there are such applications and those that do exist, they are not free.
OpenOffice Calc
OpenOffice and LibreOffice initially they were born from the same project, but due to differences in the project, they separated their paths following the same open source philosophy. The applications that OpenOffice offers us are practically the same that we can find in LibreOffice, as well as the number of functions available.
The entire set of applications that are part of OpenOffice is available for download free of charge through this link. We cannot only download Calc, but we have to download the entire set of applications, yes or yes.
Gnumeric
Gnumeric is an application to create spreadsheets of Linux compatible open source. Gnumeric is compatible with all spreadsheet formats on the market, including support for Lotus 1-2-3. It uses the XLM format so we can export the documents created to HTML or text separated by commas.
If you like open source software but don't want to install all the applications that are part of OpenOffice or LibreOffice, Gnumeric is one excellent alternative if you use the GNOME desktop environment on Linux, Unix or GNU and derivatives. Although a version for Windows was released a few years ago, it was abandoned shortly after, so it is only available for the GNOME environment.