Microsoft Office alternatives This article will give you some information on alternatives to Microsoft Office and where to find them. Neither students nor employees have the opportunity to install Microsoft Office on their personal computers at home. OpenOffice OpenOffice is an open source office suite available for many different operating systems including Solaris, Linux, Microsoft Windows, IRIX and Mac OS X. Available in both versions of Norwegian and in English, it is a popular choice being so compatible with Microsoft Office. The package can be downloaded here. Overview The program Writer is what resembles Microsoft Word the most. You can make documents, reports, booklets and more. Like Word, it is easy to use with a WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) view and it is possible to insert tables, images. Writer also supports HTML-editing. Calc is Open Office's answer to Microsoft's Excel. A spreadsheet program with many functions for pretty much anything you need. For presentations, Open Office has the program called Impress which works pretty much in the same way as Microsoft PowerPoint. Draw is a program for drawing and such, e.g. simple diagrams, dynamic 3D illustrations and special effects. Manuals In English.