Good Ms Office Alternative? Or Reputable, Cheaper Reseller Of Office?

Can anyone recommend a good, inexpensive alternative to Microsoft Office? I’m not knocked out by Apache OpenOffice (although it is free).

If not, does anyone know of a reputable 3rd-party seller (who won’t rip me off, engage in any dirty tricks, or give lousy service) where I can get Office Home & Student 2021 for less than the $149 Microsoft charges? (I know, it’s not a lot of money, but I’ve got a lot of other expenses, so why pay any more than I have to?) And no, I don’t want Microsoft 365 (which has deleted some of my files a few times, not just on their servers, but on my computers too), nor do I want Microsoft Office Online (which although it’s also free, I’m afraid may delete some of my files like Microsoft 365 did).

Thanks for any help.

 

I love WPS (aka Kingsoft) Office - fast, efficient and very faithful in rendering MS Office formats! If, however, you are like me and wish to stick to just the traditional office suite (spreadsheet, word processor, and presentation) - and permanently gut out any and all "cloud account/collaboration" stuff - let me know and I'll be glad to show you how.

But if you prefer MS Office but deeply discounted - MakeUseOf offers discounts here. I should mention that while MUO is a reputable website, I've never actually dealt with them (I prefer WPS, as stated above). Hopefully an actual purchaser/user will chime in.

 

I bought Office Professional 2021 for £29.99 from Ghacks a short time ago. No issues at all so I got a second copy for my laptop.

 

Kingsoft WPS Office looks good. It's free (with ads) and "provides a complete Microsoft Office compatibility". I AM only interested in the spreadsheet and the word processor, and yes, I WOULD like to permanently get rid of any and all "cloud account/collaboration" stuff – I don't need any more data disappearing like what happened with OneDrive – so if you can show me how to get rid of any cloud stuff, I'd really appreciate it.

One question, though: what are the free version's limitations on "PDF to Word", "PDF split" and "PDF merge" mentioned by Major Geeks?

 

1. Download app from MajorGeeks
2. Install as normal. Upon completion...
3. Go to "Task Manager" and close the three WPS processes
4. Now, open up Windows Explorer and go to the app directory: \WPS Office\11.2.0.11191\office6
5. Delete these three executables: wpscenter.exe, wpscloudlaunch.exe and wpscloudsvr.exe

That's it - no more cloud stuff automatically launching themselves.

Finally, if you are like me, then maybe you also hate the grey and white default color scheme. Within the app, look for and click the "WPS Office" tab (top left) and then look for and click a "tee shirt" icon along the top right area. Here you have a choice of different color schemes to choose from. When working, you can open up word, spreadsheet, powerpoint as tabs all within the same 'window'. Hope you like WPS Office. I've been using it for years now, without issues.

 

I installed WPS Office, and it runs, but:

1. The only folder named "office6" on my computer is

C:\Users\ < my Windows user account name > \OneDrive\Documents\KingsoftData\office6, and

2. None of the three executables wpscenter.exe, wpscloudlaunch.exe or wpscloudsvr.exe are ANYWHERE on my computer.

I don't know what to tell you, but that's how it is.

 

You need to look in the Program folder where you installed WPS Office (e.g. C:\Program Files (x86)\...) - not your documents folder. How are you liking WPS Office?

 

Using the taskbar's search box, I had searched for wpscenter.exe, wpscloudlaunch.exe and wpscloudsvr.exe, both as apps and as documents, and found them nowhere on my computer. And there was no reference to either Kingsoft or WPS Office under either C:\Program Files (x86) or C:\Program Files.

However, I just finally found all three executables under:

C:\Users\ < my user account name > \AppData\Local\Kingsoft\WPS Office\11.2.0.11191\office6

After doublechecking that no WPS Office or WPS PDF process was shown running in Task Manager – which is what I expected, since I hadn't launched either one of them – I just deleted all three of those EXEs.

Oddly enough, although none of these three were shown under Task Manager's Processes, Startup or Services tabs, wpscenter.exe and wpscloudsvr.exe had to be terminated under Task Manager's Details tab in order to delete those two from WPS Office\11.2.0.11191\office6.

Now that I feel I'm (quite probably) safe from files disappearing into the cloud, never to be seen again, I'll dummy up some appropriate test files and play around with them in WPS Office and WPS PDF. I'll let you know what I think.

Thanks for the help!