LibreOffice The Document Foundation LibreOffice v4.3 for PC by Author’s Name

LibreOffice has a great reputation at universities, and it came highly recommended by a Professor friend (someone regarded as the department’s computer guru since we all had to do our work on mainframes and minicomputers and communicate via ARPAnet in the late 70s). It is a highly evolved and capable full suite of programs with customization options (and the current standard bearer for OpenOffice development). I used this constantly for over 5 months, after using Microsoft Office Pro 2003 and its earlier 97 version heavily for over 15 years. LibreOffice is an excellent product, totally free, and a good backup program to have, even if you use MS Office every day. I got it because I bought a small Windows convertible tablet … which included a “free” MS Office 365 (which will actually cost you $100/year after your one-year trial, which would add up fast, and eventually cost me more than this tablet system), but I wanted access to all my old Office 2003 files on my super-portable platform. It did that well for most everything I tried.
However, if you have a highly customized version of Word, you may not find the options sufficient to mimic they way you want to tweak the program to work. For instance, if you have chosen options (saved in a file called Normal.dot), use autocorrect, or other customizations that make your life easier if you write a lot, you will not find the same flexibility and capability here. I tried, you DO have many customization options (but less extensive than MS Office) … so I eventually bought a USB external CD/DVD and installed my old MS Office 2003 because LibreOffice was forgetting / losing these changes, or things like the keyboard customization options were limited, or did not work as well.. This criticism applies mostly to power users who have high expectations because they use it intensively.
However, I still recommend LibreOffice for new users, or as a backup, and (even with my old version of MS Office installed), I still use it if something from the latest version does not open correctly in my older version of MS Office. It is hard to knock a free product, and a good one. I would choose this over MS Office if I were a new user or student on a very limited budget, since you can get updates for free and no issues with the copy protection issues which can put you out of commission even on your fully-legal copy. So I have both suites installed, and keep an extra copy of LibreOffice on a USB drive in case I need a MS Office work-alike while traveling without a computer. (I cannot do that easily with the MS product.) For that reason, I gave this an extra star, even if I have reverted back to the MS product for most serious work. Everyone should have this program, at least as a backup.
So if you are spoiled, like me, I suggest you install an old, fully-legal copy of MS Office if you own one, but you can download LibreOffice for the next best thing. But if you are a pro at MS Office, you may miss many of your favorite features, and be frustrated when you have to relearn a system which does have quite a few differences.

I couldn’t use it.

I got this intending to replace Microsoft because their yearly subscriptions combined with their endless updates has rendered their software impractical; too unstable; extremely faulty; and the many backdoors they leave in their software (according to my former computer programming instructor) combined with their antivirus software, for hackers and thieves to exploit makes their software laughable at best. 9in my personal opinion) This is especially true when you consider Microsoft operating computers used to provide disks with the computers when you bought them so crashed computers or faulty software could be reloaded from these disks, with no need for any yearly subscriptions. The updates serve only to add new features to you programming while the updates render the computers more and more unstable, until finally, they quit working all to gather, forcing you to buy yet another computer and begin all over again with another yearly subscription once the most recent one ends. By then the Hackers, thieves, and advertisers have accessed these computers so much, it is little wander when they crash again and the now cycle-by-design cycle begins all over again. And then, when you get so old you no longer have the finances to pay the yearly subscriptions; to keep replacing computers; or to pay the “Cloud” storage services these computers end up expensive decorative paperweights and the online access every business and government offices demand you use at your own expense stop being accessible and you lose all connectivity. My plan was to gradually replace all Microsoft Software with other products where I could perform my own upkeep from software I owned, but Microsoft has already upgraded my Government VA Disability Computer to death. So now, through no fault of the company, this software is useless.

Works great and easy to use. no problems.