# Need simple, basic office program



## SFM in KY (May 11, 2002)

Need a very basic, simple office program for letters, etc. No bells and whistles. I had a Windows office program for years I never had a problem with.

Got a new computer, new system and the office program is Open Office. I hate it, find it difficult to work with, way more than I need.

Suggestions for an easy, basic office type program, hopefully one that can be downloaded from the Internet and is not expensive?


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## arabian knight (Dec 19, 2005)

If that is all you are doing why not just use "Notepad" A Windows program already there.


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## backwoodsman7 (Mar 22, 2007)

You might take a look at AbiWord. It's a good deal simpler than OpenOffice.
http://www.abisource.com


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## mekasmom (Jan 19, 2010)

Open office. It is free and works as well as MS Word.


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## mekasmom (Jan 19, 2010)

http://download.openoffice.org/

That's the link for the free download. It's a great program.


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## Kari (Mar 24, 2008)

mekasmom said:


> Open office. It is free and works as well as MS Word.



OP has already stated a dislike for OO. 

I second Abiword. It is good program with just enough features and without a steep learning curve.

Also the OP may wish to look into using Google Docs. Very easy to use and accessible from any where there is a internet connection. 

Another web based option is Zoho which is just as good as (if not better in some aspects) then Google Docs.


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## millipede (May 28, 2006)

I'll third the Abiword... 
It's been a while since I've looked into word/document programs but the last time I did, it had high ratings and I've always liked it.
I usually go to cnet and do a search... refine it by FREE and then organize by editors rating. Then I look at the highest rated programs first.

I've used open office as well and like it... but I can understand wanting a simpler program.


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## wogglebug (May 22, 2004)

MS-Works was popular and simple to use too, but it had built-in limitations, and eventually they dropped the product rather than upgrade it. I'll admit that Office-98 was more to my taste than anything since. OpenOffice is no more complicated than MS-Office though. Both have basically been improved until they're so complicated they're nearly unusable.

AbiWord is a decent simple word-processing program, but it isn't an office suite with spreadsheet and database.


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## Kung (Jan 19, 2004)

If you just want a WORD replacement, there're tons of them: Abiword, FluentNotepad, Atlantis, etc.

If you want a full replacement, there's ThinkFree, IBM Lotus Symphony, Google Docs, etc.


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## SFM in KY (May 11, 2002)

Will start with the Notepad option and see what happens. What I use an 'office' program for is for letters (which don't need to be saved) and for contracts for selling horses, etc., which do need to be saved.

I have several handicaps with any kind of computer program, first of which is the fact that I'm older, technological incompetent (dial telephones and electric typewriters were, at one time, the height of my technical accomplishments) and I have vision impairment which makes reading on a computer screen for very long somewhere between difficult and impossible.

If I find I need something more than "Notepad" it sounds like the Abiword might be the next thing for me to try.

Thanks ...


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## Belfrybat (Feb 21, 2003)

SFM in KY said:


> Will start with the Notepad option and see what happens. What I use an 'office' program for is for letters (which don't need to be saved) and for contracts for selling horses, etc., which do need to be saved.
> 
> I have several handicaps with any kind of computer program, first of which is the fact that I'm older, technological incompetent (dial telephones and electric typewriters were, at one time, the height of my technical accomplishments) and I have vision impairment which makes reading on a computer screen for very long somewhere between difficult and impossible.
> 
> ...


Notepad does not allow any formatting, so won't work for contracts. Have you tried wordpad which also can be found in the accessories section of your computer? It allows formatting but is simpler than a full word processor. I use it sometimes if I'm in a hurry. One disadvantage is it won't automatically number pages, but other than that will work just fine for smaller simpler documents.


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## Kung (Jan 19, 2004)

The other thing you might try, SFM, is Wordpad. It's already loaded on Windows, I believe.

Edit: BB beat me to it.


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## SFM in KY (May 11, 2002)

I'll keep Wordpad in mind as well. I don't usually use "formatting" with my contracts ... just basic paragraphing, as I do in letters. In fact that's one of the things about OpenOffice that was more or less the final straw ... it kept 'auto formatting' on something and I couldn't read long enough to find out how to turn the blasted thing off. 

Everything I do now is very basic ... paragraphs, which I don't indent ... and I can type the address block in if I want it there ... and I don't have anything that is long enough to require automatic page numbering or word counts.


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