Accept it that Office 365 / 2013 are not that cost effective, and if possible all the features in office are pretty much easy to work with. Today in this post we have collected best free alternative to Microsoft Office 2013 and we explain how to get the same tools in the older version of Office.
Shelling out $100+ for a year is a bit too much for the best features of Office, all of these features have plenty of alternatives (to office 2013).
Let us know which on of these have you used before and liked the most.
Outlook
Add weather information to OutIook’s calendar
What’s the new tool? Local weather information is now shown above the calendar In Outlook 2013
How can I get it for free? Outlook 2013 has been redesigned to look more like Outlook com (previously called Hotmail) As a result many of its new features are already available for free in the webmail service. If you don’t have an account sign up at Outlook.com.
You can add weather to the calendar in Outlook.com by choosing Options from the top left hand menu in Calendar. Tick Show weather on the calendar and click Save. You can switch between Celsius and Fahrenheit.
See Facebook updates In your Outlook inbox
What’s the new tool? In Outlook 2013, you can now see social updates from Facebook LinkedIn and other connected accounts when you click emails and Contact cards.
How can I get It for free? To connect social accounts to your Outlook.com click your photo in the top-right corner select ‘Edit profile’ then click Connect You can connect your Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Flickr and Google accounts If you d rather connect social accounts with Outlook 2003 2007 or 2010 download Microsoft s Outlook Social Connector. Facebook is shown as the default but you can also connect to LinkedIn Windows Live Messenger Viadeo and Xing by clicking View social network providers online A People pane will appear at the bottom of the screen showing previous conversations Facebook status updates shared calendar invites and more.
Add Quick Actions to your message list
What’s the new tool? Quick Actions have been added to Outlook 2013 These are task buttons such as Delete and Move that appear when you hover your mouse over an email in the message list.
How can I get it for free? In earlier versions of Outlook, you can access email tasks by right-clicking a message and choosing an action from the context menu Alternatively in Outlook com you can add and customise Instant Actions by clicking the cog icon and going to More email settings then Instant actions Tick Show Instant actions to turn them on then click Add actions and choose which tasks you want to appear.
Preview emails in the message list
What’s the new tool? In Outlook 2013, a one-line preview of each email is shown by default in the message list.
How can I get It for free? Open Outlook 2003 2007 or 2010 to View and choose AutoPreview
Word
Drop photos into Word documents
What’s the new tool? Microsoft has added features to Word 2013 that make it more like a desktop publisher than a word processor. For example, the new Live Layout tool makes it easier to place photos into Word documents because copy is automatically wrapped around images, and there are green guidelines to help you drop the photo in the correct place You can also annotate documents with freehand text and drawings.
How can I get it for free? Serif’s PagePlus Starter Edition is a brilliant free desktop-publishing tool that lets you import and edit Word documents, and create new publications. Place multiple photos into the text and the copy flows around it automatically. As you move the image, a red grid helps you position it accurately. The Pencil tool lets you add annotations, and create shapes and lines.
Edit PDFs
What’s the new tool? You can now import and edit PDF files in Word 2013. Previously, you could only save documents as PDFs.
How can I get it for free? CutePDF Editor and PDFescape are free online PDF-editing tools. CutePDF Editor lets you extract, rotate, delete and crop pages. It also lets you add Headers and Footers, edit the document properties, and add passwords to PDF files.
PDFescape lets you make cosmetic changes, such as removing and adding text and pictures, inserting links, highlighting text, adding sticky notes and more.
Bookmark pages within Word documents
What’s the new tool? When you open a document in Word 2013, it bookmarks the page you were last reading, so you can pick up where you left off the next time you open it. Word 2013 also opens documents in Read Mode by default.
How can I get it for free? Both tools are available in earlier versions of Word. To switch to Read Mode in Word 2007 onwards, go to View and choose Full Screen Reading. To add a bookmark, place your cursor in the document where you want the bookmark to start. Goto Insert, Bookmark, give the bookmark a name and choose Location, then click Add. Next time you open the document, go to Insert, Bookmark, and choose Go To.
Add online photos and videos to documents
What’s the new tool? Word 2013 lets you add online photos and videos directly from Bing image search, YouTube, Flickr and Facebook, via the Insert menu. The videos can be embedded and played from within the documents, too.
You can also upload your Word document straight to WordPress and Blogger blogs.
How can I get it for free? There’s no like-for-like free alternative, but there are similar options already built into earlier versions of Word.
For example, to add an online picture in Word 2007 and 2010, go to Insert, Picture and in the ‘File name’ box, paste the URL of the online photo you want to add. It only supports image formats, such as JPG and PNG, so you can’t insert Facebook photos using this method.
To add videos, go to Insert, Object and choose ‘Create from File’. You can either click Browse to find a video file on your hard drive or paste a video URL.
To insert interactive, playable videos into your documents, upgrade to Serif’s PagePlus X6 from the Starter Edition for $66. This is $23 cheaper than buying Word 2013 separately.
You can’t upload directly to blogs in earlier versions of Word, but you can embed documents in blogs via skydive. Upload a document to your SkyDrive account, right-click the file and choose Embed. An HTML code will be generated. This works for Excel and PowerPoint files, too.
OneNote
Sync notes across devices and clip web pages
What’s the new tool? OneNote is Microsoft’s digital note~taking program. It can be used for to-do lists, sketches and doodles, and you can import documents, tables, audio and videos. The 2013 version lets you sync files across PCs and devices, and clip and save information from the web using its Send To OneNote tool. OneNote is available on Windows XP, Vista, 7 and 8, Android, iOS, Windows Phone and Symbian.
How can I get it for free? Evernote.com has many of the same features of OneNote, but for free. It’s also available on more platforms: Windows XP, Vista, 7 and 8, Mac OS X, Android, iOS, Windows Phone, BlackBerry and Web OS.
Evernote lets you add to-do lists, and typed and ‘handwritten’ notes; import files; record and add audio notes; save videos; clip web pages, and more.
When you download and sign into the Evernote Desktop and mobile apps, all your files and notes are automatically synced and can be downloaded to your local hard drive.
To get advanced note-taking options, you can download Evernote add-ons including the Web Clipper for Chrome, Firefox and Safari, which makes it easy to clip online pages to Evernote straight from your browser.
The Skitch app for Windows, Mac, Android and iOS, has advanced sketching and annotation tools, while Evernote Food stores recipes, cooking tips and restaurant reviews. You can get more add-ons from Evernote download.
Excel
Filter charts and add slicers
What’s the new tool? Excel 2013 makes it easier to filter data in tables and charts, because the options appear automatically when you select cells or create a chart. These options aren’t new, however, and you can do the same tasks, albeit in a more roundabout way, in Office 2007 and 2010.
Slicers, which were first introduced in Office 2010, have been made more prominent in Excel 2013. They make it easier to colour-code data within a table, and work like an extra filter.
How can I get it for free? The simplest way of adding filters to your tables is by going to Data, Filter. For more advanced filtering options, or if you want to filter data in a chart, create a PivotTable. To do this, select a cell in your worksheet and go to Insert, PivotTable. Create your table by selecting Row and Column headers, Values and Report Filters. You can then filter the information using the arrows.
From the PivotTable Tools menu, go to Options and click Pivot Chart. Choose a type and your data will be turned into a graph.
Click the chart to get the filter options. You can now add and remove parts of the chart to see different variables. Learn more about PivotTables.
To add slicers to a PivotTable, go to Insert and choose Slicer. ln the Existing Connections box, click Show and choose how you want the slicers to appear. You can read more information about slicers
Powerpoint
Edit slides live and stream your presentation online
What’s the new tool? The Presenter View in PowerPoint 2013 lets you view your speaker notes and annotate slides on your tablet, for example, while presenting the slides on another screen.
PowerPoint 2013 also has a feature called Present Online, which streams your presentation over the web to any PC with the link.
How can I get it for free? Office 2007 and 2010 already have Presenter View: you just need to enable it by going to the Slide Show menu and ticking Use Presenter View. It will check for additional monitors and connected screens. You can then choose which monitor is used for the presentation and which is used for your speaker notes.
Alternatively, if you want to present an online presentation, sign up to Prezi.com. The free version lets you create collaborative online presentations that can be shared with others, or you can stream presentations in real-time by clicking Present Online from the editing screen. You can also save presentations, and download them for offline use.
If you upgrade to a Pro account for $59 a year, you can also edit presentations offline, and use the iPhone, iPad and Desktop apps.