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- Compatible with Word 97 through Word 2003 for Windows and Word 98 through Word 2004 for Mac. Rich Text Format (.rtf) Exports document content and formatting to a format that other applications, including compatible Microsoft programs, can read and interpret. Plain Text (.txt) Exports document content to a text file and saves text without formatting.
- The word processor itself has a clear and friendly interface, managed via a Word-style tabbed menu along the top of the screen—it feels more like a desktop program than Drive does.
- Openoffice.org Word Processor for Mac is one monster software you should have in your computer already. In my humble opinion, I’ll like to affirm that it is the best free Word Processor for Mac. You can’t have a complete list of top 5 best Word Processors for Mac without mentioning openoffice.org Word Processor, let alone a top 11 list.
- Word for Mac 2016, however, is different. It takes many of the best features of the Windows version, but it's very much a modern Mac app.
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Some of us are old enough to recall life before word processors. (It wasn’t that long ago.) Consider this sentence:
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How did we survive in the days before every last one of us had access to word processors and computers on our respective desks?
That’s not a great sentence — it’s kind of wordy and repetitious. The following sentence is much more concise:
It’s hard to imagine how any of us got along without word processors.
The purpose of this mini-editing exercise is to illustrate the splendor of word processing. Had you produced these sentences on a typewriter instead of a computer, changing even a few words would hardly seem worth it. You would have to use correction fluid to erase your previous comments and type over them. If things got really messy, or if you wanted to take your writing in a different direction, you would end up yanking the sheet of paper from the typewriter in disgust and begin pecking away anew on a blank page.
Word processing lets you substitute words at will, move entire blocks of text around with panache, and apply different fonts and typefaces to the characters. You won’t even take a productivity hit swapping typewriter ribbons in the middle of a project.
Before running out to buy Microsoft Word (or another industrial-strength and expensive) word processing program for your Mac, remember that Apple includes a respectable word processor with OS X. The program is TextEdit, and it call s the Applications folder home.
The first order of business when using TextEdit (or pretty much any word processor) is to create a new document. There’s really not much to it. It’s about as easy as opening the program itself. The moment you do so, a window with a large blank area on which to type appears.
Have a look around the window. At the top, you see Untitled because no one at Apple is presumptuous enough to come up with a name for your yet-to-be-produced manuscript.
Notice the blinking vertical line at the upper-left edge of the screen, just below the ruler. That line, called the insertion point, might as well be tapping out Morse code for “start typing here.”
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Indeed, you have come to the most challenging point in the entire word processing experience, and it has nothing to do with technology. The burden is on you to produce clever, witty, and inventive prose, lest all that blank space go to waste.
Okay, got it? At the blinking insertion point, type with abandon. Type something original like this:
It was a dark and stormy night
If you typed too quickly, you may have accidentally produced this:
It was a drk and stormy nihgt
Fortunately, your amiable word processor has your best interests at heart. See the dotted red line below drk and nihgt? That’s TextEdit’s not-so-subtle way of flagging a likely typo. (This presumes that you’ve left the default Check Spelling as You Type activated in TextEdit Preferences.)
You can address these snafus in several ways. You can use the computer’s Delete key to wipe out all the letters to the left of the insertion point. (Delete functions like the backspace key on the Smith Coronayou put out to pasture years ago.) After the misspelled word has been quietly sent to Siberia, you can type over the space more carefully. All traces of your sloppiness disappear.
Delete is a wonderfully handy key. You can use it to eliminate a single word such as nihgt. But in this little case study, you have to repair drk too. And using Delete to erase drk means sacrificing and and stormy as well. That’s a bit of overkill.
Use one of the following options instead:
- Use the left-facing arrow key (found on the lower-right side of the keyboard) to move the insertion point to the spot just to the right of the word you want to deep-six. No characters are eliminated when you move the insertion point that way. Only when the insertion point is where it ought to be do you again hire your reliable keyboard hit-man, Delete.
- Eschew the keyboard and click with the mouse to reach this same spot to the right of the misspelled word. Then press Delete.
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Now try this helpful remedy. Right-click anywhere on the misspelled word. A list appears with suggestions. Single-click the correct word and, voilà, TextEdit instantly replaces the mistake. Be careful in this example not to choose dork.
Microsoft's titan of a word processor is used almost everywhere by almost everyone, but what if you don't want to spend seven bucks a month? Here are our favorite alternatives to Word. They're all free, they're all capable of working with the ubiquitous .docx format, and they all offer some very useful features on top as well.
Microsoft does offer a stripped-down online version of Word free of charge with your OneDrive account, so if you're committed to Office that should be your first stop. If you're looking outside the blue box, though, here are five alternatives worth your time:
1. LibreOffice (Windows, Mac OS X, Linux)
If you're looking for a solid, dependable desktop tool in the mold of Word then LibreOffice is one of your best bets. Its Writer component is a more-than-capable replacement for Microsoft's program despite a slightly old-fashioned appearance, and it comes with all of the features you're going to need such as auto-save, change tracking and a commenting. Word users will feel at home right away, particularly if they're familiar with older versions of the Microsoft product.
The look of the software is fresh and clean, and the quick access toolbars make editing and formatting straightforward. Importing and exporting Word documents works fine—though it's not perfect all of the time—and there's also the option to export your documents as PDFs. All of the usual word processor mainstays, from spelling and grammar checks to header and footer support, can be found in LibreOffice.
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There are some basic wizards you can play around with to create standard letters, agendas and so on, and the autocomplete feature is something a lot of users will find helpful. More complicated document layouts are handled with aplomb, or at least as well as they're handled in Word, while the only significant feature you might miss is the format painter functionality that's built into Microsoft Office.
LibreOffice split from OpenOffice four years ago, with the latter suite of products eventually taken over by the Apache Software Foundation. OpenOffice has got plenty going for it too, and is very similar in look and feel to LibreOffice thanks to their shared history; give OpenOffice Writer a whirl if LibreOffice doesn't grab you. A lot of the differences between the two packages are minor.
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2. Google Drive (Web)
Google Drive/Docs is improving all the time, and Microsoft is feeling the heat, forced into releasing its own free-to-use Web-based suite of products. But Google's effort feels more intuitive and comfortable on the Web than Microsoft's app, perhaps as it's been built from the ground up as an online tool rather than an adaptation of existing software. Now that QuickOffice has been merged with Google Docs, opening and editing Word files is more seamless than ever before, and you shouldn't run into problems working with contacts who are using Word.
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There are all the usual benefits of using a cloud app as well: access to your files from anywhere, no need to save your documents, and the ability to collaborate on work with other people in real-time. It's more lightweight in terms of features than the desktop edition of Word, so don't expect to be able to pull off advanced layouts or mail merges using the online app.
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That lightweight approach has its advantages though: Drive's word processor is quick and simple to use, and some of its best features—such as the option to research topics on the Web in a separate sidebar—leave Microsoft's word processor feeling a bit out of date. For those who've grown up on the Web, Google's software feels much more natural, but power Word users will bump up against limitations.
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3. AbiWord (Windows, Linux)
One of the very few word processors you can get hold of without an attached office suite, AbiWord might look like it was last updated in 2004 but it's got everything you're going to need from a desktop word processor. It recently added an online component called AbiCollab to make it easier to store documents on the Web and collaborate with other users.
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AbiWord's list of features reads like a checklist for the definitive word processor program: spelling and grammar checking, headers and footers, table and column support, templates, footnotes and so on. All of the standard character and paragraph formatting options are here too so you can get your documents looking the way you want them too.
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The application itself is compact and lightweight—worth considering on older, slower systems—and there are a pile of plug-ins available on the Web to enhance the software even further (by adding in auto-translation capabilities, for example). The ability to add annotations is one of the newer features added to the AbiWord code.
If you're after a capable and free word processor but don't want the hassle of a bundled office suite then AbiWord is ideal. It's perhaps not as slick and modern-looking as some of the other options, but it gets the job done with the minimum of fuss.
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4. Zoho Docs (Web)
Zoho Docs may not be as well known as Google's online office suite, but it's actually far more comprehensive in some areas. As well as the word processor, you get finance, HR, and customer support tools, making it an all-in-one business solution you can run through a browser. Personal users are welcome too, and get 5GB of storage space for free.
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The word processor itself has a clear and friendly interface, managed via a Word-style tabbed menu along the top of the screen—it feels more like a desktop program than Drive does. Unfortunately it doesn't have the extensive pile of Google Web Fonts offered by its competitor, but there's an adequate selection that will meet most people's needs.
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You can import and export documents saved in the .docx format, while collaborating on documents and reviewing changes is intuitive and painless. If mail merge is an important feature for you then Zoho Docs can handle that too. Images, tables, symbols, shapes, links, YouTube clips and document metadata can all be neatly dropped into your text as required.
The integration with other Google products and its polished mobile apps make Google Drive a convenient choice for online word processing, but Zoho Docs has plenty to offer, particularly if you're running a small business and want access to a full suite of complementary tools. There's also a desktop sync tool available to install on Mac or Windows for getting your files into the cloud more easily.
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Alternative for Notepad++ on Mac Alternative. It is the only one that has built in FTP and seamless like Notepad++. It is not as good as Notepad++ nor is ANY mac OS X software I’ve tested, but it is close. Posted Reply Quote. Alternatives to Notepad++ for Windows, Mac, Linux, BSD, Web and more. Filter by license to discover only free or Open Source alternatives. This list contains a total of 25+ apps similar to Notepad++. Notepad++ is a free source code editor and Notepad replacement that supports several languages. Program like notepad++ for mac.
5. Scribus (Windows, Mac OS X, Linux)
Scribus is officially a desktop publishing package but we're including it here as a free option for those who need a Word replacement for more advanced layouts: think posters, flyers, newsletters and the like. It does a decent job of packing in a lot of features without being too overwhelming, though it might take you some time to adapt from the standard Word workflow.
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Once you get into the DTP mindset—as in, you need to create a text box before you start doing any typing—the strengths of Scribus soon become apparent. The application has no problems with tables, oddly shaped selection boxes and flowing text around objects, but you won't get some of the standard word processor features like the ability to create outlines and a table of contents.
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As we've said, this is a Word alternative specifically for those looking to get creative with their layouts. You can use it as a standard word processor but you'll need to launch the Story Editor module to apply most of your formatting and paragraph style effects. If you don't mind this way of working then Scribus has a lot to offer wordsmiths.
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Scribus was first released more than 10 years ago, so there's a wealth of features and expertise to fall back on. It can punch above its weight in terms of a direct comparison with Adobe InDesign or QuarkXpress too. While text can be imported from Microsoft Word, you can't export it back in the other direction, so it's not suitable for situations where you're sending documents back and forth between people.
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