In the same vein as other open source productivity suites like OpenOffice.org, LibreOffice boasts a comprehensive set of office management tools arguably on par with Microsoft Office itself. LibreOffice offers six different office management tools to meet your project management needs: Text Document, Spreadsheet, Presentation, Drawing, Database, and Formula.

Text Document is relatively synonymous with Microsoft Word, where Spreadsheet is like Excel. Presentation mirrors Microsoft's PowerPoint, and Database is similar to Access. Then you also have two additional programs in Drawing and Formula, which are an added bonus to the entire package. LibreOffice is compatible with Microsoft Office's document formats and also supports PDFs natively. It also has its own document format called Open Document.

Unfortunately, if you're unfamiliar with Microsoft Office products, this program might take a little additional time to get used to, particularly if you want to master some of its more advanced features. Regular Microsoft Office users will find LibreOffice's interface quite similar, however, and should pick up on how to use its various programs without too much difficulty.

A great alternative to Microsoft Office, LibreOffice is a must-try for managing your various office projects.

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The extension supports Word (DOC, DOCX), Excel (XLS, XLSX) and PowerPoint (PPT, PPTX) files.

Chrome Office Viewer lets you zoom in on your documents, save them or print them, but bear in mind that it doesn't allow any editing. At the moment, Chrome Office Viewer is only available for the Chrome beta release, but we think that it will be made available for the stable version very soon .

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Microsoft Access 2013 is a database management program included with Microsoft Office 2013. Microsoft Access 2013 has been updated with significant changes. The biggest change is the ability to easily create database-related web apps and use them through SharePoint that colleagues can access. This free trial will allow you to easily maintain a database for your business or project.

Features

The biggest new feature is the ability to create Access apps that are fully compatible with SharePoint. Microsoft Access 2013’s emphasis is on these apps as you can easily create them from the Welcome screen using templates. Online Access app templates are designed for collaboration with colleagues, but there are also offline apps for local databases.

After selecting from a variety of templates you will need to select a type of data to be tracked, such as contacts or tasks. The app will then generate the database structure, navigation, and command interface. If you’re not happy with the data displayed in the app you can edit it or add in new data types.

The focus on Access apps does have a few drawbacks for those seeking older database tools. Microsoft Access 2013 removed some Query designs such as Pivot Chart and Pivot Table, as well as the Upsizing Wizard. It is possible that these features were rarely used in the 2010 version, but it would have been better if Microsoft improved these tools instead of omitting them. You can still use Microsoft Access 2013 to create standalone databases instead of Access apps, but there are not handy tutorials and templates to guide new users.

Usability

Access 2013’s interface is similar to the 2010 version, but updated to the sleeker look of Microsoft Office 2013. Data creation is entered from either the toolbar or corresponding hotkeys. The main tools such as Table, Query, and Form all return, along with new menus to quickly list different SharePoint and Access apps. The look and feel of Access apps depend on which template you select.

Some of them are better suited for displaying timesheets or orders, but might be a poor choice for graphs and charts. All of the fields and interface will depend on the template you select. You’ll need to spend time and try different templates to find one that actually fits your project.

The app is tailored for sharing your database and apps with all of your business partners. To achieve this you’ll be constantly connected to SkyDrive in order to share and edit files. While this is useful on a large stable network, it can cause problems if you are ever disconnected from the cloud and have to edit data offline.

You can still work on local Access apps while offline, though you will have to connect to the cloud if you want to upload and transfer to a collaborative app. Thankfully, Microsoft Access 2013 has many tools and prompts to easily import data from local apps, Access 2010, or Excel into an online Access app or database.

Quality

The app is color coordinated to help highlight key menus and notifications. The majority of Access app templates create a sleek web app that looks very similar to Outlook.com. Microsoft Access 2013 generally functions quickly, even when working on many complex projects. Collaborative Access apps open in your default web browser, and functions in multiple browsers such as Internet Explorer, FireFox, and Chrome. Access functions Local Access apps have a similar look and feel, though you don't have to be online to use and edit them.

Conclusion

Updates to Microsoft Access 2013 are great for connecting your business into a single connected database. The 2013 version removes some functionality from the 2010 version and is geared towards SkyDrive and SharePoint integration. If you are ready to move forward and leave old tools behind Microsoft Access 2013 is an excellent upgrade.

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In the same vein as other open source productivity suites like OpenOffice.org, LibreOffice boasts a comprehensive set of office management tools arguably on par with Microsoft Office itself. LibreOffice Portable offers six different office management tools to meet your project management needs: Text Document, Spreadsheet, Presentation, Drawing, Database, and Formula.

Text Document is relatively synonymous with Microsoft Word, where Spreadsheet is like Excel. Presentation mirrors Microsoft's PowerPoint, and Database is similar to Access. Then you also have two additional programs in Drawing and Formula, which are an added bonus to the entire package. LibreOffice Portable is compatible with Microsoft Office's document formats and also supports PDFs natively. It also has its own document format called Open Document.

Unfortunately, if you're unfamiliar with Microsoft Office products, this program might take a little additional time to get used to, particularly if you want to master some of its more advanced features. Regular Microsoft Office users will find LibreOffice Portable's interface quite similar, however, and should pick up on how to use its various programs without too much difficulty.

A great alternative to Microsoft Office, LibreOffice Portable is a must-try for managing your various office projects.

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Thunderbird is Mozilla's award winning and free solution to manage your mail more efficiently. And there are many advantages of switching to it too. Unlike Mail for example, it can handle virtual identities and create on-the-fly addresses and it's widely regarded as having one of the best spam filters out there. Most recently, it's been updated with a slick tabbed interface to make managing your e-mail easier.

The fact that like Firefox, Mozilla Thunderbird can be beefed up with all manner of extensions makes it an extremely competitive mail client. It's also now much faster and more stable than before due to the Gecko 5 engine.

Getting going

Setting up Mozilla Thunderbird is painless. You can quickly import your mail and contacts from your Outlook or Mail account and set up POP3, IMAP or SMTP accounts in a flash. To stay well organized, Mozilla Thunderbird offers filters to deliver your mail into separate folders and inboxes. And of course, there's a built-in spell checker to make sure that your mails are professionally crafted.

What makes Mozilla Thunderbird slightly more unusual is the fact that it comes with an integrated RSS reader. Nowadays, this is a little outdated because many people use a separate application - or even Firefox itself - to follow RSS feeds but it may be useful if you only want to mail and follow RSS feeds at the same time when composing mails.

Searching your mail

The search tool in Thunderbird is excellent and searches happen in real time as you type. Search results are displayed in a separate tab. Tabs in general are a very big part of Thunderbird and like Firefox, you can have multiple messages open in separate tabs. This is a fantastic feature of Thunderbird although does tempt you to have too many mails open at once. Archiving is also another handy feature for those that don't want to delete messages but want to clear space in their inbox.

So what about security? You might think an open-source mail client would inherently be less secure than a paid one but Thunderbird is surprisingly secure with a fairly bulletproof spam filter. The reason being is that Thunderbird is regularly updated and crafted by volunteers who's main interest is making a better product rather than profiting from an end-product. Security updates are regular but small so as not to slow-down Thunderbird.

Exchange support

One of the biggest selling points of Mozilla Thunderbird is that it offers Microsoft Exchange support, meaning it will appeal to Office users who previously discounted it.

On the downside, the app is lacking some finesse in certain areas. Thunderbird still doesn't have conversation style email views like in Gmail (although an extension to do this can be downloaded separately) and there aren't many options for managing attachments and photos. There's also no calendar but again, this can be downloaded separately in the form of "Lightning".

Overall, Thunderbird is an excellent free alternative to Microsoft Outlook.

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A Extended Microsoft Explorer collection; All Explorer pages, all Explorers and all their docking position that you opened last time will be reproduce the same appearance when starts again. So turn on your computer, start the software and have a cup of coffee, other work left for us to do. It's really a graceful way to manage your documents. All explorer pages, all Explorers are dockable. You can dock them as you want. Very useful in document comparison or reference and files copy.

The person who likes to use Microsoft Explorer and wants to improve it, such as preview image, audio, video, Microsoft office word, excel, ppt directly; such as a double directory to convenient file copy; such as often close and open the same file..

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Features

Usability

Whether you create a text from scratch or use one of the many templates included, Microsoft Word will help you with a wide array of tools: tables, text formatting options, color schemes, support to insert images and clipart and more. Microsoft Word also includes a powerful spellchecker and tools to revise documents with marked text and personal notes. Support for video, however, is still missing.

Quality

In all, Microsoft Word proves to be an excellent tool for text processing, from a simple note to a complex report with images, graphs and tables.

Conclusion

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Microsoft Office Word Viewer is a handy tool that lets you view or print any Microsoft Word document quickly, without having to install Microsoft Office in its entirety.

After a simple install process, run Microsoft Office Word Viewer and you're presented with an Open File dialog window. Remember: you can't create, change or save any document in Microsoft Office Word Viewer. Select your chosen file (the viewer supports DOCX files via a converter, as well as older DOC and other formats).

Upon opening your document, you'll see that Microsoft Office Word Viewer displays just as it would in the original Microsoft Word, only without any of the editing tools. This means that you can see editorial notes and changes, if they have been tracked on the document. Additionally, you may access the file's properties window which will display statistics and authorship information, along with other details.

While you cannot export or save any document from Microsoft Office Word Viewer, you do have two options for obtaining a copy of the text. You may either print the document (which works just as well as printing from the full version of Word), and you're also allowed to copy the text and paste it into another application.

In all, Microsoft Office Word Viewer 2007 is a small and useful free download for viewing Microsoft Word documents. While it has no editing functions, it lets you read documents from any version of Microsoft Word with ease.

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Using this PDF app couldn't be simpler - open the PDF you want to use, and use the tabs across the top to view, edit, comment and more. You'll be able to add bookmarks, make comments, view in different layouts and more. Soda PDF Pro + OCR also lets you make more substantial edits, changing text, adding images and more.

If you want to create PDFs with Soda PDF Pro + OCR, you won't have a problem. You'll be able to create from a completely blank page, a form template or even convert from a variety of other document formats. One excellent Soda PDF Pro + OCR feature is the ability to import and convert documents to PDF in batch.

You'll also be pleased to see that Soda PDF Pro + OCR has good security functions, allowing you to encrypt you PDF or set a passwords and different levels of editing privileges.

Of course, what Soda PDF Pro + OCR offers that many of its competitors don't is optical character recognition (OCR). This means that the program can scan printed documents and interpret the text, leaving it ready for you to edit. True, it's relatively new technology, and the results aren't always 100%, but it's definitely a huge improvement of having to manually type information in by hand!

Although not at the top of its game, Soda PDF is a solid PDF creation suite.

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What's new in Office 2013?

Microsoft Office 2013 is by no means a revolutionary update to the venerable office suite but this is the first version of Microsoft Office that has good cloud integration and a touch-friendly interface.

SkyDrive will be the backbone of Microsoft Office 2013. Settings, documents, templates, and even custom user dictionaries will all be synced to the cloud so that you have a consistent Office experience on whatever device, wherever you are.

There are also new social features shown in Microsoft Office 2013 including automatic picture importing from services like Facebook and Flickr. Easier sharing also brings along easier collaboration. Users can now hold a multi-person video conference while editing a single document.

What you get inside Office 2013

PowerPoint 2013

PowerPoint will also feature full stylus support to make giving presentations easier. Users can annotate their slides instantly. There's also a great new feature where the presenter can have notes on his or her screen but only have the main slide open on the audience's screen.

Outlook 2013

One of the more impressive features that was built into Outlook 2013 is its ability to intelligently suggest events and appointments. Outlook will detect when someone wants to create an appointment by looking for locations, time, and specific keywords. This makes adding events to your calendar much easier.

Last but not least, Microsoft also announced powerful developer tools to create plugins for Outlook. They demoed a fully interactive Bing map within a body of an email, without having to jump into a browser.

Word 2013

OneNote 2013

Excel 2013

Installation issues

Installation of Microsoft Office 2013 can be a bit of a pain on Windows 7. The Office 2013 preview downloads as an image file, which will need to be burned to a disc or you'll need a drive virtualization tool like Daemon Tools to create and mount the image. Windows 8 users will not have to worry about this as the operating system includes a disc virtualization tool.

Compatibility concerns

Microsoft Office 2013 creates a nice ecosystem for those already using their office suite but it may not be enough to woo users from other services or applications that are free. Microsoft also announced that Microsoft Office 2013 will only be compatible with Windows 7 and Windows 8. XP and Vista users will be left out in the cold.

Conclusion

While Microsoft Office 2013 received some nice updates, there was nothing revolutionary that was announced. Microsoft played the catch-up game with Microsoft Office 2013, giving its office suite many features its competitors like Google Drive and Apple Mail have had for a while.

Overall, Microsoft Office 2013 offers some huge improvements over its previous versions with great cloud and touch features but this may not be enough for it to say as the king of office suites.

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The Excel Bond Calculator assists with input by providing automatic schedule creation and embedded help material providing detailed explanations of input and results.

The Bond Yield Calculator contains both an Excel and Open Office version with open source code for customization and compatibility across operating platforms.

The Excel bond calculator creates automatic bond payment and cash flow date schedules and calculates the implied yield to maturity for the bond.

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Key features of this Word to PDF Converter software: Convert Word to PDF files - Convert Word to PDF format accurately and easily in a few seconds. - Convert all the files you have created with Microsoft Word 2007/2010 (.docx). - Perform batch conversion of Word to PDF. You can convert multiple Word documents to PDF files using batch conversion. Retains original layout - Save or maintain the originality of the PDF documents by identifying paragraphs, text labels, graphics, tables, and flow of columns before reproducing it within Microsoft Word. - Preserve the data integrity, structure and properties of the Word document files.

Easily learn and use This Word to PDF Converter offers intuitive options when you convert your PDF files. You can convert your files in three simple steps: 1) Open: Open the file you want to convert. 2) Choose: Choose an output folder. 3) Convert: Click the "Create" button to convert Word to PDF. 4)You can convert documents from MS Word to PDF format without the hassles of missing fonts, lost images or broken layouts so you can email or share the files easily.

With this wonderful Word to PDF Converter, you can create PDF files with the easiest way to convert Word to PDF.

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PDF converter has editing PDF Properties, removing password if password in known, adding bookmarks through templates are special features. It shows PDF management and conversion reports. It supports 70 user interface laguages. It runs on Microsoft's latest operating systems Windows 8 and Windows Server 2012. It supports Microsoft's latest Office 2013 Preview.

PDF Converter is useful for any one handling PDF files extensively. It is useful for home users, professionals, and businesses handling PDF documents.

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OX PDF creator is an all-functional PDF maker tool that can create PDF documents from any printable files, such as txt, images (JPEG, GIF, PNG, BMP, EMF, EWF, TIFF), compatible with Microsoft Office 2003/2007/2010, support converting Word (doc, docx), PowerPoint (ppt, pptx), Excel (xls, xlsx) to PDF file. Besides PDF document creating, the PDF File Creator can also save file format as PNG, JPEG, BMP, PCX, TIFF and PS, EPS under "option" settings.

PDF Creator provides you an easy way to create PDF document from all printable files (office, text, images formats). PDF documnet Creator allows you to comibne multiple files into a single PDF. And you can also set password to protect your PDF files from opening or modification. Creating PDF, users can place stampstring onto the PDF files, after registering, and change font color, outline font and more.

OX PDF creator is an all-functional PDF maker tool that can create PDF documents from any printable files, such as txt, images (JPEG, GIF, PNG, BMP, EMF, EWF, TIFF), compatible with Microsoft Office 2003/2007/2010, support converting Word (doc, docx)

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More, it also can decrypt with password dictionary- the program finds passwords by using special word lists, all provided passwords are checked. You can get Dictionaries (word lists) on the Internet. Want to remove the Excel workbook or worksheet password protection? Use the tool, it can help you remove the password protection to open and modify Excel without any restrictions. Key Benefits: Powerful functions and easy to use. Wizard user-friendly interface helps you to find the best way to decrypt password. 100% guarantee of decryption regardless of password used. Very high decryption rate. Remove restrictions on opening, modifying etc. Particular password template. Large wordlist dictionary. Automatically open the output file when finished

Forgotten your Microsoft Free Excel password and can't open your file? Use Easy Do Excel Password Recovery to recover lost or forgotten Excel workbook or worksheet protected passwords to open or modify your files. It works to decrypt the workbook or worksheet password protection with alternative methods-by custom mode to recover your password or with password dictionary. More, it can help you remove the workbook or worksheet password protection

Use Easy Do Free Excel Password Recovery to recover lost or forgotten Excel workbook or worksheet protected passwords to open or modify your files with alternative methods. More, it can help you remove the workbook or worksheet password protection

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It provides a comprehensive alternatives list of links for free advice and freeware for recovering data from corrupt MS and Open Office files.

The Alternatives menu. The fact that it is freeware. The fact that it offers to methods for MS Office recovery and three for Open Office. The fact that it recovers both MS and Open Office files not just one or the other.

Low income office suite end users with corrupt documents they can't open. A lot of my users come from developing nations and I'm happy to be able to serve them.

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Includes the recommended Microsoft methods. Has a previous file version client within the same interface. Works as an add-in facilitating faster batch like operation. Is freeware.

This is meant for an average user of Excel that has a corrupt file who would like to explore all free options before trying demos of the commercial Excel recovery methods.

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Using this PDF app couldn't be simpler - open the PDF you want to use, and use the tabs across the top to view, edit, comment and more. You'll be able to add bookmarks, make comments, view in different layouts and more. Soda PDF also lets you make more substantial edits, changing text, adding images and more.

If you want to create PDFs with Soda PDF, you won't have a problem. You'll be able to create from a completely blank page, a form template or even convert from a variety of other document formats. Once excellent Soda PDF feature is the ability to import and convert documents to PDF in batch.

You'll also be pleased to see that Soda PDF has good security functions, allowing you to encrypt you PDF or set a passwords and different levels of editing privileges.

In all, Soda PDF is a complete PDF tool, but even so, it pales slightly against competitors such as Foxit PhantomPDF. There's nothing very wrong with it, but it does feel less polished and the interface - which doesn't have a right-click function - feels a little less intuitive.

Although not at the top of its game, Soda PDF is a solid PDF creation suite.

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Almost identical to Microsoft Excel in appearance, Kingsoft Spreadsheets Professional 2012 is a good alternative that's also compatible with Microsoft's popular spreadsheet application. Consequently, it's able to both read and edit .xls and .xlsx file formats. In addition, Kingsoft Spreadsheets Professional 2012 can also produce other file formats like .et, .txt, .csv, .pdf and .dbf. If you need to send a file you've created on Kingsoft Spreadsheets Professional 2012 to someone who's using Microsoft Excel, they should have no problem opening it.

Kingsoft Spreadsheets Professional 2012 has all the basic features you expect in a spreadsheets application, including a calculator, graphing tools, multiple different spreadsheet template options and other tools for complex data analysis. In addition, Kingsoft Spreadsheets Professional 2012 has two different interface options for you to choose from. One looks like a pre-2007 Microsoft Excel, while the 2012 interface option is a little more colorful and aesthetically pleasing.

There are also some new features that were added specifically to this latest version of Kingsoft Spreadsheets Professional 2012. The program comes with more than 100 commonly used formulas, a multiple tab interface and the ability to encrypt your documents to ensure security.

The nice thing is that if you're familiar with Excel, this processor's interface will be easy to navigate since it's very similar. This program does cost money to purchase a license key, however, which open source alternatives like LibreOffice and Open Office do not. It will ultimately come down to preference as to which spreadsheets program you choose if you're looking for an alternative to Excel.

Kingsoft Spreadsheets Professional 2012 is very similar and a good alternative to Microsoft Word for users who want to try something new with lots of the same features.

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DayMate is an excellent day planner that helps you get organized in both your business and personal life.

It enables you to create reminders for any kind of event: anniversaries, meetings, personal dates and so on, including system tasks like turning the PC off or launching a given application. Each reminder has its own color code and can be set to warn you with a pop-up window, a sound or even by sending you an e-mail message.

If you have ever used Microsoft Outlook, you'll have noticed that DayMate's interface is very similar to Outlook's calendar. In any case, you'll find it extremely easy to use. The only thing I missed is the possibility to create new categories for events but, otherwise, DayMate may the planner you're looking for.

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