Office programs: A com­par­is­on of the best office software

Everyday office life presents all those involved with various chal­lenges. Whether it be task or­gan­isa­tion, planning ap­point­ments and deadlines, or the figuring out internal and external com­mu­nic­a­tion: Without the right tools you will quickly feel lost, which is why office software for PCs, smart­phones, etc. is an in­dis­pens­able part of modern office life. However, the range of office software on offer today is so diverse that it is difficult to find the right office programs for your needs. We’ll show you the most important cat­egor­ies of available office software so you can decide for yourself what you’ll need.

When searching for the right software, companies often face the problem regarding which office programs are actually needed for a smooth business process. Es­pe­cially for this purpose, so-called office suites (also called office programs or software) offer a col­lec­tion of ele­ment­ary ap­plic­a­tions that simplify everyday office life. Usually, these suites contain word pro­cessing programs, spread­sheets, present­a­tion tools, database man­age­ment systems, and com­mu­nic­a­tion tools. The classic market leading software is Microsoft Office, which has been on the market offered by Microsoft since 1989, but for which there are now fee-based and free al­tern­at­ives.

The open source program Lib­reOf­fice shows that office software does not ne­ces­sar­ily have to cost a lot of money. Although the office software contained in Lib­reOf­fice can be used free of charge, it is in no way inferior to Microsoft Office programs. The text editor Writer or the drawing program Draw are similar to Microsoft’s not only in terms of their operation, but also their func­tion­al­ity, making them a popular choice. Since the Lib­reOf­fice programs also support many Microsoft formats such as .docx or .xlsx, col­lab­or­a­tion with users of the Microsoft suite is also possible without any problems.

Since 2016, the search engine Google has also been offering an office package: Google Workspace. It differs from the other softwares in that it is ex­clus­ively cloud-based. The various tools for the joint document editing and task schedul­ing and ap­point­ment man­age­ment are not installed on a PC or mobile device, but can be easily started and used without in­stall­a­tion with the browser of your choice. You only need an active internet con­nec­tion to syn­chron­ise the documents, but the majority of office programs included in Google Workspace also have an offline mode. As with Microsoft Office, a monthly sub­scrip­tion is required to use Google Workspace.

Even if half a century after its invention it is already con­sidered outdated, the e-mail shouldn’t be forgotten as a daily part of office life. An estimated 196 billion mails are sent worldwide every day, about half of which are pro­fes­sion­al messages. An e-mail program with which you can receive, send, and archive e-mails should therefore not be missing on any working device – es­pe­cially since these clients in most cases also function as Personal In­form­a­tion Managers (PIMs) by enabling the ad­min­is­tra­tion of ap­point­ments, contacts, tasks, and notes.

If you're looking for free office software, you'll also find it in the e-mail client category: The open source program Thun­der­bird developed by the Mozilla Found­a­tion is one of the best Outlook al­tern­at­ives and is com­pletely free of charge. By default, the client is limited to e-mail only, but can be extended with add-ons for various functions. For example, you can add a calendar with the “Lightning” add-on to manage upcoming tasks and ap­point­ments directly in Thun­der­bird. Also popular and very useful is the Re­mind­er­Fox extension, which lets you view and manage lists of reminders and tasks.

The Windows operating system also offers a free office program for e-mail man­age­ment. The ap­plic­a­tion, which has the simple name “mail,” first appeared in the Windows Vista edition and is also available in the current Windows 10 version. The tool comes standard with an inbox, calendar, and contact man­age­ment. In addition, you can add the “Microsoft To-Do” task scheduler to the client via the Microsoft Store. When you link Windows Mail to a Microsoft Exchange account, you also get access to security features such as the ability to encrypt your messages.

Keeping ap­point­ments and deadlines is one of the most important virtues in everyday office life. Re­la­tion­ships with business partners suffer quickly if you do not show the necessary pro­fes­sion­al­ism in this respect. And even within your own company, adherence to deadlines plays a fun­da­ment­al role in achieving the goals you have set yourself. So don't hesitate to use calendar software or sched­ulers to plan your daily routine optimally and not to miss any of your ap­point­ments. Such special programs offer a much larger range of functions than the in­teg­rated calendar solutions of e-mail clients, for example.

With the calendar ap­plic­a­tion Rain­l­en­dar you can keep an eye on all important events and tasks. For this purpose, the tool presents cor­res­pond­ing lists directly on your desktop so that you can view them at any time. The graphical style of these lists, which are unlimited in number, can be cus­tom­ized using different skins. Rain­l­en­dar is available for Windows, macOS, and Linux, and stores all data in the stand­ard­ised iCalendar format (RFC 2445). So you can easily export your ap­point­ments and tasks to another program. The office schedul­ing program is available either as a free Lite version or as a paid Pro version. The latter gives you the pos­sib­il­ity to integrate other calendars like the Google calendar.

Far more than a simple calendar is the office program developed by Astonsoft Ltd. Es­sen­tialPIM. The software for Windows, iOS, and Android shines with various other features for the or­gan­isa­tion of everyday work, which is why it can be clas­si­fied as a Personal In­form­a­tion Manager (PIM). You can also enter tasks and create notes, manage contacts, and even integrate e-mail accounts. In addition, a password manager is in­teg­rated in the office software. Es­sen­tialPIM can be upgraded to the paid Pro Edition to get access to a huge syn­chron­isa­tion package (e.g. Google, iCloud, Outlook, CalDAV, and CardDAV), strong en­cryp­tion methods, or a notepad function for the desktop.

The to-do list is an in­dis­pens­able utensil for everyday office life, which should also be well known from private life. Such a list of out­stand­ing tasks fa­cil­it­ates the self-or­gan­isa­tion or the work in the team con­sid­er­ably, and forms the crucial basis for suc­cess­ful time man­age­ment. The in­di­vidu­al items in the list can be spe­cific­ally assigned to specific people and ticked off as soon as they have been completed – if new tasks arise, simply add them. Instead of keeping your to-do list on a sheet of paper or on a flipchart, you can also do this on your PC or mobile device thanks to the ap­pro­pri­ate office software.

The Office program ToDoList is one of the oldest to-do list tools. The free software for Windows does not require any in­stall­a­tion – you simply download the ex­ecut­able program file and start the task scheduler by double-clicking it. ToDoList presents upcoming tasks in a clear tree structure, where you can create as many subtasks and comments as you like for each task, which can be folded in or out for better clarity. You can also define the following settings for each task:

• Priority
• Time spent
• Deadline
• Status
• Person re­spons­ible
• Category

In addition, you can store links in ToDoList to resources that are needed for a task or a task branch. To do this, simply enter the network or internet address.