What do you use to edit Microsoft Word documents (docx)?

Question

What alternatives exist for editing Microsoft Word documents (docx)?

I know about OpenOffice and Google docs. What else is out there?

Solution 1

LibreOffice is the replacement for OpenOffice and does the same job.

Solution 2

Abiword

Which is a part of gnome-office also supports docx format.

Solution 3

I can certify you that LibreOffice opens correctly Office 2007 Documents (docx) AND saves them correctly. I have tested till now a little over 50 documents which include tables, pictures, a lot of different margins, paragraphs, etc..

They open, read and save correctly. Tested with LibreOffice 3.3.2 and OpenOffice 3.3.0. With OpenOffice you will have a problem that text will move up or down and maybe even change the way they look. But in LibreOffice you will not.

This is a headache i can say goodbye at least for now.

Use the following to install the latest LibreOffice:

• How to install LibreOffice? (replacing OpenOffice.org)

NOTE - When you add the PPA of LibreOffice the option to remove OpenOffice will appear. I recommend you remove it since, trust me, it will be far better.

Solution 4

If you want to guarantee perfect compatibility with the docx format you could always run Office 2007 under Wine. Not the best for the open source ethos but it does work well if you already have a copy of office.

Solution 5

I've always used Microsoft Office 2007 on Wine. It works perfectly!

Right now, LibreOffice is not mature enough to be considered a replacement to Office 2007 IMO

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Comments

[Oli]

Just before people rush off and download Libre Office, thinking it'll do so much more than OpenOffice, they should realise that Libre Office is a recent fork of Open Office, contains 99.something percent of the same code at the moment, and doesn't deliver a whole lot more. In future years perhaps they'll diversify but if you have a docx that OO won't touch, LO probably isn't going to help you.

[Admin]

@Oli LibreOffice was forked from the Go-OO project, which was the OpenOffice "distro" Ubuntu ships. Go-OO had additional code for WRITING OOXML (.docx, .pptx, .xslx) files, whereas the vanilla OpenOffice.org version didn't (or doesn't) have that feature. But OOXML support is definitely shakey.

[Ashfame]

@Oli @Tyler Thanks for the additional info, I certainly didn't know Libre Office is a fork of OO. Recently heard its name, I hardly use docs. :)

[Admin]

I can vouch for Abiword being a great little word processor.

[Luis Alvarado]

I can give knowledge that several (about 50 Office 2007 Docs) so far have opened CORRECTLY in LibreOffice and NOT in OpenOffice. Am comparing the latest for both so i can give word at least in that part that Office 2007 documents open good with LibreOffice (3.3.2) Vs OpenOffice 3.3.0 What am REALLY waiting is for LO to support amipro .sam documents

[pub.david]

all details for office 20077 in Wine 1.5 here:appdb.winehq.org/objectManager.php?sClass=version&iId=4‌​992

[Masroor]

Being a regular user of LibreOffice, I will have to comment that LO works correctly in 99% cases to open docx files (please not that I do not mean .doc files). For the other 1%, I have seen incorrect section numbers, and incorrect rendering of texts.

[Marc Valsells]

When you open powerpoints (pptx) the letters go biggers so the images go on top of them is not beter that k office/wps office

[dax]

and much smaller than libreoffice. thanks for the recommendation.