I tried Open Office software - it is free and I didn’t want the headache of using pirated software. It opened my existing Word and Excel files without difficulty. It didn’t have as many features as Office but I doubt I’ve used even a quarter of the features Office offers - so it was ok.
I downloaded the file - first mistake - it’s massive and takes a lot of time. Besides, there are a number of add-ons which have to be downloaded separately [such as Thesaurus]. You can’t make out from the file name or site which ones you can do without.
Then, if I created a new file, it would automatically save it in it’s own proprietory format. Which meant that I couldn’t share / send the file with / to clients. This is defintely a hassle since I routinely exchanged files with clients. If you’re not doing that then there’s no problem.
Also, some of the commands were different [such as the usage of comma in functions in Excel]. So you can open, edit and save an Excel created file but if you have edited a function, then Excel will not recognise this and show it as an error - as I found much to my chagrin. This is a major problem since, theoretically, it’s still in Excel format.
Also I found it slow to load - maybe because it is a truly integrated suite rather than a clumping of different programs.
Conclusion: I finally removed it from my system because most of my clients use MS Office and expect to be sent data in that format - else it was worthwhile.