Our Review: Apache OpenOffice is considered the father of open source freeware office products. OpenOffice has gone through a number of owners starting with StarDivision to Sun Microsystems, from Sun to Oracle, then finally from Oracle to Apache. Due to some elements of OpenOffice having Java dependency, a JRE (Java Runtime Environment) download is required directly from Oracle. We found it difficult to get Base & Calc to fully work using the latest version (v7) of Java JRE and had to resort to a previous (v6 32bit only) in order to get it loaded without errors. From all the office products available, OpenOffice (and it's variants) are the only ones offering a free database management application.

The Apache Software Foundation Apache OpenOffice. Apache OpenOffice is a full suite of office applications: word processor, database, spreadsheet, presentation, and Apache OpenOffice is a long-standing competitor to Microsoft Office, with the roots of its code going back over ten years.

There are four main applications included with OpenOffice: • Writer, a word processor that can import nearly all text file formats available, plus the ability for a direct PDF export. The interface is similar to Microsoft Office 2003 and with no 'ribbon' available. • Calc, a spreadsheet that can import nearly all forms of spreadsheet formats.

Within Calc there is support for scripting & macro's in the form of Basic, Javascript, Beanshell & even Python. • Impress, a presentation application that can import ppt, pps, pptm, pptx presentation files. The layout is simple and stable enough.

• Base, a database management application that can create tables, forms, queries, reports, etc. It comes complete with Wizards to help transfer tables for forms etc. All in OpenOffice is well rounded with a great support group and lots of help files and documentation. There is so much add-ons and file import & export formats that OpenOffice would be useful for both the novice users looking for a quick Wordpad alternative to Advanced users who can customize the source code for their own requirements. Apache OpenOffice was reviewed by on 2016-04-30.

I love Apache OpenOffice. I just downloaded 4.0 and it looks pretty good. I am not a big fan of the big sidebar stuff, but once you close it, it seems to stay closed. It looks like it may be useful to those who use such things though. I had thought that this version would allowing saving in the docx and other newer M.S.

File types, but ti doesn't. That doesn't matter to me either as I save my stuff in.doc.

I figure that anyone can open a doc file so I am not worried about the newer types. What would I like to see in a future update?

I don't know if it would be a simple or not, but I would like to be able to customize my tool bars by just dragging icons to the bar itself (the way M.S. Office and Softmaker Office allow one to do). I tried LibreOffice and to me it seemed bloated. It also wasn't as fast as A.O.O. What do I like BEST about A.O.O.? You have kept the menus and tool bars looking the same. It doesn't look like one big tool bar at eh top of the screen.

There is a distinction between bars. Tool bars that seem all run together. And we SURELY do not need that ridiculous ribbon interface that M.S. The tool bar is a simple thing, but it is what keeps this Office Suite top of the rest. Winmail reader for windows 10. We don't need super fancy stuff. What we DO need is what works and looks pleasing to the eye.

Has managed to do that. Thanks Guys.:).