Most of the people who work on computers use, above all, two programs, one for writing documents like on a typewriter, the other for making numerical calculations . The most used programs in the world for these two goals are Microsoft Word and Microsoft Excel . These two programs, together with Powerpoint which is used to create graphic presentations, are included in the Microsoft Office suite which is not and will never be free .
If then, for those who use the computer to work, buying Office is an obligatory step, those who use their home PC and want to use these programs for free, without buying licenses, will have to look for clandestine, pirated versions that often work poorly and bring problems .
Instead of wasting time with the perennial search for illegal ways to install Word and Excel on your computer without paying, it is better to find other ways.
Microsoft does not offer a free download of Microsoft Word or any other application such as Excel or PowerPoint.
The only way to have a free and free version of Word and Excel is to use the Office Starter version which however is pre-installed on some laptop models and cannot be downloaded from the internet.
So either you find it already installed or you can't use it.
Much more often, on the pre-installed computers there is the normal Office version, which must be purchased within 60 days, after which it stops working.
This is the trial or "trial" version of Office 365 that can also be downloaded from the internet.
This version of Office, with Word, Excel and Powerpoint, is free only for a certain time within which you have to buy it.
To be more relaxed, however, you could also do without Microsoft Word and replace it with free alternatives .
1) Wordpad
This tool in Windows 7 is more powerful and is able to open, create, edit and save the Word 2007 and Word 2010 file formats, the docx (Office Open XML).
The program is a kind of Word for writing but has limited functionality so the display of complex documents may not be correct.
With Wordpad of Windows 7, however, .doc files, those of Word 2003 and earlier cannot be opened.
A better Wordpad is Jarte which can be downloaded for free and installed on Windows XP, Vista and Windows 7.
This great little program is able to open and edit RTF, Doc and Docx files, to create documents, to modify existing ones, to add images and tables.
2) Microsoft Word Viewer and Microsoft Excel Viewer, no longer exist, were two free programs to open files written and created with Word and Excel to read them but not to modify them or create new ones.
This program is ideal for those who receive documents and do not need to write them.
Users can view and print documents, but if the one for Excel is very useful, the one for Word can be replaced by the Wordpad.
3) AbiWord is an excellent word processor for writing and modifying documents without any limitation.
It is identical to Microsoft Word but it is free .
The files are saved in the .abw file which can be converted to a doc file.
From the notes of the program, however, we recommend that you send files in RTF format (fully compatible) and not Doc or Docx because their display may not be the same as that readable by MS Word.
4) LibreOffice is the open source Office suite that I have often talked about by dedicating an article to it.
LibreOffice includes Word (which is called Writer), Excel, Powerpoint and other tools for computer work and word processing.
All programs can open doc, docx, xls, xlsx, ppt, pst files and so on.
5) Atlantis Nova is an old program, practically identical to Word 2003 that has a unique feature: the program weighs just 700 Kbytes and is portable to keep on a USB stick.
It is therefore a very light and very small software, perfect for PCs with little space where you still want to use a complete writing program.
Not surprisingly, there are fewer options in Nova's settings than there are programs like LibreOffice or Microsoft Word, but as light as it is, it's really worth a try.
Unfortunately the free version does not support the .doc or .docx formats which are the standards in Microsoft Office, but only the RTF format.
READ ALSO: List of alternative programs to Microsoft Office
6) Office online is the Microsoft site that can be used without downloading anything to your computer, from any PC that can be connected to the internet.
The online programs Word, Excel and Powerpoint are the same as Office, with all the features.
It is possible to create new documents, upload existing files and share them with friends and colleagues via Facebook.
7) Google Editor Office for Chrome is Google's free service, which offers document management features on the web.
The best feature of Google Docs is the fact of being able to work and collaborate remotely on the same document.
All files can be saved online or can be downloaded to your computer in files that can be opened from Microsoft Word, Excel and Powerpoint.
8) Zoho Docs is another online program, a less famous web application but absolutely up to the situation.
In addition to Google Docs, Docs.com and Zoho, there are other web applications for reading, creating and saving Word documents and Excel tables.
Specifically for Word documents I would also like to mention other websites such as: Shutterbox and DarkCopy with black screen.
To return to the original title question, there is no free download of Microsoft Word or any other Microsoft Office program.
The only way to get Office for free is to download it from the official website for a 60-day trial version.
There are however valid alternatives available both online and offline that users of multiple computers can certainly use instead of Microsoft Office, without prejudice and without thinking that they are inferior.
READ ALSO: Best programs to write books or texts of any kind on the computer
