SoftMaker Office special sale

I received a special offer from SoftMaker Office this morning stating that I could purchase the stand alone version of SoftMaker Office Pro for Mac at a cost of $29.95 or the SoftMaker Office Standard version for the Mac for $19.95. The offer stated that I was entitled to this special price because I had downloaded their Free Office and activated it.

I can't be sure that the special pricing is for everyone but apparently if you already own their Free Office, then you can get their Pro or Standard versions at the special discounted price. The regular price for the Pro version is $99.95 and the Standard version is $69.95.

Both the Pro and Standard versions are 64 bit and can open, edit, and save all current and older MS Office documents. (doc, docx, etc.)

I purchased the Standard version and will give a review of how well it works when I get it installed and organized.

Thanks for the heads up on this. I activated the free version recently so I bet I have a similar email in my inbox.

I got a similar offer, but just in Canadian dollars, but I almost mistook the offer for some MS Office 2018 sales SPAM, especially when glancing at some of the included images:








- Patrick
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How many of these "Office" suites are there for the Mac?

Besides Microsoft Office, I tried NeoOffice, Open Office and Libre Office - none of those are really complete replacements of MS Office.

I never heard of SoftMaker or Free Office before - are there any others besides the ones I mentioned?
I just downloaded Free Office - installation was painless; what do people think of it???? - the Free Office version

krs said:

I never heard of SoftMaker or Free Office before - are there any others besides the ones I mentioned?

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There is a complete list of all word processors, including office suites, for the Macintosh, here:

Macintosh Word Processors
http://www.macattorney.com/wp.html

krs said:

I just downloaded Free Office - installation was painless; what do people think of it???? - the Free Office version

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It is quite competent, especially in an area where all the other Office suites usually fall down, which is compatibility with the Microsoft Office file formats. The free version of SoftMaker's product will open all Microsoft Office formats, but will only save to the newer ones. The commercial versions of SoftMaker Office will also save in the older MS Office formats. In my testing, at least with regard to word processing files, FreeOffice did a perfect job.

Whether it is an acceptable replacement for Microsoft Office is sort of up to you. Some folks are used to Microsoft Office and if a potential replacement isn't *exactly* the same as Microsoft Office in every way, they aren't going to be accepting of it. Others have found FreeOffice to be remarkably competent and easy to get used to.

It's free, and you even already have it. Why don't you run it through its paces and then add to the feedback that folks have available to them to decide whether FreeOffice/SoftMaker Office is worth switching to?

I also received this offer plus they are throwing in two graphics programs for free too.

KennyC said:

I also received this offer plus they are throwing in two graphics programs for free too.

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Their most recent sale offer expires this Friday, Feb 8, 2019 for those who want to take advantage of their offer:
The same email offer page here:
http://www.softmaker.com/newsletter/n.php?rv=1&n=2019-01-f18to18-en





- Patrick
======

Randy B. Singer said:

There is a complete list of all word processors, including office suites, for the Macintosh, here:

Macintosh Word Processors
http://www.macattorney.com/wp.html

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Thanks, Randy - nice article.

Why don't you run it through its paces and then add to the feedback that folks have available to them to decide whether FreeOffice/SoftMaker Office is worth switching to?

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I downloaded Free Office last night.
Reading the comments here. Ifilled in name, country and email address as requested and downloaded the software.
Tried to use their PPT equivalent but needed registration key which they supposedly sent me via email.
Checked my email several times to make sure I didn't miss it in the raft of new email, but no - it was not there.
Ended up having to go to their website again and register again following the link that came up when I tried to open their software.
This time the registration key came after a few minutes.
Seems they don't expect anybody to actually provide their registration information first time around, I also ended up on a slightly different looking website than the first time around.

Anyway - got the registration key and opened the first slide in a ppt presentation, tried several different applications:
Slide consiste of 7 images and a bit of text above and below the images
MS PowerPoint - slide looked exactly like it should (nothing different expected, although in the past some MS ppt slides sometimes are a bit different after transmiiting by email)
Apple Keynote - slide only shows 5 of the 7 images, in place of the 2 images that don't show, there is just white space. Also text above images has moved up slightly (no more space above that text) and text below slides has also moved up slightly and now runs into the images
Libre Office (which I found was the best before) - All 7 images show, text is moved up by one or two pixels, but still shows space above upper text, lower text now just touches the image
PresentationsFree (SoftMaker) - - All 7 images show, text is moved up by several pixels, but still shows a little space above upper text, lower text now just slightly inside the image

So, based on a single slide od a ppt presentation, Libre Office renders it best, SoftMaker is very close behind and Keynote rendering is pretty much useless with two images missing.

I'l try a few more ppt slides later, as well as Excel and Word, but in the past I found alternate applications have the hardest time rendering MS ppt slides accurately, using them with MS Word and MS Excel seems to work a bit better.

To krs, one thing I noticed using pages and other alternatives to MS office is when I saved a previous word 2007 document pages files size was almost 3x as large. I also noticed a difference in a pp flyer being a little different in Keynote that it didn't display the same but I may have done something to cause that too. Haven't done anything from excel yet.

I just tried one Excel spreadsheet.
It was just a very basic one - opened fine, everything look allright, I made a change in softmaker, saved it as an Excel document (.xlsx) opened the changed document in MS Excel - all looked good.
Only thing was that I find the MS Excel much more visually attractive compared to the softmaker version - the softmaker version reminds me too much of the Windows version of Excel.

My experience with Pages opening older MS docs and even the newer docx format is similar to that of Kenny in that the Pages documents are larger. However, I have to disagree with member "krs" when it comes to using Keynote with Powerpoint presentation documents. I have some very complex PPT documents which include graphs, diagrams, and pictures. Keynote renders them perfectly.

I'm not an Excel user so I can't comment on that. However, when it comes to MS Office, I much prefer the Windows version over the Mac version. The Windows version of MS Office is more polished and in my opinion much faster. It's too bad that Windows is so terrible.

I was tempted at one time to run my copy of MS Office 2013 in a Windows VM but quickly gave up on that idea after I remembered what a pain Windows was.

KennyC said:

I also received this offer plus they are throwing in two graphics programs for free too.

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Note that the offer for the Pro version includes the 2 graphic programs, but not the offer for the Standard version. The Pro version in my opinion is not worth the extra $10 since the only difference between it and the Standard version is the 2 graphic programs and the inclusion of extra language modules. (assuming you need them)

I purchased the Standard version for $19.95 since I had no use for the graphic programs and language modules.

chscag said:

My experience with Pages opening older MS docs and even the newer docx format is similar to that of Kenny in that the Pages documents are larger. However, I have to disagree with member "krs" when it comes to using Keynote with Powerpoint presentation documents. I have some very complex PPT documents which include graphs, diagrams, and pictures. Keynote renders them perfectly.

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I wonder if a later version of Keynote works better, I'm using version 6.2
Tried a few other ppt presentations and they all have the odd slide where some image or images don't show when I use Keynote; occasinally, the text is also moved.

I have attached an example of what I'm talking about - slide opened with Keynote 6.2 is the first one, the original ppt slide is below.