Excellent alternative to Office and barely 80MB. Much cleaner crispier UI. Just love it.Thank you GOTD.

Sticking with Libre Office. Free for ever!

Extremely excited to try this Office alternative!

Just reading CNET posting earlier about today's giveaway:-

"Of course, plenty of users are perfectly content with free-all-the-time options like Google Docs, Microsoft Office Online, LibreOffice, OpenOffice and so on. WPS Office offers the same three core programs: word processing, spreadsheets and presentation. But it also includes cloud-sync capabilities and a handful of minor amenities not found in some of the freebie suites, like a built-in spell checker, a save-as-PDF option and loads of document templates.

What's more, as I mentioned, I think WPS Office has the most polished interface this side of Microsoft Office. If you're looking for a top-flight office suite that's effectively free for a year, here's your shot."

Sounds like it definitely worth an install.

@krypteller
I can confirm that it does not support macros as it requires VBA. I had been using a giveaway of the Pro version and it did support macros. In fact of all the free suites it suppoted MS macros best of all. I noticed no difference between it and MS Office while using them

The Pro version had a free licence for a year. Once the year was up last August the licence was withdrawn and it became an unregistered version. After that it only permitted you to "view" any files but you could not work on or save them. To all intents and purposes the software stopped working. I suspect that this offering will do the same thing unless Kingsoft can tell us different.

WPS/Kingsoft Office isn't a bad office suite, though I think the pricing is a bit audacious -- a year's subscription to Microsoft's Office 365 can commonly be had for $30-$35 [e.g. by sellers on Amazon]. If it was something you owned, rather than a subscription model, that'd of course be a different story, given the higher pricing from Microsoft & Wordperfect.

The subscription model favors the company producing the software, and can be useful to businesses using the product. My guess [& it's purely a guess] is that WPS subscription pricing works with business in China & Hong Kong where there might be restrictions on using Ofc 365.

That said, if you don't mind the restriction of a 1 year license -- & after all there may well be a giveaway in approximately a year -- it is a respectable office suite that does work well, so no reason not to give it a try. DO bear in mind the caveats mentioned in other comments -- I've not had problems with earlier versions, but I'm not a heavy use of office apps nowadays, & it's been a couple of years since I ran their software.

In the past when a Kingsoft Office license expired it reverted to the free version, which did not have the watermarking on printouts. That earlier version [free w/out watermarks] **may** still be available to you as Kingsoft Office Suite Free 2014 at kingsoftstore.com/software , though no info is provided -- the link to learn more leads to the WPS Ofc page.

Besides the open source Libre Ofc you can sometimes find licenses for Wordperfect Home/Student on sale for around $30. Corel also has less expensive academic licenses -- their popularity leads me to *suspect* that educational status is not always that thoroughly vetted.

Ashampoo & Softmaker have occasional sales on Softmaker [Ashampoo] Ofc -- I picked up a license over the holidays for less than $20 -- Softmaker offers it to schools free, while students pay $10, and they have a free version at freeoffice.com . It's not Ofc 365, but it's easy & it works. It also doesn't have the more restrictive licensing enforcement of Wordperfect of Microsoft Ofc [the permanent version]. Corel likes to use a 3rd party licensing enforcement app that runs as a service, & can go wrong or break, while it's easy to find stories online where folks have activation problems with MS Ofc -- it allegedly is overly sensitive to system changes.

Installed tried to open an Excel spread sheet, was informed that I would need to purchase a VBA package in order to run macros. Worthless program, uninstalled.

i've used this product for a long time. i bought a used computer from a place of business and this is one of the suites that was installed. it was free. that was several years ago. because it is not an american company, there are certain things that it doesn't do, for instance, automatically capitalize the letter 'i' when it stands alone. i've looked and looked as to how to remedy this and can't find it. there are a few other things that it took me a while to figure out, but overall, i've really liked the program. it automatically updates if i set it to do that. free. i won't download this today, i don't know if there is anything extra here beyond what i have, but i am happy with what i have.

One VERYinteresting property of this suite is that it can use MSO add-ons.

I have two that I use extensively: One is (evidently) an abandoned add-on for Excel called XLNotes. What it does is to allow notes -- including MS Word documents -- within Excel for each cell. Later versions of XLNotes stopped working with later versions of Excel but XLNotes v2 *still* works with Excel 2010.

Guess what? It works with the *latest* version of WPS Spreadsheet as well. I'm getting a message that I need to buy the product to get vba support (for other features, not for XLNotes) and I might just do that because this is a *huge* advantage for me.. I'm pretty sure you have to have Office installed first, to use XLNotes with WPS Office.

The other add-in is also one I use ALL the time. It's called Outliner for Word and, basically, it turns MS Word into Scrivener (It's a novel-writing software). It, too, works well WPS Office, from my limited testing.

The reason to consider this over MS Office *upgrades*, for me, is compatibility with these 2 add-ons.

Lot of discussion here about alternatives.

I just spent an hour on LibreOffice opening up PDF documents (originally written in Microsoft Office), editing them, and resaving as PDFs. I've worked in an office where everybody else used MS Office on Windows, and I use LO on Linux. Very few problems with interoperability. Sometimes I've had to open up documents in LO that were the old MSOffice version but weren't readable in the new. I did a lot of presentations, drawings, docs with math, some spreadsheets. LibreOffice has gone a long way from its beginnings. They're up to Version 5 and working on a cloud-based version.

Changing to a new software can be a challenge, because you've invested so much time in learning your present one. So you have to decide whether it is worth it. It certainly was for me (not that hard, either, considering I'm an old retired guy). I use all open source software now, including my operating systems (Linux Mint, openSUSE, Manjaro, a few Ubuntu flavors). So this is the first time I've been back to GOTD in a couple years, whereas I used to be here daily. I like the new website.

After installing and taking the product for a test run, I'm sticking with SoftMaker Office. SoftMaker is lighter on your drive and is not a subscription-based model. I think the annual subscription price is steep for what you get. If you are goinng to spend $45 on an Office product, SoftMaker Office is the way to go.

WPS Office used to be called Kingsoft Office. I have Kingsoft Office Pro 2013 installed on my computer. It was at first a 1 year giveaway. When I uninstalled it, I found that it had messed up my Microsoft Office 2003 installation and as a result I had to reinstall Microsoft Office. Reinstalling Kingsoft Office did not rectify the problem. I would say to all who install this: Beware of the unintended consequences of uninstalling if you decide not to buy it after the trial ends, especially if you already have Microsoft Office installed on your computer.

Some points to ponder: Software subscriptions are the wave of the future. There are many reasons why the big developers are going this route, including lower media and distributions costs, and a big reduction in pirating However, purchasing the full version of Office (non-subscription) is still costly to many, so even though this software doesn't match the power of Office; at $45.00, it appears to be a reasonable alternative. There are also other free Office equivalents mentioned by others today.

Just my two cents

A friend offered to let me use one of his unused Office 365 codes, but I didn't as what would happen after it expires? I have little use for subscription office software. I have been happily using an older version of WPS Office free for some time on this computer though I really should find my install and license for Office 2007 I have on the computer I'm not using and run that instead.

I once wanted to upgrade to the latest free WPS, but when I read that it now puts watermarks on printouts I stuck with this one. Is LibreOffice actually a good Office clone these days? I remember the old OpenOffice was a pretty poor imitation.

If you are thinking of buying this software after the Giveaway 1 day limit has expired, don't bother.
Once you have to pay, then get the real thing. Ms Office. Buy the full permanent version. Not the pay-Microsoft-every-year version.
Don't pay for a near-clone (WPS) of the real thing Ms Office.
If it is free like in this giveaway, then maybe try it.
But there will be compromises and shortcomings; some of which you cannot tolerate.

I don't understand why we still have 3rd party office suites like today's giveaway. Why is it necessary to have anything other than Microsoft software or , It's a new name now but I'll go by the old name Open Office? What is the purpose? Open Office is a fine open source product. There is no need for a third wheel. If you are in a corporate enviroment, go with Microsoft. If you are a small business in your extra bedroom trying to make it, go with Open Office.

Looks good and work well. Only problem is that it doesn't support Finnish so I don't have any use for it :(

Free version of WPS office available here:


http://www.kingsoftstore.com/kingsoft-office-freeware.html

Haven't checked it out, but subscription "rental" software is a no-no in my book!

For $15/yr more, you get the real thing (Office 365 BE) with cloud storage and e-mail; why would anyone subscribe to a knock-off rather than using free Open Source knock-offs or subscribing to the genuine article? Crazy...

I'll stick with the previous giveaway before they rebranded and switched to a subscription business model Kingsoft Office 2012 Pro on this laptop and kingsoft office free on the machines that missed that giveaway, Where I have installed WPS Office Free the user did not like it and requested I disable it from opening MS Office documents and to use MS Office 2007, I do have WPS office as one of a few free and given away pro office suites on my Android devices, but would not buy into the subscription model as the use of the product depends upon the vendor remaining in business and that's not a gamble I am willing to make.

WPS office used to be called KingSoft Office before, and it used to be freeware. We used this software a lot, since it was a very faithful "clone" of microsoft Office, which we had reciously, before trying out the freeware/opensource projects. Lots of features, native .xls and .doc saving and opening of files. I found it to be a better (more office-like) alternative to MS Office than other open source projects like OpenOffice, FreeOffice, LibreOffice and such... However then WPS decided to become subscription model sofware. We were prepared to upgrade, if one time buying sofware package was available. Which unfortunately it isn't anymore. To make things a bit more consuming, from one leftover installation we frequently get pop-ups with "special software deals", but trough a very unreliable payment company (judging from it's internet comments). So we haven't decided to go this route. Especially, since there are at least three "official" looking WPS office sites, each having it's own presentation and available software (http://www.wps.com, http://www.kingsoftstore.com/, http://www.ksosoft.com). Some versions are free, some are SAAS-type, some are limited functionality, and some revert to limited features after some time. Very confusing from user point of view. I think I'll go with MS in the future again, everything else is a complete hassle...

Before you install, I suggest you create a system restore point. This software will set itself as the default for all office files. On my Win7 64 bit system it would not open doc files, and even using the right-click "Open with" option I could not access the files with either Libre Office or Microsoft Word. Obviously I've uninstalled, and I'm glad to say the files will now open with as usual.

With Libre Office free and very capable, I wonder how WPS Office hopes to compete with an annual subscription.

I've used WPS Office in the dim & distant past without problems.

Good luck. Take care!

Hi, is this a 64bit version?

My favourite part of Word is its ability to run macros, an area where Microsoft excel.
The best version in my opinion was in Word 6 with their Word Basic.

None of the lookalike programs compare with Microsoft, so if it's macros you interested in older versions of Word are available online, considerably cheaper than today's download.

The GUI is clean and modern and looks great. The spell checker is very bad and needs refining for English at least - this is a very bad thing especially for an Office app. WPS Office starts up faster than Libre Office but it's an Office app and so far that's all there is to say.

This includes one year's free licence. Does this mean the software stops working after one year, or does this only affect support?

Very good software. I'm using this software for quite a while now. Best alternative to MS Office imho.