Kathy - I am using ApacheOpenOffice after using Microsoft Professional for years. I use it for Spreadsheets, Documents and mostly Presentations. It was not too difficult to get used to.

I now have the paid version of MS Office but I have worked with Libre Office in the past. It may have changed since I used it a few years ago but I found it almost to be an Office clone. Very easy to work with.

There are free versions of Office/Apps available on line. If you haven't seen them...check out what's available at this MS website. If these had been available when I bought my Office version...I would have opted for them rather that spending my hard earned money. :-) The only benefit I seem to have with my paid version is that I have the OEM disk in the event I ever need it.

https://products.office.com/en-us/office-online/documents-spreadsheets-presentations-office-online

i have been using open office for many many years also used libre. I never installed microsoft office on any of my computers. My husband has he uses it at work so he wanted it on his pc.

You can save your documents in .doc format or .docx or several other formats. They are very similar and in most cases it works out easily.

Open Office, first released as free and open source about 15 years ago, is no longer being actively developed. Libre Office, which started life as a fork out of OO, is current and active.

Menu structures and commands aren't identical to MS Office (so they're not intended as clones) but functionality is similar and files are mostly compatible. Users may occasionally come upon a file utilizing sophisticated features/functions that may not be completely understood. Most users use a small percentage of these programs' features anyway so the average user should be able to use them without much trouble.

I've used Open Office since it was first released, but my use for it has dwindled since I got my Mac. I can "save as" so folks with the Micro$oft $oftware can use my files.

Libre Office sounds intriguing, though!