There are many alternatives to Microsoft Office Word for Mac if you are looking to replace it. The most popular Mac alternative is LibreOffice - Writer, which is both free and Open Source.If that doesn't suit you, our users have ranked more than 50 alternatives to Microsoft Office Word and many of them are available for Mac so hopefully you can find a suitable replacement. Collaborate for free with online versions of Microsoft Word, PowerPoint, Excel, and OneNote. Save documents, spreadsheets, and presentations online, in OneDrive. May 22, 2017 Best Apps for Mac Best Microsoft Office alternatives for Mac What's the best alternative to Microsoft Office on the Mac? If you've recently ditched the PC, here's how to ditch Office as well!

OpenOffice (Free) OpenOffice for Mac is a completely free alternative to Microsoft Office for Mac and the equivalent of Word in OpenOffice for Mac is Writer. OpenOffice was originally created by Oracle but is now developed by Apache and one of the most widely used MS Office alternatives on Mac. Start quickly with the most recent versions of Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, OneNote and OneDrive —combining the familiarity of Office and the unique Mac features you love. Be more productive Find the feature you need fast and create documents more easily with built-in automated design and research tools.

Other interesting Mac alternatives to Microsoft Office Word are WPS Writer (Freemium), Apache OpenOffice Writer (Free, Open Source), Notion (Freemium) and ONLYOFFICE (Freemium, Open Source). Microsoft Word is a commercial word document processor for Windows.

You don't have to leave Microsoft Office if you decide to switch from PC to Mac. Microsoft has a perfectly good version of Office 365 for Mac that comes with Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote, Outlook, and more. If you've been thinking about switching away from the Office productivity suite, there are alternatives that offer many of the features you love in Microsoft's programs, plus some features you can't get anywhere else.

iWork Suite

Apple's alternative to Office is iWork. It's the most comparable alternative to Microsoft's productivity suite, only it comes free with every Mac. The interface is different, and will take some time to get used to, but if you're really interested in kicking Office to the curb, the iWork suite is the best alternative on Mac.

If you're ready for change, and Office's user interface, design, and tools aren't burned into your psyche, get Apple's iWork suite of apps. It comes preinstalled on new Macs, but you can also find it in the Mac App Store.

• Pages - Download now
• Numbers- Download now
• Keynote - Download now

OpenOffice

OpenOffice by Apache is probably the most similar to Microsoft Office in look and design. It comes with a word processor, a spreadsheet maker, and a presentation creator, all with many of the same features their Office counterparts have. Files are saved as open document format files, so they can be opened with any document viewer, including Office apps, without needing to be converted first. The best part is that OpenOffice is completely free.

If you're looking for an alternative to Microsoft Office that looks and works pretty much exactly the same, but doesn't cost a dime, OpenOffice is for you.

LibreOffice

LibreOffice is an open source productivity suite very similar to Microsoft Office that comes with a word processor, spreadsheet maker, and presentation creator. It also includes a vector graphics editor, a math formula editor, and a database manager. Files are saved as open document format files, so you can open them with any document viewer, including Office apps, without needing to be converted first, though it does provide tools for saving a document as an Office-specific file. LibreOffice is totally free. It is very similar in design to Microsoft Office, with some minor differences in the design.

LibreOffice is a solid replacement for the Office apps and includes some useful extra programs that Office doesn't even have.

Google Docs

Google Docs is the easiest replacement for Microsoft office because it's so accessible. If you have a Gmail account, or a Google Hangouts account, or a YouTube account, you have Google Docs. Just visit the web-based app from your browser and you can create word processor documents, spreadsheets, and presentations. There is a Google Drive app you can download onto Mac so you can work offline. The changes will be made when your Mac is back online. Google Docs doesn't look at all like Microsoft Office, and has a very different user interface, but it does have many of the same, familiar features you know from Office.

The thing that makes Google Docs so useful, however, is it's real-time collaboration, which works seamlessly with multiple users. I've worked alongside a dozen other people in one document. I am able to see where everyone is within the documents and can see exactly when changes are made.

If you're looking for a very easy to use Office replacement that is ideal for working with others in real-time, you'll be pleased with Google Docs.

What's your pick?

Do you use a Microsoft Office alternative you'd recommend to our readers that are new to Mac or just want to switch from Microsoft? Put your suggestion in the comments below and tell us why its the one you chose.

MacBook Pro

Main

We may earn a commission for purchases using our links. Learn more.

The HybridDrive is a USB-C dock with an SSD built in

You need more ports, right? And you probably need more storage, right? Nostalgia margarator replacement cable. What you really need is the HybridDrive.

As one of the most widely used layout programs in the world, Microsoft Publisher is beginner-friendly and lets virtually anyone design a variety of marketing materials, whether for web or print, with ease. Its tight integration with Office 365 contributes to it being the default choice for many when it comes to design software as well.

However, if you’ve recently switched from Windows to macOS and installed your favorite Microsoft software, you might have noticed that Microsoft Publisher is absent from the app lineup. How could it be? Is there Microsoft Publisher for Mac? What do you use instead? Let’s tackle all these questions one by one.

Get a publisher for Mac

Microsoft Publisher doesn't work on Mac. But Setapp has an equivalent you'll enjoy even more.

Is Microsoft Publisher Available For Mac?

As the official Microsoft website indicates, Microsoft Publisher is available for PC only. But that shouldn’t discourage you in the slightest. After all, the key value proposition of Mac computers for the longest time has been an abundance of platform-specific designer-oriented software.

Not only there are lots of Microsoft Office Publisher for Mac alternatives — they are generally more intuitive and focused on getting the professional results you’re after much quicker. One of those options is Swift Publisher.

Create astonishing layouts with Swift Publisher

What exactly is a Microsoft Publisher equivalent for Mac? There are certain tools that professional full-time designers use to create books, brochures, and printed advertising. Generally, those apps take hundreds of hours to get a grasp of and, even after you know them quite well, demand highly manual approach.

The other category is software that was designed to be accessible to all but which is still capable of producing results comparable to its highly specialized alternatives. Microsoft Publisher is certainly in that camp, and by comparison Swift Publisher is too.

Swift Publisher provides you with more than 200 templates and 2,000 royalty-free images right from the get-go. That means whatever you’re planning to design has already been mocked up and all the media you need can be found with a quick search, no purchase required. To accompany all these images, the app also features a built-in image editor you can use for any necessary cropping or color correction.

Building out your perfect layout in Swift Publisher couldn’t be easier, as the whole interface operates on a drag-and-drop functionality to enable you to fill out the template you’ve chosen at the beginning. You can also change the template yourself with regards to master pages, grid, layers, tables, and more.

Unlike Microsoft Publisher for Mac, Swift Publisher makes full use of programmatic automation. For example, calendars and maps can be added in a snap to show timelines and directions. Contacts can be merged from Apple’s address book to output names. New QR codes can be created to guide users to where you want them to go.

Printing your project has never been so seamless. First you can simply check out the layout integrity by printing samples at home. When you get the result you seek, the app allows you to further fine-tune the image resolution, mark bleeds, and customize anything else required by your commercial printer.

As you can see, the inability to download Microsoft Publisher for Mac shouldn’t affect your need for creative expression. Swift Publisher offers all the same features and more in a convenient and approachable package. But what if someone sends you a .pub file Macs can’t read? There are workarounds for that too.

How to open a .pub file on Mac

It’s true that none of Mac’s default apps would be able to peek inside the .pub file, simply due to how closed the Microsoft ecosystem is. Luckily, it’s less of a problem than it seems. A quick search online would reveal dozens of free web-based utilities that instantly convert Publisher files into PDFs, .docx, .png, etc.

Alternatively, you can notify your team of your recent switch to Mac and ask them to export .pub files to another format before those get sent to you. To do that your colleagues need to go to File then Export then Change File Type.

Most likely, all the files you’ll receive from now on would be PDFs, which are great, as they preserve the original formatting and can be read by any program that deals with images. With time though you’ll accumulate hundreds of PDF files, so your new challenge will be finding the right one quickly. That’s where PDF Search comes to the rescue.

PDF Search is a powerful utility that first and foremost scans any folder on your Mac for PDFs and then uses its AI capabilities to work with them. This app doesn’t just search for a word or phrase, it also analyzes a variety of semantically related keyword combinations and ranks them for you based on relevancy. To put it simply, there has never been an easier way to scan your PDFs.

Microsoft Office Equivalent For Mac Pro

Publish flawless blog posts on the web

A frequently overlooked use case for Microsoft Publisher is laying out the content for the web, whether it’s a website or complex blog post. And while Swift Publisher is an outstanding tool for creating website mockups, it would seem like an overkill to use it for putting together a blog post. Working with a single-focused app like MarsEdit would make so much more sense.

MarsEdit is a lightweight but powerful all-in-one blogging tool. It lets you write, design, optimize, and publish outstanding blog posts using a single workflow, and thus saving time and reducing errors in the process.

When you launch MarsEdit for the first time, it asks you to connect the app to your existing blog, whether it’s on WordPress, Blogger, or Medium, so that it can import all your settings and configure the publishing process. That way, MarsEdit will also become the de facto content management system for your website — good news, as keeping a copy of all your posts offline certainly wouldn’t hurt.

Apple Alternative To Word

Microsoft Office Equivalent For Mac Free

Writing in MarsEdit is straightforward and distraction-free. You can also copy-paste the text from another app and even retain the Markdown syntax. Adding media is the best part, as MarsEdit supports a variety of image engines and even features a native image editor to make all the necessary adjustments. What’s more, the app can scan Apple Photos, Lightroom, and Aperture for images.

Purchase Microsoft Office For Mac

You also get to preview your resulting blog posts in real time to avoid after-the-fact tweaking. And if you have more than one blog, you can simply switch accounts right within the app. To sum up, MarsEdit is exactly the software web publisher have been waiting for.

Microsoft Office Equivalent For Mac

Despite the fact that there is no official Microsoft Office Publisher for Mac, you’re not left without tools that are crucial for your success. In fact, it’s quite the opposite. Lots of apps could be called a Microsoft Publisher equivalent for Mac. Your task now is to pick the right one. Swift Publisher does the trick for nearly every use case, and MarsEdit effortlessly takes care of your web presence. Finally, in case someone sends you .pub file Macs can’t read, search online to resolve the issue and try any top-ranking utility.

Word Equivalent For Mac Free

Best of all, both Swift Publisher and MarsEdit are available for a free trial through Setapp, a platform of more than 150 highly acclaimed apps and utilities for any situation. Become a Setapp Member today and download Microsoft Publisher for Mac alternatives you want to try.