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(And, you’ll have to live with the likelihood that your formatting will need to be fixed again if it is opened by a Microsoft program.) If the Microsoft document contains a lot of macros or formatting, you’ll likely have to do some fixing or reformatting before you print or share it. The bad news is not every document translates perfectly. The good news is you can open nearly all Microsoft documents using your open source software. * Are You Compatible? Most of the world uses Microsoft Office. Each open source package has its own community forum where you can find the information you need or ask your unique question and get a unique answer. But there are also tangible benefits, the biggest of which is, if you have a question you’ll likely get an answer. If you like grassroots, people-powered solutions, open source software will feel good. The open source community has created numerous extensions that allow you to add the features you want and leave out anything that might get in your way. Compare that to downloading Mircrosoft Office, which can range from $29 for a standard version via TechSoup to $399 retail for Office Professional 2016. Open source software is free to download and updates are also free. Let’s look at the pros and cons of choosing an open source productivity suite. In fact, the tools all share the same names. The two suites have a complicated history - LibreOffice was formed by OpenOffice programmers after OpenOffice was acquired by Oracle - but for the purposes of this article we’re treating them as, more or less, the same. OpenOffice and LibreOffice are the two most popular open source alternatives. But is Microsoft your only option? Open source software is used at many nonprofits for word processing, spreadsheets, and presentation design. The Microsoft Office suite - Outlook, Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and OneNote - dominate the productivity software marketplace.