best free word processing software for mac

Best Word Processing Software Mac Buying Guide
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The selection of quality word processors available is incredible, ranging from minimalist no-distraction apps right up to fully featured office suites.

Microsoft put that right with Word 2016 and has now built on this success with the 2019 version.

Best Word Processing Software Mac Buying Guide

To see how they compare, read our Office for Mac buying guide.

This can also be expanded to include the whole paragraph on which youre working.

It also supports Markdowns LiveParse mode, meaning you can write in plain text with Markdown markup on the left of the screen and see the formatted text in one of three templates on the right.

Theres a document library too, and the app hooks into both Wordpress and Medium.

Support for the markup language includes footnotes, tables and cross-references.

And you can use iCloud drive to sync your documents with Bywords iOS app.

Plus, it has a typewriter mode that scrolls text as you write, keeping the passage youre working on in the middle of the screen, much like IA Writer.

Saying that, it is a fair bit cheaper, so if your writing is predominantly online, it could be a very useful addition to your collection.

Writer, as the name suggests, is its word-processing element, and very good it is too.

Importantly, it has full support for.doc and.docx files, so you can open those and work on them without a problem.

An auto-complete feature makes suggestions as you type, though this may not be for everyone.

There are also downloadable extensions that add features to Writer.

Best Word Processing Software Free Tool That

But as a free tool that supports multiple formats and covers all the basics, its excellent.

Multiple users can work on a shared document simultaneously (but only if theyve been given permission to do so by the document creator).

The latest version, however, is a very competent writing application indeed.

The use of iCloud as storage for documents means you can work on them wherever you have a Mac, iOS device or access to a web browser.

But what sets Pages apart from others is its support for Handoff, meaning you dont have to save and close a document on one device before moving to another.

Placeholders make it easy to add images from the Photos app, or anywhere else on your Mac, and if youre not happy with the colours or fonts used in a template, you can change those too.

And its easy to see why its so popular, especially now the third major version has been released.

And Scriveners split-screen mode allows you to have the document youre working on on one half of the screen with your research notes above or below.

The corkboard view allows you to see how documents and sub-documents relate to each other and, if you prefer, a separate viewing mode organises them in outline form.

Best Free Word Processing Software For Mac