Office suite

In computing, an office suite, sometimes called an office application suite or productivity suite is a software suite intended to be used by typical clerical and knowledge workers. The components are generally distributed together, have a consistent user interface and usually can interact with each other, sometimes in ways that the operating system would not normally allow.

Typical components

Most office application suites include at least a word processor and a spreadsheet element. In addition to these, the suite may contain a presentation program, database tool, graphics suite and communications tools. An office suite may also include an email client and a personal information manager or groupware package.

Current suites

The currently dominant office suite is Microsoft Office, which is available for Microsoft Windows and the Apple Macintosh. It has become a proprietary de-facto standard in office software.

An alternative is any of the OpenDocument suites, that use the free OpenDocument file format, defined by ISO/IEC 26300. The most prominent of these is OpenOffice.org, open-source software that is available for Windows, Linux, Macintosh, and other platforms. OpenOffice.org supports many of the features of Microsoft Office, as well as most of its file formats, and has spawned several derivatives such as NeoOffice, a port for Mac OS X that integrates into its Aqua interface, and StarOffice, a commercial version by Sun Microsystems.

Other office suites include:

Corel's WordPerfect Office.
iWork, Apple's Mac-only office suite. Includes Pages, for word-processing, and Keynote, for presentations.
KOffice, an OpenDocument and open-source office suite which is part of the KDE Desktop Environment.
GNOME Office, a loosely coupled group of open-source applications that includes Abiword (OpenDocument) and Gnumeric, part of the GNOME desktop environment.
Lotus SmartSuite, provided by IBM contains a word-processing program called Word Pro, a spreadsheet program called Lotus 1-2-3, a presentation program called Lotus Freelance Graphics and a database program called Lotus Approach. Lotus Notes provides the email/PIM portion of the Lotus offering.
SoftMaker Office, an office suite from Germany including a word processor, a spreadsheet, a database manager, and a programming tool.
ThinkFree Office, a free web-based alternative office suite. It is almost fully compatible with Microsoft Office files.
Zoho Office Suite, another webware office productivity suite. (Review)

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Typical components

Current suites

See also