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← Cancel your subscriptions · Mission 6 of 10

Cancel Microsoft 365: a free office suite that opens your Word and Excel files

Microsoft 365 costs £84.99 a year for one person (£104.99 for a family). LibreOffice opens, edits and saves the same Word, Excel and PowerPoint files for £0, with formulas, tables and charts intact. It even does something Word can't: 40 Word files turned into PDFs in 35 seconds, without opening one.

30 minBeginnerTools: FreeStep 1 free
Tested 9 Oct 2026 · LibreOffice 26.2.4 (portable), test .docx and .xlsx files, Windows 11
Writer, Calc and Impressfree replacements for Word, Excel and PowerPoint
Your existing Word and Excel files opening with their tables, formulas and charts intact
Word and Excel set as the default save format, so people you send files to never notice
  • One command that turns a whole folder of Word files into PDFs
  • A short list of what to sort out before you cancel (email, cloud storage, macros)
Before you start
  • Windows 10 or 11, a Mac, or Linux
  • About 1GB of free disk space (the download is about 375MB)
  • A Word document and an Excel file to test with. Use copies, not your only version.
01/05Install LibreOffice0 done
STEP 01 of 05~10 min

Install LibreOffice

One free download gives you a word processor, a spreadsheet and a slides app.

  1. Download the installer from the official site, libreoffice.org/download ↗, and run it. Or install it with one command in PowerShell:

    Windows
    winget install --id TheDocumentFoundation.LibreOffice -e
    Mac (Homebrew)
    brew install --cask libreoffice
    Linux (Debian/Ubuntu)
    sudo apt install libreoffice

  2. Windows will ask for permission to install. Click Yes. The installer is about 375MB, so give it a few minutes. On a Mac without Homebrew, download the .dmg from the same official page and drag LibreOffice into Applications.

    TipCan't install programs on this PC (a work laptop, say)? There's an official portable version that runs from a folder or USB stick with nothing installed. Get it from PortableApps.com ↗, which packages it with The Document Foundation's permission. Same program, it just lives in a folder.

  3. Check it worked. First tell PowerShell where LibreOffice lives (you'll reuse $soffice in step 4), then print the version number:

    Windows (installed)
    $soffice = "C:\Program Files\LibreOffice\program\soffice.com"
& $soffice --version
    Windows (portable, change the path to where you unpacked it)
    $soffice = "$HOME\Documents\LibreOfficePortable\App\libreoffice\program\soffice.com"
& $soffice --version
    Mac
    /Applications/LibreOffice.app/Contents/MacOS/soffice --version
    Output
    LibreOffice 26.2.4.2 0229ac93fcf0d7cbc6376066c6f35021cef002dc

  4. Yours will probably show a newer number. LibreOffice puts out a big update twice a year.

✓
CheckpointLibreOffice is in your Start menu, and the command prints a version number.
If it breaksThe term is not recognised, or 'cannot find path' + 1 more
The term is not recognised, or 'cannot find path'
Copy both lines, including the & and the quotes. If it still fails, LibreOffice is somewhere else: search File Explorer for soffice.com and put that full path in the $soffice line. To just see the version, open LibreOffice and go to Help → About LibreOffice.
You're not allowed to install programs
Use the portable version from the tip above. It unpacks into a folder you choose, such as your Documents.
Still stuck? Ask the community
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