Basic office software

Most businesses use office suites to create text documents, spreadsheets and presentations. An office suite, or productivity suite, is a collection of programs that are sold as a packet and perform essential office functions.Application office suites usually combine a word processor, a spreadsheet program and a presentation program, but they can also contain a database manager, an email client, a website browser, Instant messaging, collaboration groupware, and personal information manager, address book, and more. Each edition has own mix of programs and utilities, and each component can be installed separately.The most widely used office suite is Microsoft Office, a standard in office software. Depending on the edition, it includes some combination of word, the excel spreadsheet program, the PowerPoint presentation program, along with various internet and other utilities. Another popular proprietary suite is IBM Lotus SmartSuite, which includes WordPro, the famous Lotus 1-2-3 spreadsheet, Freelance Graphics for business presentation, Approach relational database, and Lotus Organizer.One alternative to proprietary packages is OpenOffice, a free, open-source suite available under the GNU Lesser General Public License, which mean anyone can use it or modify it for their own purposes. OpenOffice includes Writer, Calc, Impress and Draw, among other component. Other competitors are online office suites such as Google App and Think Free Office. These web-base programs allow subscribers to do the typical office thing, collaborate on documents with others, and even publish to a blog and website. The component of a suite has a consistent graphical user interface (GUI) and can exchange data with each other. The OLE (Object Linking and Embedding) feature allows user to insert information from one program into another. The object maybe liked, electing the changes that users make to the original, or just embedded-inserted as static copy of the original. Object can also be dragged and dropped between applications.Office suites are available for most operating system, including Windows, Linux and Mac OS. Lotus SmartSuite and OpenOffice are compatible with Microsoft Office – i.e. they can read word or excel file, and even save file in Microsoft formats (.doc for text document, .els for spreadsheets, .ppt for presentation, etc.). Office suites are reasonably secure, as long as you have an anti-virus program, and may include a document recovery tool that helps you retrieve documents after a system failture.