Free · Open source · Non-profit educational project

A free modern word processor that doesn't ask for your credit card.

Officewrite is a free alternative to Microsoft Word and to LibreOffice and OpenOffice (dated GUI designs). Write essays, letters, reports and CVs with a modern ribbon and familiar .docx files. Use it free in your browser or offline on Windows.

Officewrite editing a document titled The Water Cycle, showing the Home ribbon with the clipboard, font, paragraph and styles groups

Try in your browser Download for Windows Read the source

No account. Nothing to sign up for.
No cloud. Your documents never leave the machine.
No lock-in. Saves plain .docx, which every major word processor opens.

Take a look around

Click a tab, the way you would in the app itself.

Officewrite: Start screen — Pick up where you left off, or start from a template.

About Project

Writing an essay or report shouldn't need a subscription.

Officewrite is a non-profit educational project for office workers, creatives, students, teachers, families and anyone else who needs to write. The aim is simple: a free word processor with a modern interface, familiar tools and no subscription. If LibreOffice and OpenOffice feel stuck in 2006 to you, Officewrite offers a fresh approach with a ribbon, clear controls and a workspace built around your writing. The source is open too, so people learning to program can explore a working application from end to end.

What it does

The features below are implemented. Format limits and missing capabilities are listed in FEATURES.md, including what Officewrite still can't do.

Write

Fonts, colours, text effects, bullets, numbering, checklists and multilevel lists, tables you can size to the inch, pictures with drag handles and seven wrap modes, shapes, text boxes and freehand ink.

Structure

A styles gallery, style sets, a table of contents that keeps itself current, footnotes and endnotes, captions, cross-references, an index, and citations in APA, MLA, Chicago or IEEE.

Check

Desktop spell check in English, German, Spanish and French, a grammar checker, AutoCorrect, an offline thesaurus, word count with readability, and an accessibility checker for alt text, headings and contrast.

Review

Track changes with insertions and deletions, a reviewing pane, document compare, comments anchored to the text, and Editing / Reviewing / Viewing modes.

Mail merge

A full Mailings tab. Read recipients from a .csv, insert merge fields, an address block and a greeting line, add rules like If…Then…Else and Skip Record If, preview each letter with real values, then merge to a document, the printer, or one file per recipient. Envelopes and labels too.

Open and save .docx, .rtf, .html, .txt and the native .officewrite. Export a PDF. Print with a preview so you can see the page breaks first.

Stay safe

Auto-save, up to twenty versions kept per document, and a delete that goes to the recycle bin rather than nowhere. No telemetry and no network calls of its own.

Keyboard first. The shortcuts are the standard ones: Ctrl+B, Ctrl+K, Ctrl+G, F7. The ribbon itself is fully keyboard-operable: arrow along the tabs, open a menu, and walk it without touching the mouse. Alt+Q searches every command by name.

Officewrite vs Microsoft Word, LibreOffice, OpenOffice and Google Docs

The honest version. Officewrite is younger and smaller than any of these. What it offers is that it is free, opens the same files, and asks nothing of you.

	Officewrite	Microsoft Word	LibreOffice Writer	OpenOffice Writer	Google Docs
Cost	Free	Subscription or licence	Free	Free	Free
Account required	No	Yes	No	No	Yes
Works offline	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Limited
Runs in a browser	Yes	Yes	No	No	Yes
Reads and writes .docx	Yes	Yes	Yes	Reads only	Import / export
Documents stay on your device	Yes	Optional	Yes	Yes	No
Open source	Yes	No	Yes	Yes	No

Apache OpenOffice opens a .docx but cannot save one; it writes .odt or the older .doc. Officewrite reads and writes .docx directly.

Build it yourself

Three commands and it's running on your machine. Pull requests welcome; the tests run on every one.

git clone https://github.com/DandanITman/OfficeWrite.git
cd Officewrite
npm install && npm run dev

CONTRIBUTING.md explains the layout of the code · testing.md explains how the tests are written · every test drives the app through the same controls a person clicks.

Get Officewrite

Windows 10 and 11 · free · no account

Download the latest Windows build

Older builds live on the Releases page. Prefer to compile it? npm run package.