In researching the best free apps for the Mac, I started by using Apple's category list. Our team of Apple experts have years of experience testing all kinds of tech and gadgets, so you can be sure our recommendations and criticisms are accurate and helpful. You won’t find incredibly advanced features like those on the full-blown Microsoft Word, but for most people it’s all they’ll ever need.You can always trust iMore. Google Docs is a perennial favourite as the web-based software is free and easy to use. Any new Mac will come with a free copy of Apple’s Pages software, which is a hugely powerful tool for creating and editing documents, and also works well with its iOS/iPadOS counterpart app. Unless you specifically need Microsoft Word, you’ll find that there are plenty of great word processors out there that won’t cost you a penny. Our advice would be to keep well away from these ‘free’ routes to Word.

That’s aside from the fact that you’re contravening copyright, which is rather naughty. Downloading and installing things like this on your Mac is one of the easiest ways to contract malware or spyware software that can cause havoc with your data. It’s true that some hackers are benevolent, wanting only to free the information so that anyone can use it, but sadly others are most definitely not. Microsoft keeps you on the latest version of the apps at all times, so you never need to deal with outdated software or miss out on new features.įor a one-year Microsoft 365 Personal subscription you can either pay up front, costing $69.99/ £59.99, or $6.99/£5.99 per month, which allows one account to use the Office apps on up to five devices, including an iPad. With this you not only get Word, but also Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote, Outlook and 1TB of OneDrive storage. The best option in our opinion, so long as you don’t mind signing up to another service, is the Microsoft 365 subscription. It’s not cheap, though, as buying the app outright will set you back $159.99/ £149.99, although there are no more payments afterwards. Thankfully, you don’t have to, as Microsoft still offers a one-and-done approach to buying Word. We already pay for plenty of things each month, so the idea of adding another bill to the list might not appeal. There are two routes open to you: one-off payment, or a subscription.

If you need the full range of tools that Word has to offer, not to mention the ability to work offline and save files into other folders or online storage services, then you’ll need to pay. How to get the paid version of Microsoft Word

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