What is Wordle?

Word Cloud is a visual representation of word frequency and value. Use it to get instant insight into the most important terms in your data. With the interactive experience of Word Cloud in Power BI, you no longer have to tediously dig through large volumes of text to find out which terms are prominent or prevalent.

Wordle is a popular online tool that allows you to input a web page, block of text or list of keywords, and have it spit out a graphic known as a word cloud. Wordle does this job pretty well, but something that gets asked at work quite a lot is if there are any Wordle alternatives out there. In addition, Wordle is a little awkward if all you want is an image file at the end of it that you can paste into a presentation for example, without taking screenshots.

Download Wordle For Free

Here’s a list of a few sites that do a similar job (being sites they are of course compatible with Windows and Mac) and a few other alternatives to Wordle that you might want to consider.

Here’s an example of a Wordle word cloud for comparison with the alternatives listed below:

Wordle Alternative #1: ABCya! Word Clouds for Kids

ABCya! Word Clouds is pretty basic, but it can be forgiven since it’s aimed at kids. It also has a handy randomise feature, so if you need a quick result, this is a great choice. It accepts a body of text as its input.

It also allows you to quickly adjust the number of words that contribute to the word cloud, which is also handy and allows you to eliminate truly infrequent words (the aim of the word cloud is to illustrate quickly what is popular rather than give the whole picture).

It occasionally seems to place a word too far out, and the random colour schemes can be garish at times, but that’s the whole point of random and it might be what you want!

Wordle App For Windows 10

Head over to http://www.abcya.com/word_clouds.htm to check it out. It relies on Flash which may be a pain point for some.

Wordle Alternative #2: Tagxedo

Second up is Tagxedo. Tagxedo has way more options as it’s not ‘dumbed down’ for children, so straight away you can use it to make a word cloud out of your blog, tweets, other RSS feed and more.

It also allows great control over the shape of the cloud including using words and graphics. As you can see above, I have chosen to create my word cloud in the shape of a rubber duck.

Something that wasn’t immediatiely obvious is that you have to let it load a preset word cloud and then click on “Load” to be able to add your own text for transformation.

A great feature of Tagxedo is that you can add a list of keywords of the form keyword:frequency (e.g. rubberducky:7) and it will act as if the word has been used that many times. For people with PPC or other quantified data (e.g. a keyword list from Adwords with impressions or clicks) it’s only a few concatenations away from providing a nice quick way to represent keyword themes to a client.

Tagxedo can be found at http://www.tagxedo.com/ and is built on Silverlight.

Wordle Alternative #3: WordItOut

WordItOut requires you to submit your email address before you can easily download your word cloud (although you could just screengrab it). This is a big turn-off, but its reason for asking is apparently so that you can share the tag cloud and edit it again in the future, amongst other things. This seems fair enough. The site is ad-supported which I would hope means they aren’t selling the email addresses on!

It’s neither here nor there in terms of features, sort of not as advanced as Tagxedo but cleverer than ABCya!. On the other hand it has a nice summary of all the word clouds that have been created by the community, which may be inspirational or a bit too sharey for you, but it’s interesting either way.

Also it appears to be written without Flash or Silverlight which is nice if you’re on an unsupported device or OS (but could explain the slightly less ‘tidy’ arrangement of words).

Link to Word It Out: http://worditout.com/

Wordle Alternative #4: Tagul

Tagul requires a full sign up before you can get cracking. It’s worth it though, because like WordItOut it means you can keep working on a tag cloud in case it’s not right first time. This is handy because Tagul has a decent number of features.

You will want to filter common words which isn’t a feature as standard (the other Wordle alternatives reviewed here seem to do it by default).

One cool feature is that you can embed your cloud with a default link for each individual tag, for example to click through to a Google search for the tag text itself.

Visit http://tagul.com/ for more, it uses Flash.

Other alternatives to Wordle

There is an interesting approach to getting a more dynamic Wordle cloud out of Excel here. Whilst this isn’t strictly a Wordle alternative, if your reason for seeking one was avoiding the process rather than the end result of Wordle, then this may help.

There are a whole bunch of Javascript tutorials that probably go beyond the scope of those who simply want to create a word cloud… maybe I’ll save those for another day. In the meantime if your aim is to get a static, non-Flash or Silverlight word cloud out of some data, there is an easy to understand example at http://www.lucaongaro.eu/demos/jqcloud/ — just check out the source of the page and you’ll see that you need to have word frequency calculated in advance.

Conclusion

There are plenty of other types of visualisation out there to be used, but word clouds are simple to read and a great way to illustrate the prominence of themes within a text or body of work.

If you have found any other Wordle alternatives then please let me know in the comments and I’ll add them to this list 🙂

Microsoft Office is one of the productivity beast software. But still, it gets a bit expensive for home or business users. You know the cost is pretty expensive.

Install Wordpad For Windows 10

Microsoft Office has been the perfect compact system that everybody would use. But nowadays after the excessive price range, many of us have started to look for other options.

In other words, if you are looking for best alternatives to Microsoft Office then you have come to the right place. You know there are some great alternatives to Microsoft office that only a handful knows.

And today, I’ll be giving you the best alternatives to Microsoft Office. The choices will allow you the freedom to create and edit along with even being compatible with the files of Microsoft Office suite.

Though, there are only a handful of programs that are worth your time and your money. And the list ranges from office clones to cloud collaboration. Now enough with the chit chat, let’s see what better solution you could have to Microsoft Office.

RECOMMENDED: Ultimate Windows 10 Tricks and Hacks

Cheap but Powerful MS Office alternatives

Windows 10 Free Word App

1. WPS Office

This alternative comes with the Writer, Presentation, and Spreadsheet all like Microsoft Office. They all kind of copy the office suite. But there is an extra suite for PDF conversions where you can import and export files in a friendly manner.

All the files created by this program will be compatible with Microsoft Office and vice versa. Along with Windows, it is also compatible with Android and MacOS. So, you don’t have to worry about the compatibility.

This Office suite can be the best alternative if you are used to Word tools and want to keep using the same features but on an alternative. If you don’t want to learn or go through any tutorials for the alternative and this is the right one for you.

Even the templates are like Office suites templates. So, you see this alternative is just like Microsoft Office but with a different name. So, if you choose this one, it’s going to be much easier than you expect.

Nevertheless, it didn’t copy all the things from Microsoft, but it has some features of its own too! Like, organic ways to change paragraph layout with your mouse, advanced section navigation, and document tabs and much more.

Lastly, I would recommend this one for laptops and school works. But if you want to use a more professional level tool this might not be the one for you.

2. FreeOffice

SoftMaker’s FreeOffice is the best alternative there is. It comes with the full compatibility DOC, DOX, XLS, XLSX, PPT, and PPT file formats. The developers put a lot of work into making it loss-free software. Meaning that if you transfer your files to word, there would be no data loss.

And this one makes it the best alternative to Microsoft Office. The software also has a very clean interface. You will be amazed to see it’s more like Office with the same kind of user-friendly interface. So, you won’t have any problem working on it.

Even the toolbars are of the same kind as Office. The further updates made sure it’s relatively fast and quick to respond.

Excel’s alternative called PlanMaker will give you features such as conditional formatting and pivot tables. The best thing is that you don’t have to go through tutorials to use this alternative.

It will also help to create PDF files and ePUB files, track document changes, and switch between languages and much more. Also, spell check and smart typing will make it easier for you.

3. LibreOffice

LibreOffice gives competition to Microsoft Office. The developers made it as so that it can offer more features than Office itself. The difference is so huge that many are now going for LibreOffice instead of Office suite.

You’ll be amazed to see the new compatibility it offers compared to the office suite. It supports both MacOS and Windows for a large amount of file type.

If you want a more functional program and you think office can’t handle that then you can use LibreOffice without a fuss. It’s one of my personal favorites of all the alternatives.

The developers are always updating and creating more extensions for your use. And this allows you to use any app you want. The updates brought a feature called ribbon which allows it to cope more with Offices many features.

The recent update has made improvements of the PDF qualities including adding an RYB color wheel to help you customize. Both the Fresh and Bug Hunting modes are available for LibreOffice.

Compared to Office I would say it’s like Office but more customizable and with more features. It’s a highly customizable alternative giving you all the perfect features you need.

4. Office Online

Yes, I’m not crazy because Office Online is one of the best alternative options for Microsoft Office. Microsoft created to give Google a competition for the Google G Suite. It’s quite surprising actually as it is completely free.

So, you don’t have to worry about spending any money on this one. You’ll have access to all the Office programs such as Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote and even Outlook. Though it doesn’t include Access and Publisher, these are hardly used by anyone.

The other tools will give you all the options you had in Microsoft Office suite. So, I’ll say it’s a pretty good alternative.

Though some features are missing on the Online Suite, such as, can’t copy formatting across documents, can’t add fancy borders to Word docs, and the References ribbon is gone entirely.

But if you ask my opinion it’s a minimal price to pay for the free features you are getting. Again if you want to use it for editing pivot tables, managing databases, or execute more advanced operations, you should go for other alternatives.

Nevertheless, you will get a familiar interface that no other alternatives can provide no matter how they try.

5. Apache OpenOffice

This suite is one of the oldest alternatives to Microsoft Office. Apache OpenOffice is giving their services for the last 15 years. And many people use this one instead of Office suite.

It comes with six programs based on the same platform as Office suite. So, it will be an easy task for you to switch to OpenOffice anytime. You will have Writer for Word processing, Calc for spreadsheets, Base for Databases, Draw for Graphics, and Math for equations and Impress for presentation.

It’s an open source software, so there will be constant updates adding to the program. It stores all the files in an international format so that you won’t have any problem creating or sharing them.

It has some major functions such as cell-dependent calculations, spelling check, and Microsoft Word support. Even though they add new features regularly, but still it has a friendly interface to work.

You don’t have to worry about seeing tutorials first to work on this. The software comes with an instructional wizard to help you get to know the interface quickly.

6. Google G Suite

This one is the cloud based alternative to Microsoft Office. It’s an ideal choice if you are looking to work with a team on a project. The Google drive will store and share the files you create. And it will make it accessible for all other team members.

The Suite supports a broad range of files such as PDFs, DOC files, and even iWork files. So, you won’t have to worry about the loss of any information. It also connects with other platforms such as Gmail, Calendar, and Google Plus.

The interface is not quite user-friendly like Microsoft Office, it’s rather confusing. There could be necessary tools hidden in the menus that are hard to find if you have not gone through any tutorials.

Though, if you have previous experience of using Chrome or Chrome OS, then you would have a pretty decent idea of how it’s going to be.

This program can be an excellent choice for someone who will edit from a distance or has limited storage capacities. The Suite will provide you with the ability to work on documents and write it with others too! A feature you won’t have in Microsoft Office.

There could be numerous reasons for you to ditch Office. But now you will have some options to consider as alternatives. All the sites are compatible with Office files, though the compatibility varies from one app to another.

These six best alternatives to Microsoft Office will give a good range of programs to choose. Most of them are free, but one or two paid ones are incredibly cheap compared to Office.

My recommendation would be to try out FreeOffice and LibreOffice. Though in the end, the choice is entirely up to you.