Kingsoft Office Suite Professional 2013 9.1.0.4560

Overview

Kingsoft Office Suite is by far one of the best MS Office alternatives. An office suite is one of the most important packs we install when we first purchase a computer. Those who know the value of a good low-cost software will seldom start with a MS Office license. If you are looking for a decent, comprehensive and affordable MS Office alternative, consider installing trial version of this suite. Kingsoft Office offers three most important office elements - word processor, spreadsheets and presentations. All three come with a bunch of templates and, what is more important, nifty features.

You can choose to install the word processor only - each element can be installed separately. The program is fully compatible with Microsoft Office - it opens .doc, .docx, .ppt and .xls files and it saves .doc, .xls, .pdf and .ppt files, too.

The Professional version is available at $69.95. There is also an option to rent a yearly license for $29.95.

Installation

Installation is smooth and painless. Kingsoft obviously knows how mad some users may get when developers try to install additional toolbars on users' browsers. There is no bundled software in the Kingsoft Professional pack. Installation process is quite transparent - the Wizard keeps prompting the user to choose what settings and features the user would like to install. Once the installation is complete, you will see three icons on your desktop - Writer, Presentation and Spreadsheets. When launched for the first time, the program suggests you create your own personalized signature for your documents. You can use your name, or the company’s name, or simply leave the ‘Admin’ signature that is there by Default.
Works with Windows 7 (32 bit), Windows 7 (64 bit), Windows 8, Windows Vista (32 bit), Windows Vista (64 bit), Windows XP.

Interface

GUI is one of the features that attract when the program is launched for the first time. Users can choose between three skins - Elegant Black, Water Blue and Classic Style that resembles MS Office. The latter may be useful for those who take their time getting used to the new looks.
The interface is very intuitive and resembles that of an Internet browser because you can switch between documents within one window - separate document files open in tabs, just like the browser tabs. This feature comes handy when working with multiple documents simultaneously.
Presentations come with good-looking Templates of General, Business and Education styles. Spreadsheets are easy to sort out and create tables even for those who are slow in MS Excel.

Features

Saves document files as DOCX/DOTX/DOCM/DOTM
Can install Writer, Spreadsheets or Presentation separately
Opens XML documents and save as MHT/MHTML
Inserts pictures from scanner
Supports Solver function
Exports shared workbook to XLS format
Supports customizing shortcut for Macros

Pros

- MS Office Compatibility
- Affordability
- Handsome and feature-rich GUI
- Tabs for multiple open documents are more convenient than separate windows
- Low system requirements allow for this suite to run on older machines
- Attractive templates
- Three good-looking skins
- Support for foreign characters, various date and time formats
- Inserting references, comments and images is easy - just select the tab at the top of the window
- Users can undo changes even after the document has been saved
- In the Pro version, you can create and edit macros, export to .xslx and .docx formats

Cons

- No cloud integration
- No alternative to Outlook
- Three products only
- Not compatible with other popular file formats such as .odt OpenOffice files
- In our test, we copied and pasted this review from Kingsoft Writer into TinyMCE and the resulting text had an odd formatting with lots of blank spaces at the end of each line. The same test went fine with MS Office and LibreOffice.

Alternatives

This intuitive, attractive and affordable office suite is a huge time saver due to the number of nifty features that make routine tasks a tid faster. The installation pack comes clean, without unwanted toolbars. The pack is light on system resources and requirements. The GUI is modern, easy-to-navigate. It runs smooth, fast and works like magic.