Open Office?

[ShirleyW]

[Caanan]

I believe you can save your documents as MS Word documents, even for the different versions of Word. You choose how when you do File > Save As....
http://www.winona.edu/library/ig/help/o ... r_save.htm

Here's some more information that might be helpful: http://documentation.openoffice.org/HOW ... o-OOo.html

[Mel]

I'm a VA and use OpenOffice side-by-side with MS Office. There are a few quirks, like when converting one type of file to the other but for the most part, it works fine. My MS Office program sometimes throws temper tantrums so that's why I have OpenOffice too.

Just make sure before you save that you find out from your client's what version of Word/Excel they use so you can save the files as that format. It will keep conflicts to a minimum.

[karynsolo]