Portable SoftMaker Office

Portable SoftMaker Office is a software suits that contains a word processor and spreadsheet. It comes packed with useful options to please everyone's taste.

Since it's portable, you can save the pack anywhere on the hard disk and click any of the two executables to run. Otherwise, Portable SoftMaker Office can be saved to a USB flash disk or similar device, in order to run it on any machine seamlessly.

Both applications have user-friendly interfaces, familiar to the ones of similar products, such as Microsoft Office or LibreOffice.

TextMaker offers support for Microsoft Word (DOC, DOT), OpenDocument text (ODT), RTF, Pocket Word - Pocket and Handheld PC (PSW and PWD), HTML 4.0, and others.

Objects can be easily manipulated by entering object mode. An additional toolbar appears on the upper part of the screen, allowing you to insert text, picture and OLE object frames, along with equation editor items. You can draw lines, curves, straight, elbow and curved connectors, and so on.

As far as format options are concerned, TextMaker lets you change character and paragraph formatting, set or clear tabs, create bulleted or numbered lists, set borders for paragraphs and objects, transfer formatting attributes using the mouse, and set chapter formatting.

It is possible to insert database fields, calculation, symbols from character map, external documents, SmartText entries, cross references, and tables. When it comes to writing projects and reviewing them, you can create databases, generate index, bibliography and table of contents, set comments, track changes, use a thesaurus, and check spelling.

PlanMaker is similar to Microsoft Excel, and it offers support for XLS, RTF, DBF, DIF, TXT, and others. Some previously described formatting attributes apply here as well. Moreover, you can insert functions, comments, symbols, SmartText entries, page break, header and footer, as well as manipulate tables and table objects (e.g. sort, transpose, insert cells).

Other options of PlanMaker let you password-protect sheets or the entire workbook, edit fill lists, seek an input value for the given result, recalculate all cells, as well as update charts from table data.

Both utilities have minimal impact on system performance, using low CPU and RAM. We have not encountered any problems in our testing. Unfortunately, the pack has not been updated for a while. For example, it does not offer support for XLSX format.

Portable SoftMaker Office is a handy office suite for anyone looking for an alternative (and free) word processor and spreadsheet tool, which integrate powerful features.