- Quick specs
- Price: Free
- Operating system: Windows 95/98/Me/2000/XP/NT
- Date added: May 02, 2006
- Total Downloads: 372,516
- Downloads last week: 975
- See full specifications
A newer version of AbiWord is available.
(Download doesn't provide access to previous versions of this program.)
- CNET editors' rating: stars
- Average user rating: stars out of 131 votes
See all user reviews
CNET editors' review
Reviewed by: CNET Staff
This free, open-source word-processor strikes us as a worthy alternative to pricey, big-name products. AbiWord has a quick learning curve, since the interface is very similar to those in Word and WordPerfect. You'll find just about all the features you'd expect, including the ability to cut and paste, highlight, and a bevy of common formatting tools. Although we did miss a grammar-checking utility, AbiWord can check your spelling in many languages; you'll need to choose the appropriate foreign language dictionaries during installation. A huge plus is the ability to open and save Microsoft Word documents, though the program also has its own proprietary file format. You can download plug-ins at the publisher's site to import and export a wide variety of other formats, including OpenDocument. AbiWord should appeal to a wide range of users who seek a functional word-processing app but lack a large bank account.Publisher's description
From AbiSource :AbiWord is a free open-source word-processing program similar to Microsoft Word. It is suitable for typing papers, letters, reports, and memos. AbiWord is able to read and write all industry-standard document types, such as OpenOffice.org documents, Microsoft Word documents, WordPerfect documents, Rich Text Format documents, and HTML Web pages. Give your document that professional, scientific, or fun-to-read look using AbiWord's advanced-document layout options. Use tables, bullets, lists, images, footnotes, endnotes, and styles to enhance the way your document looks. AbiWord comes in many languages. Make sure your document contains none of those nasty spelling errors by using AbiWord's built-in spelling checker. Dictionaries exist for more than 30 languages.
Version 2.4.4. adds updated OpenDocument import and export filters, tweaks to the Windows interface, various fixes to our Right-to-Left text handling routines.
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User reviews of AbiWord 2.4.4
- Average user rating: 3.8 stars out of 131 votes
- My rating: 0 stars Write review
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Showing 5 of 17 user reviewsSee all 17 user reviews
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0 out of 2 people found this review helpful
Version: AbiWord 2.4.4
Pros: easy to use
Cons: too bulky and white
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9 out of 11 people found this review helpful
Version: AbiWord 2.4.4
"Much improved, but still needs a lot of work."
Pros: Stand-alone AbiWord might be preferable to a full office bundle like OpenOffice, for those who only need word processing. (If you don't need all that other stuff, why download it?) The interface is pretty familiar, and it has a good compliment of tools. It even supports some text and paragraph styles, in much the same way as MS Word and OOo Writer. There's also a portable version that can be run from a UDB memory key. Oh, yeah. It's free. Gotta love that.
Cons: Stability is improved over earlier versions, but still isn't the greatest. (Don't take my word for it, check out AbiSource's own change log.) It no longer crashes at the drop of a hat, but its not uncommon for some of the "advanced" features to conflict or cease functioning.
The native file format (the default cannot be changed) makes for some huge data files, even bigger than Word binaries. Compatibility with Word's DOC format isn't what it's cracked up to be, and AbiWord's ODT export import/export filter is terrible. Word and Writer documents often don't look anything like their original format. Headers and footers get lost, as well a lot of field data. Keep documents very simple, and they port just okay in RTF format, but you'll have to remember to change the "save to" format each time.
Although it supports styles, automated footnotes, and some other cool features, some more mundane ones are missing. For example, would it have been so hard to include a print preview button?
AbiWord has some good stuff going for it, not the least of which is its free and open source status, but it also has enough annoyances and glitches that I wouldn't want it to be my only word processor. Not yet, anyway.
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1 out of 1 people found this review helpful
Version: AbiWord 2.4.4
"Has most features as of MS Word. Pretty good for 5Meg install"
Pros: I was going to download Openoffice but 98 meg just for a word processor seemed to much. 5Meg is pretty reasonable given all the features it has. Seemed to do most things MS word can do.
Cons: Converting a doc to HTML leaves out carriage returns so have to go through and enter by hand.
Imbedded images sometimes don't display correctly (get the same problem with word sometimes).
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2 out of 3 people found this review helpful
Version: AbiWord 2.4.4
"Looks promising, but is just okay."
Pros: AbiWord is about the only free word processor I know of for Windows that is a real word processor, and not just a dressed-up text editor. It has a lot of useful tools for making tables inserting graphics, making tables of contents, etc. Yeah, OpenOffice does all that and more, but it's a BIG download.
Cons: The help file and online help at the website are pretty lame. If you're familiar with Word, you'll get along alright, but newbies won't have an easy time figuring out some of the features. Kinda slow, and despite what some others here have said, it still crashes and locks up more than it should, and people I send DOC files to often can't open them. (And no, I'm not a novice, nor do I have a jacked-up PC.) Probably the best thing I can say about AbiWord is it's free. Otherwise, the negatives would outweigh the positive.
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1 out of 1 people found this review helpful
Version: AbiWord 2.4.4
Pros: it's a proper word processor and does it's job well. It isn't bundled up with a spreadsheet, database or all sorts of other junk you don't want and it doesn't use much hard drive space. It has a few non-elaborate templates and most of the usual word processing functions. Ideal for me.
Cons: It does coloured highlighting but I wish it would do coloured text too. I'm not grumbling though as it's free.
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