If you need to open an Excel document but don't have Microsoft Office installed, then don't fear - you can open them with Microsoft Excel Viewer.

Microsoft Excel Viewer is a simple application which allows you to open Excel sheets without Excel. Once installed, just double-click on the file you want to open and Microsoft Excel Viewer does the rest:

It's just like using the real thing but obviously, there's no editing of any kind allowed but it's ideal for just browsing or viewing Excel documents if you don't have Office or your Excel isn't working.

If you need to edit Excel, you can opt for OpenOffice which is completely free to use and allows you to both open and edit Excel, PowerPoint, Word and many other formats although it's much heavier and requires a longer installation process than Microsoft Excel Viewer. There's also LibreOffice which you can read more about here.

Download Microsoft Excel Viewer.

I'm a big fan of Google Docs, to such an extent that I don't have any productivity suite installed on my Mac at home – I just use Google Docs for everything. This is why I was happy to read that Google is adding 12 new file types to Google Docs Viewer, the tool you've been using so far to open PDF files that you found online or were attached to an email message.

The 12 new file types supported by Google Docs Viewer are the following:

• Microsoft Excel (.XLS and .XLSX)
• Microsoft PowerPoint 2007 / 2010 (.PPTX)
• Apple Pages (.PAGES)
• Adobe Illustrator (.AI)
• Adobe Photoshop (.PSD)
• Autodesk AutoCad (.DXF)
• Scalable Vector Graphics (.SVG)
• PostScript (.EPS, .PS)
• TrueType (.TTF)
• XML Paper Specification (.XPS)

Thanks to the support for these types, from now on you'll be able to open all the major Microsoft Office formats (DOC, DOCX, PPT, PPTX, XLS and XLSX) plus a bunch of important document and image formats like PSD and AI right in Google Docs Viewer – a faster and safer option that downloading them to your hard drive and opening them on your computer.

Microsoft Office 2011 for Mac will officially be released today and if you're in New York, you can attend a special launch party according to the Microsoft Office 2011 for Mac Facebook page. We gave you a sneak preview of what to expect after testing the Beta version in April and the final release won't disappoint Mac users who've finally got the OS X tailored Office suite they deserve.

There are several things to be excited about (although perhaps not quite as excited as some of the people of the Office 2011 Facebook page who are reacting like Microsoft have landed on Mars). These include the long overdue introduction of Outlook:

The implementation of the "ribbon":

Windows Mobile users have had top put up with limited, stripped-down versions of Microsoft's Office tools for years. Finally, Microsoft seems to pumping up the power of its mobile productivity suite, Office Mobile 2010. Released at the same time as Microsoft Office 2010 for PC, the latest version adds some powerful new functionality to the suite and harnesses the capabilities Windows Mobile 6.5 to deliver a more comfortable user experience.

The overall look and feel of all the apps within Microsoft Office Mobile 2010 is much improved on the previous version. The drop-down menus are sexier and more touch-friendly, and the apps support touch gestures for zooming in and out of documents and flicking through files. That said, the toolbar icons within the apps still look very outdated compared with the desktop versions. I was also disappointed to learn that you still can't drag over text with the stylus to select it for copying, cutting and pasting.

In terms of the utilities themselves, Word, Excel and PowerPoint are definitely more functional than they've ever been on a mobile. For instance, Word Mobile 2010 now includes more formatting options, a whole bunch of new preset formulas have been added to Excel Mobile 2010, and PowerPoint Mobile 2010 adds a feature for hooking up to your PC via Bluetooth and flicking through slides from your phone.

Great news for those Mac users that have yet to try Microsoft Office 2008. The company are offering a free fully functional 30 day trial of the suite. Although Microsoft Office 2008 first hit the shops over a year ago, it's only now that Microsoft are offering a free 30 day trial for free.

All that you have to do is register at Microsoft's Mactopia site and you'll be sent the registration key. Don't worry if you've already got previous versions of Office installed - Microsoft Office 2008 runs alongside them and won't overwrite them. During the trial period, users can upgrade to the Standard Edition or Home & Student Edition.

Currently, the Standard Edition costs a hefty $400 while the Home & Student Edition go for $150. This compares with Apple's own iLife suite which currently goes for between $79-$99.

If you're thinking of giving it a try, bear in mind that it's a big download at just over 500 MB and installation can take a good 10 to 15 minutes so make sure you have a bit of time on your hands before starting. Once you've entered the registration key, you're taken through an introductory tour of Microsoft Office 2008 to familiarize yourself with its powerful suite of tools namely Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Entourage.

It's hard to know where to start when describing what it all has to offer but highlights include the professional templates in Word’s Publishing Layout View, OfficeArt tools and the impressive diagrams you can create with SmartArt. Word is still the best and most intuitive word processing application out there in my mind and Excel remains popular with business professionals due to its power and formula creation possibilities. Check it out for yourself and let us know what you think!

Last week, I attempted to unravel the mystery of how the once-mighty WordPerfect became a gibbering wreak of its former self. Today, the spotlight turns to another fallen hero - Microsoft FrontPage. Here's the sad tale of how the World's most popular Web publishing tool vanished into obscurity within just a few years.

The rise to fame

Believe it or not, FrontPage wasn't always a Microsoft product. It was actually first developed by Vermeer Technologies Incorporated, who in November 1995 released Vermeer FrontPage 1.0, one of the first ever distributed Web content authoring tools. Seeing that this kind of product might have a future, Microsoft snapped up Vermeer shortly after the launch of FrontPage 1.0, for $133 million. The Redmond company released FrontPage 97 in June 1996, when it was also bundled with the Microsoft Office suite. A stripped-down version, FrontPage Express was bundled for free in Internet Explorer from 1997, then came a Macintosh version, followed by four more versions between 1998 and 2003. At the height of the program's success, Microsoft announced that FrontPage was topping 1 million unit sales a quarter.

A couple of weeks ago I had a first look at Office Web Apps, the online version of Microsoft Office 2010. Today I’m going to compare this newly launched service with another online productivity suite that’s been in the business for quite some time now: Google Docs.

To begin with, the main interface in Google Docs looks much better than the one in Office Web Apps, ruined by the presence of a huge, highly distracting banner. Google Docs is clearer and simpler, just like Google’s style.

Both suites have a similar structure on this main page, with document categories on the left and a list of all the files you’ve created so far. The list on Google Docs lets you select multiple documents at the same time to perform bulk operations such as deleting, hiding, starring or exporting. The list on Office Web Apps, however, only lets you manage files one by one, and doesn’t let you delete files – you have to click More > Properties, and then select Delete.

Let me be honest with you: my goal here is to clearly push you to ditch your PC for a Mac. How am I going to manage this? I will use a series of posts, starting with this one, where I recommend a Mac application for every PC program you might use. And to top it off, I'll prove to you that each and every one of these Mac programs is better than their PC counterpart. In this first post we start off with basic apps, you know, the essential programs you use every day to do things like communicate with friends, work on documents or connect to the internet.

Outlook Express - Apple Mail - Finding Outlook Express excruciatingly slow every morning at startup? Apple Mail always starts up in a flash. Another thing I'm really surprised with Outlook Express is the lack of a truly effective search tool, where Apple Mail makes use of the lightning fast Spotlight. Add to that the great templates in Mail and the wide choice of third party plugins and you have a clear winner in Apple Mail.

Windows Live Messenger - Adium X - Why put up with the advertisement-ridden Live Messenger when you can use the open source and highly customizable Adium? The Mac messaging client lets you connect to almost any IM protocol like AIM, MSN or Jabber and can be customized with all sorts of icons, audio, styles and script. True it doesn't offer voice or video chat yet, but you'll still get encrypted Off The Record messaging.

Microsoft Office - iWork'08 - This one is a no brainer. iWork'08 is cheaper, smoother and creates better looking documents, particularly presentations under Keynote. You'll also be able to work with any Microsoft Office document, whether Word, Excel or PowerPoint.

Internet Explorer - Safari - Apple's homemade browser loads twice as fast as IE and integrates perfectly with Keychain, so your online account data is always safe and sound. The sleek metal view and clear bookmark also contrast with IE's convoluted interface.

Nero - Roxio Toast Titanium - I've always found Nero too bloated a program and draining on PC resources. Roxio Toast Titanium on the other hand is much easier to use and offers a streamlined process so that disc of yours is catalogued, burned and ready to watch in no time. It now lets you watch movies on your iPhone and mix your own sounds.

It was always on the cards that a software giant like Adobe would eventually launch themselves into the world of online desktop publishing, especially in view of their pioneering development of Web 2.0 in the form of Adobe Air.

Acrobat.com is a new set of office applications recently launched by Adobe to get a foothold in this rapidly expanding software field currently dominated by the likes of Google Docs and Windows Office Live (Incidentally, why do Microsoft now have to tag anything new they come up with as "Live"? Can they not be a bit more creative in the naming of their online office apps?).

When you enter the site, it's clear that Adobe have decided to base their suite on Flash which as we all know, can be very cumbersome and slow sometimes but it certainly looks slick. You are presented with a collection of online apps including Buzzword (for word processing), Adobe Share (for file sharing) and Adobe ConnectNow which allows you to share your screen with anyone. In fact, ConnectNow is a brilliant online conferencing app that assigns a room for all users to log on. On the downside, there doesn't seem to be any presentation or spreadsheet tools such as PowerPoint and Excel and so it's safe to say that Acrobat.com seems to be aiming more at helping people share and collaborate on projects rather than produce original pieces of work.

There are some definite reasons to be impressed by Acrobat.com. Buzzword gives you a generous 5GB of space for sharing documents and PDF conversions are so quick and easy that I'd never use a third party app for that again. The PDF converter can convert up to 5 files of 200MB each at the same time and it's lightning fast. If they do choose to add a presentation and spreadsheet application, Google and Microsoft may well find themselves with a major player to contend with.

Microsoft Office is one of the most popular and widespread office suites for everyday tasks. Most companies install it on their employees' computers and this enables them to open documents, work on spreadsheets or view a presentation in a comfortable way, all from the same software package.

Now what if you don't have Office installed, for example, in your home computer? You probably can't afford the license or simply don't want to install the whole thing just for viewing the odd fun Powerpoint presentation your friends email you. The perfect solution for these situations is the Microsoft official viewers for Word, Excel and Powerpoint files.

These small, simple apps enable you to open DOC, XLS, PPT and other file formats that are usually managed by the Office suite, so that you can view Office documents without actually having the Microsoft Office suite installed on your system. These viewers work with all Office versions from 97 to 2003, but you may need to install a special Compatibility Pack to open the DOCX format from Word 2007.

Bear in mind that these tools are intended just for viewing files, meaning you won't be able to edit them. In any case, it's a handy way to open Office files when you don't have the original Office apps.