Abiword is a useful and free word processor

There are times when you don't need the wide range of word-processing features built into Word, just the ability to write documents that can be spell-checked and well formatted. Abiword is such a program and is free to download and use.

It is simple to install and can be set as the default program to work with Word .doc and .rtf files.

Abiword used to have a selection of plugins that could be downloaded from the Abiword site. They are now included in the download itself and you can select them during the installation wizard.

Plug-ins include a grammar checker, google and wikipedia search integration, an equation editor. We needed to manually select the option to install the English dictionary.

Abiword will look familiar to anyone who has used Microsoft Word 2003 and most of the important icons are in the same place. It can include tables, bullet and numbered lists, footnotes and end notes.

Although it is not part of an office suite, Abiword can perform mail merge operations using comma-separated text files or tabbed text files.

Abiword is also available for Linux. Click here to go to the Abiword download page.