Review: Free Editor lets you open and edit over 70 different file types for free |
February 19, 2013
In our everyday lives, we use a number of different programs to edit the various file types we work with. There's Word for DOC files, Excel for XLS files, PowerPoint for presentations, image editors, video and music players, PDF viewers, Hex editors, ZIP expanders, and the list goes on. Most of us use a separate program for each one of these purposes and never stop to think about it. Free Editor claims to open for viewing and editing all the aforementioned file types, and more, all by itself.
For DOC files, Free Editor includes all the basic formatting options, including tables, links, highlighting, etc.
Free Editor, as you can gather from the name, is completely free to use, and according to its support pages, can open and edit 75 different file types, including Microsoft Office files, other document files, image files, Windows files and coding files. I chose to start my tests with simple DOCX and XLSX files, and took Free Editor through its paces. I was immediately impressed by how lightweight and responsive it felt; there was no hanging and no waiting, and aside from a weird but harmless error message which appeared every time I opened a Word 2007 file, I could edit any file I chose to.
For Word documents, Free Editor supports all the basic editing functions such as formatting, images, links, tables, numbered or bullet lists, find and replace, and more. The table toolbar is especially easy to use, and surpasses even Word's native table tools. The editor also includes a spellchecker, which is a nice touch. While Free Editor managed to show any DOC and DOCX file I fed to it, it failed to show figures and images that were already in the document.
With Excel files, things get a bit trickier, as Free Editor does not include Excel's formula bar, which makes it next to impossible to use formulas. While you can insert any formula you wish, there are no helpful suggestions to help you along, and after entering a formula and getting a result, there's no easy way to know which formula is written in the cell. Surprisingly, Free Editor does include more advanced editing options, such as conditional formatting—but with an oversight as big as the missing formula bar, it's just not enough.
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Link: http://www.pcworld.com/article/2027956/review-free-editor-lets-you-open-and-edit-over-70-different-file-types-for-free.html
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