Cloud-based productivity software is on the rise and it’s becoming the de facto choice of an increasing number of people, mobile and desktop users alike.The convenience of creating, saving and processing files entirely on the cloud, with no significant hit to your local computer’s storage space plus anywhere access to your files, is one of the wonders of today’s ultra-connected computing age.For a free cloud-based word processor that’s feature-rich but easy to use and minimal but powerful, try Zoho Writer.

Zoho Writer

Zoho’s Writer word processor is a cloud-based HTML program that’s a cinch to use.It supports all the major document formats (file sizes up to 10MB) like doc, docx, docm, docm, dot, dotm, dotx, odt, rtf, html, htm, txt, and tex. Aside from these formats, it can also export your work into PDF files.Like Microsoft Word, it supports multiple tabs, spell checking, a dictionary and a thesaurus, text boxes and shapes and even image and video embeds. For formatting styles, it has a wide variety of preset templates and character styles to choose from.Other useful features include DocuSign and Adobe Sign capabilities, Mail Merge and advanced online publishing tools such as WordPress integration. For mobile users and unreliable connections, there’s even an option to edit a document offline and sync the changes online later.

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Microsoft Word veterans should feel right at home with Zoho Writer and can even replace it for your basic word processing needs. Zoho even has a Microsoft Word plugin for tighter interoperability.

Real-time collaboration

For team collaborations and file sharing, like other cloud-based word processing software, team members can edit and see changes done to a document in real time. Change tracking can also be turned on for any particular collaborator.Team members can comment and view comments as threads via Zoho Chat.For a brief overview and tutorial on Zoho Writer, check out this official video.

Download instructions

Since Zoho Writer is cloud-based, there’s really nothing to download!Just point your browser to Zoho Writer’s page, click “Start Writing,” sign in with your email, Facebook, Google or LinkedIn account and you’re good to go.For mobile users, Zoho has Writer apps for iOS and Android. Click on the blue download links below to get it for your preferred system.Writer is just one of the great software tools Zoho offers. Click here to learn more about Zoho’s line of productivity software.