AbiWordby SchoolForge updated January 30, 2012
AbiWord is an award winning, small, fast, featureful and cross-platform word processor.

Software Details

AbiWord is an award winning, small, fast, featureful and crossplatform word processor. Get your copy today to experience the state of the art in word processing.

Requirements

Operating systems: Windows, Linux, BSD, Mac OSX
Screen libraries: GTK+

Reviews

1
AbiWord Review
4
Average: 4 (1 vote)

AbiWord is an overall good, simple, and easy to use word processor. Although higher end, power users may find the formatting capabilities lacking, many first-time word processing novices will find that AbiWord is very capable for basic written document creation. AbiWord can save documents in many formats including: .odt, .doc, .docx, .pdf, .txt, .epub, .abw. This makes it very useful and compatible when sharing documents with other non-AbiWord users.
AbiWord is considered a light weight word processing program because its basic functions are kept to a minimum. If you don’t need all the features of LibreOffice or MS Office then AbiWord is the perfect choice for you. AbiWord contains at least 100 different fonts and its document page layout looks very similar to MS Office or LibreOffice. It can create tables, has a spell checker, and a collaboration feature to share and edit documents.
AbiWord can be used for a wide range of ages from middle school through post-college. Because of its simplicity, younger students will have no problems using AbiWord. Older students and even those who are out of college will also find AbiWord useful for general word processing.
I did have difficulty with setting up an APA style formatted template because of limited functionality with headers and page formatting. There is a limited online help function and knowledge base for AbiWord that assists with simple user instructions and questions. For many basic users the functions and capabilities of AbiWord are very adequate.
AbiWord is free and comes preloaded on Xubuntu and can also downloaded from SchoolForge, the Ubuntu Store, Linux Software Manager, or from the web at: http://abisource.com/. AbiWord will run on Windows, Linux, and Mac OS X.