A free alternative to Google Docs, Sheets and Slides that needs no account

The Workspace is a set of office applications that run entirely in your browser tab: Docs, Sheets, Slides, Notes, Tasks, Calendar, Forms, Contacts and Drive. There is no account, nothing is uploaded, and the pages work with the network switched off once they have loaded. Your work is kept in the browser on this device, or, if you choose a folder on the front page, written as ordinary files into that folder on your own disk. What it does not do is let two people edit one document at once, or sync between your devices, because both need a server holding your files and there is none.

Docs

A word processor laid out as Word is: pages under a ruler, headings and paragraph styles, bold, italic, underline, colour and highlight, alignment, indents and line spacing, bulleted, numbered and checklist lists, tables, links, pictures, columns, headers and footers with page numbers, a table of contents, footnotes and endnotes, and find and replace. Comments are anchored to the words they are about, with replies under them, and Track Changes marks what is typed and deleted, with who did it and when, to accept or reject. Version History keeps the document as it stood at each autosave. Six templates get a letter, a proposal, minutes and the like started.

It opens a Word file (.docx) chosen from your disk, in the tab, and writes one back with its headings, lists, tables, links and pictures, comments and replies, tracked changes, footnotes and endnotes, page size, margins, header, footer and page numbers. It also writes OpenDocument, Markdown, plain text and a web page, and a PDF through the print dialogue. Coming in, a Word file’s own fonts, colours and sizes are not read, so its text takes the document’s styles; its tracked changes arrive already accepted, and its header, footer and page setup are not read.

Sheets

A spreadsheet with formulas that recalculate as you type: 167 functions, from SUM and IF to XLOOKUP, SUMIFS, NETWORKDAYS, PMT and IRR, with a formula able to name another sheet, as Costs!B4. Cells take number, currency, percentage and date formats, fonts, fills, borders and alignment, and merge. Rows sort and filter, the header row freezes, rules colour cells by what they hold, and a cell can carry a note, a threaded comment or a list to choose from. There are tables that grow as you type under them, charts, sparklines, pivot tables, and pictures and shapes over the cells. File, Print prints the sheet, its print area or a selection.

It opens and writes Excel’s .xlsx: every sheet becomes a tab, with its values, formulas, formats, merged cells, widths, frozen panes, colour rules, validation, notes, comments, tables, charts and pivot tables, and they go back out as Excel’s own parts. A formula that uses a function it does not have keeps the value Excel saved. It imports and exports CSV and tab-separated text as well.

Slides

Eight layouts and a slide master, five themes, text boxes, pictures, shapes and tables placed anywhere on a slide, transitions and animations, speaker notes, and a presenter view with the next slide, the notes and a timer, with the slides on a second screen. It opens and saves a PowerPoint file (.pptx) with the words and their formatting, lists, pictures, shapes, tables, groups, backgrounds, transitions, hidden slides and speaker notes, editable in PowerPoint, Keynote and LibreOffice. Animations stay in this browser’s copy, and PowerPoint’s own charts do not come in. It also exports one HTML file that plays in any browser, and a PDF with a slide a page.

The rest of the suite

Notes is a markdown notebook with folders, links between notes, backlinks, tags and a graph. Tasks is boards of lists and cards with labels, checklists, due dates and attachments; it imports a Trello board and exports JSON, CSV and .ics. Calendar has day, week, month, year and schedule views, repeating events, and imports and exports .ics, the format every invitation actually is. Forms builds a questionnaire you fill in on the same device and exports the answers as CSV. Contacts reads and writes vCard and CSV. Plan schedules a project with dependencies and a critical path. PDF fills, signs, marks up and rearranges a PDF. Drive keeps files in the browser and shows everything the other apps have made in one place, with a backup of the lot as one file.

Where the files are

By default, in the browser’s storage on this device. That is private and it is not a backup: clearing the site’s data deletes it, and another browser or another machine sees nothing. The better arrangement, on a desktop in Chrome or Edge, is to choose a folder once on the front page. From then on the apps copy their work into that folder as ordinary files as it changes: documents, decks, notes and the task board as Markdown, each sheet as a .csv, the calendar as an .ics and the address book as a .vcf. The folder is written to, not read from, so a file you put there yourself is opened with File, Open like any other. It can be one that another program syncs, if you want your files on two machines; the site never touches a server for it.

What is not there

• Working together. Two people cannot edit one document at the same time, and there is no sharing link. Comments and tracked changes travel in the Word file: send it, and they come back with the other person’s.
• Sync. Nothing moves between your devices unless you move it, or point the folder at something that does.
• Everything Word, Excel and PowerPoint can hold. Macros, dynamic array formulas such as FILTER and UNIQUE, a Word file’s own fonts and sizes, and animations and charts in a .pptx do not come across.
• Add-ons, scripts and a marketplace.
• A phone app. The pages work on a phone in the browser, and can be installed to the home screen, but the folder on disk is a desktop feature.

If your work is a shared document that six people edit at once, this is not it and it does not pretend to be. If your work is writing a letter, keeping a budget, building a deck and owning the files afterwards, the table is the short version.