Rutba Office: fifteen free, open-source office apps for Windows, in one download

Rutba Office is a desktop office suite for Windows that anybody can download and use, at home or at work, without paying. Its source code is public under the AGPL. Version 2.0 came out on 15 October, and 2.25.0, the first full release, on 12 November, each release tested before it goes out and described in full on its release page.

Play the film

A 100-second introduction, edited in Rutba Office’s own Video app. It was made when the suite had ten apps, before Recorder and the four after it joined.

Fifteen apps in one download

One installer gives you Documents, Worksheets and Presentations for Word, Excel and PowerPoint files; PDF for reading, filling, signing and redacting PDFs; Mail, Calendar and Contacts; Pictures, a fast photo viewer; Image, an editor with layers; Video, an editor and player; Recorder, which records your screen, camera and voice as one finished video; Live Broadcast, which streams it live; Talk, for messages and calls with your contacts; Data Files, a database; and the Locker, which encrypts a folder’s files where they already are. They open from one launcher, which also starts a blank document, a template or a screen recording.

You need not have all fifteen. A new copy starts with the eight Office apps, from Mail to Pictures, and the Locker, which every copy has. The others are added from Choose apps when you want them. Since 2.20 the installer asks which apps to install and writes only those.

Office files, kept as Office writes them

Documents, Worksheets and Presentations read and write .docx, .xlsx and .pptx, open old .doc, .xls and .ppt files in full, and handle OpenDocument. When you change a file, only the parts you changed are written again, so a document sent back to somebody who uses Microsoft Office arrives as they expect. The ribbons follow Office’s own, tab for tab, so there is little to relearn.

The editors go further than the basics: tracked changes and Compare, forms, mail merge, tables of contents and indexes in Documents; a real calculation engine with Excel 365’s newer functions, PivotTables and charts in Worksheets; and slide shows you can draw on in Presentations.

Where it already goes further than the free alternatives

Outlook archives without Outlook

Mail opens Outlook’s .pst and .ost files and Outlook for Mac’s .olm where they lie, without Outlook installed. One search covers every archive and every account at once, and a folder can be exported for legal hold with a checksum for every message.

A PDF app that redacts properly

The PDF app puts pages in order, comments, fills and signs forms, and redacts. Redaction takes the marked words out of the file itself and out of its properties, bookmarks and comments, and saves a new file, rather than drawing a black box over words that are still there.

Text recognition on your own computer

Recognise Text reads scanned pages in English, Urdu, Arabic, Hindi, Chinese and Japanese, and nothing is uploaded to do it. A scanned letter becomes searchable while the page stays exactly as it was, and in Worksheets a pile of receipts becomes a row each.

Images, video and screen recording

Image has layers, selections, masks and text you type on the picture. Video edits on a timeline of tracks, records a screen, a window or a region with your camera and microphone, and exports MP4 with your computer’s own hardware at about twice real time.

Record, and stream live

Recorder records your screen, camera and voice as one finished video, from scenes you can change while it records, with your name and logo on the picture. Since 2.22, going live is an app of its own, Live Broadcast. It sends one picture to YouTube, Facebook, Twitch, TikTok, Instagram, LinkedIn, X, Kick, Rumble or any RTMP address, wide and tall at once if you want both, and can keep a copy on your computer, where your stream keys are kept encrypted. None of these had been tried on a real account when 2.23 shipped, and the post on Live Broadcast has the details.

A database for a small business

Data Files keeps related tables in one file, with queries designed as in Access, forms, reports, and print templates for invoices, receipts and payslips. Twenty-five sample businesses, from a corner shop to a used car dealer, show it working with a year of invented records, or start empty for your own. The post on Data Files goes through it.

For everybody who uses it

Every app is audited against WCAG 2.2 at levels A and AA at each release, works from the keyboard alone, tells a screen reader what is in the document and follows Windows High Contrast. The interface speaks English, Urdu, Arabic and Hindi, with right-to-left layout throughout.

Private by design

There is no telemetry, and no account or sign-in for anything but Talk. Rutba Office makes two requests of its own, and says so on its privacy page: a check for a newer release, and a daily check for announcements that carries only the version and the name of the operating system. Either can be turned off. Anything else it reaches, it reaches because you asked, such as your own mail server or an app you add. Your documents never leave your computer unless you send them, and Mail shows messages without running anything in them, warning before it opens a link that looks like a trap.

Talk signs in with a free Rutba account, because it connects you to other people. A call goes straight between the two computers where it can, and messages pass through a small Rutba service, which introduces you and holds each message until the other person’s app has it.

Tested before every release

Each release runs the engine’s tests, then checks that drive the real windows the way a person would, pressing ribbon buttons and reading what appears. Fuzzers feed thousands of deliberately damaged files and PDFs to make sure each one opens or is refused with a sentence, never a crash. The release page says what ran and what passed.

The Tour shows each app at work, and the source code and every release are on GitHub.