What is a portable word processor

Here is a list of Best Free Portable Word Processor Software for Windows. These are the word processing software that come in a portable package. The main advantage of a portable software is that it can be carried in portable storage devices and can be used on the go. You don’t have to install it on your system to use it. So, all these software let you process text documents without installing them on your system.

You can find all required tools in these portable word processors. These software support a good number of import and export formats including DOC, DOCX, ODT, RTF, TXT, XML, HTML, PDF, etc. You can easily import a document in a supported format and edit it. These also let you create a document from scratch. You can add simple text and insert images, text art, header, footer, page numbers, and more objects to a document. Apart from that, you can even add a table of content listing main sections of  your  document. These also let you format content as per your requirements as well as set up document layout.

Besides main functions, you can find handy tools like spellcheck, auto-correct, thesaurus, mail merge feature, and more. You can also encrypt your documents in some portable word processors. All in all, these are quite feature word processing software which come in portable packages.

My Favorite Free Portable Word Processor Software for Windows:

LibreOffice Writer is one of the most feature rich word processor on this list. It contains all standard plus various advanced tools to process documents. Plus, it supports a variety of file documents.

FocusWriter is another nice one in case you want a distraction free wiring software.

You may also like some best free Open Source Word Processor, Portable Spreadsheet Software, and Portable PDF Merge Software for Windows.

LibreOffice Writer

LibreOffice Writer is a feature rich word processor that also comes in a portable package. You can find its both installer and portable versions on its official website. This software come with other office utilities including LibreOffice Calc, LibreOffice Base, LibreOffice Impress, LibreOffice Math, and LibreOffice Draw. The entire office package is called LibreOffice which is a powerful free office suite.

Talking about its feature set, it is packed with a lot of advanced tools that help you process word documents. It provides multiple templates like CV, Resume, MediaWiki, etc., which let you create different kinds of documents. Plus, it supports a wide number of document formats to view, edit, and create documents. Some of the supported formats including Word document (DOC, DOCX), OpenDocument Text Document (ODT), XML, HTML, RTF, TXT, PDF, and EPUB.

Main Features of this Portable Word Processor:

• You can directly insert various types of content to your documents including text box, comment, images, icons, shapes, hyperlink, bookmark, cross-references, tables, special characters, fontwork, header and footer, page number, etc.
• It lets you create and insert table of content and index to your documents.
• It offers different elements to insert a form to documents such as label, text box, option box, check box, list box, combo box, push button, image button, image control, table control, etc. You can use Form Navigator to manage individual elements pf added form.
• You can set up document layout and style as per your need such as like text formatting, spacing, alignment, anchor, arrange, text style, bullet list, number list, watermark, etc. Furthermore, it provides direct options to style document pages like title page, first page, left page, right page, footnote, endnote, HTML, etc.

Additional Features:

• You can find a lot of handy tools in it that help you process document e.g., spell check, thesaurus, word count, autocorrect, chapter numbering, line numbering, bibliography databases, etc.
• It provides Mail Merge Wizard feature to share documents with multiple number of people at once.
• You can add a password to encrypt a document while saving it.
• You can digitally sign a document to add extra security to it.

Conclusion:

It is one of the best free open source portable word processor which comes with a variety of tools to process text documents. There are a lot more feature than the listed one that you can explore while using it.

AbiWord

AbiWord is another free open source portable word processor for Windows. It is one of the popular word processing software used for document creation. It is very easy to use yet quite effective in terms of functionalities. You can find all standard word processor tools in it. Here is a list of features that you get in it.

Key Features:

• In it, you can process documents in formats like DOC, DOCX, RTF, HTML, TXT, etc
• It offers some predefined templates to create a specific type of document like Business Report, Friendly Letter, Memo, Resume, Press Release, and more.
• You can add a variety of elements to your documents such as normal text, table of content, pictures, direction marker, date & time, field, mail merge field, bookmarks, etc.
• It allows you to enter a table of your document from its Table menu. Plus, you get some handy table management tools in this menu such as Convert Text to Table, Convert Table to Text, Autofit Table, Merge Cells, etc.
• You can also insert header and footers, footnotes and endnotes, text from an external file, special characters, and more to your documents.
• It offers all basic formatting tools such as  font type, font size, font color, text highlighter, alignment, text style, bullets, numbering, etc.

Additional Features:

• It contains a Collaboration tool that lets you add multiple collaboration accounts to share documents with other users.
• You can also find more helpful features in it such as URL Dictionary, Check Spelling, Word Count, Mail Merge, Revisions, Document History, Google Search, etc.
• You can also create annotations in your documents.

Conclusion:

It is a clean and intuitive portable word processor software which provides a good number of document processing tools and features.

FocusWriter

FocusWriter is yet another free portable word processor software for Windows. It is basically a distraction free writing software that helps you focus more on your words than anything else. In it, you can create word documents as well as import existing documents and edit them. To do so, it supports various input and output formats including DOCX, FODT, ODT, TXT, and RTF. Now, lets see what features are provided in it.

Main Features of this Portable Word Processor:

• It lets you write in full screen mode without any distraction.
• It provides some background themes to choose from in order to develop a fantasy environment in order to pour in your thoughts in words.
• It lets you insert symbols (blocks or scripts) to a document such as musical symbols, ancient symbols, vertical forms, specific language symbols, etc.
• Some standard formatting options are provided in it which you can use to format text, such as align text, bold, italic, strikethrough, superscript, subscript, increase/ decrease paragraph indent, left to right/ right to left writing direction, etc.

Additional Features:

• You can set up your daily goals to write a number of words within a time limit.
• It shows total word, paragraph, page, and character count at the bottom of the document.
• It lets you set up timer which acts as a reminder while you write.

Conclusion:

It is a good software for creative writers who want a distraction free environment to write a text document.

OOo4Kids Writer

OOo4Kids Writer is yet another free, open source, and portable word processor for Windows. It comes with a fully featured office suite “OOo4Kids” that is primarily designed for kids. It is easy to use and contains only essential tools, hence suitable for kids. You get document, spreadsheet, drawing, and presentation software in this package. Let’s checkout main functions of its word processing application.

Main Features:

• It can handle documents of various formats that include DOC, TXT, HTML, XML, RTF, etc.
• It lets you add various kinds of objects to your document like image, math formula, audio, video, etc.
• You can format added content as per your requirement as well as set up document layout the way you want.
• It provides a document encryption feature that lets you password protect your documents.

Conclusion:

It is a nice free portable word processor which is well suitable for kids and novice users.

ONLYOFFICE Desktop Editors

ONLYOFFICE Desktop Editors is one more free portable word processor for Windows. Although its official website doesn’t provide a portable version, you can find one on the link given on Download Page. It is basically an office software with document, spreadsheet, and presentation processing modules. You just need to click its Document module and then you will be able to create various types of documents. Let’s checkout some of its main features that you can look forward to.

Key Features of this Portable Word Processor:

• It supports commonly used document formats to view, edit, and create documents e.g., DOCX, TXT, RTF, ODT, PDF, etc.
• You get a dedicated Layout tab which lets you configure layout of your document as per your specifications, like margins, orientation, size, columns, page breaks, footnote, bookmark, etc.
• It lets you add images, charts, shapes, hyperlinks, text box, text arts, equations, tables, and more content to your documents.
• You can insert a Table of Content to list different sections and chapters of your document.
• It also lets you password protect and encrypt documents so that only the one who are authorized can access the content of document.
• You can also customize paragraph settings, image settings, table settings, text settings, etc., and use other formatting options such as bold, italic, highlight, alignment, font formatting, etc.

Additional Features:

• It offers a Plugin tab from where you can add cliparts, edit photos, extract text from files using OCR, use symbol table, send document via email, use Thesaurus, record macros, and more.

Conclusion:

It is a good office software which also provides a word processor to create and edit documents in several formats.

TextMaker

TextMaker is the next free portable word processor for Windows. It comes in SoftMaker Office package which contains one more office application called PlanMaker (spreadsheet processor). This office suite comes in installer version too; you can find the installer counterpart here.

Main Features:

• It works well with some commonly used document formats such as TXT, DOC, ODT, HTML 4.0, etc.
• You can insert various elements to your document like smart text, symbols, cross-reference, bookmarks, images, table, grid, OLE object, etc.
• You can also add a table of content to a document in this software.
• It lets you format added text and other content using standard tools like font formatting, alignment, bullet & numbering, etc.
• Some other features like Thesaurus, Check Spelling, Create Database, and more are provided in it.

Conclusion:

It is a decent portable word processor which provides all standard word processing features.

CopyWriter

CopyWriter is another free portable word processor on this list. It supports two document formats including RTF and TXT to open, view, edit, and save document. It is quite a basic word processor in which you get only some standard features. Let us checkout those features.

Key Features:

• It lets you directly insert date & time and characters to a document.
• You can create a list of auto words which you can quickly enter to your text document.
• It provides all basic formatting functions such as bold, italic, underline, highlight, alignment, font formatting, etc.
• Basic search features including find & replace, mark line, go to line, and more are available in it.
• At the bottom of this document writer, you can view document statistics including number of words, characters, lines, and pages.

Conclusion:

It is a very basic portable document processor to write and save text documents.

ZetaWord

ZetaWord is another one of portable word processor for Windows on this list. It is another text document processor with some basic features. You can import RTF and Plain text document in it. In it, you get three features namely Word Count, Sort Alphabetically, and Reverse Line Order. That’s it. It doesn’t provide any other major features.

Conclusion:

It is yet another portable word processor with only few selective features.

A portable word processor is lightweight device that is easy to transport (e.g., from classroom to home). It can be helpful to kids who may have trouble writing by hand and prefer to use a keyboard. Word processing allows the user to edit and correct his written work more efficiently than doing so by hand.

What type(s) of learning difficulty do these tools address?

This type of tool benefits people who struggle with: writing.

Products to consider:

• Fusion
• Quickpad

Resources to help you evaluate assistive technology for your child:

• Consumer Tips for Evaluating Assistive Technology Products

Updated February 2010

These free word processors can be a great alternative to Microsoft Word. Many have very similar characteristics to Word and since they’re free, you’ll be saving hundreds of dollars by using one of them.

All of the free word processors below can create, edit, and print documents. Many of them can open and edit Word documents, automatically check your spelling, use a wide selection of free MS Word templates, create tables and columns, and much more.

Our top picks for a free word processor are the first ones on the list. These have the most features and we suggest checking them out first to see if they’ll fit your word processing needs. You should find that most of them can handle just about everything Microsoft Word can.

Thanks for letting us know!

• 
• 
• 

© 2023 Prezi Inc.
Terms & Privacy Policy

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Microwriter is a hand-held portable word-processor with a chording keyboard. First demonstrated in 1978, it was invented by UK-based, US-born film director Cy Endfield and his partner Chris Rainey and was marketed in the early 1980s by Microwriter Ltd, of Mitcham, Surrey, UK. By using a mnemonic alphabet, it was claimed^{[by whom?]} to allow note-taking of up to 8,000 characters at an input rate averaging 1.5 times that of handwriting.^[1]

The Microwriter MW4[edit]

Although there was an earlier unit with an LED display,^[2] the MW4 with an LCD was the most common unit.

The 23 cm × 12 cm × 5 cm (9″ x 5″ x 2″) device comprises:

• A six-button chording keyboard.
• A single line LCD.
• An 8 bit CDP1802 microprocessor.
• Complete Word processing software in ROM.^[3]
• 16 kilobytes of RAM.
• Rechargeable Nickel-cadmium batteries — sufficient to run the device for 30 hours.^[3]
• Various interfaces (see below).

This device is capable of allowing the user to enter and edit several pages of text — and by connecting a printer to the RS-232 serial port connector, documents can be printed without the aid of a separate computer.^[3] It was first sold in the UK in most mail-order shops in computing magazines such as Your Computer from Spring/Summer 1983 and cost around £400-£500 (equivalent to around £1500 in 2014).^{[citation needed]}

Keyboard[edit]

The keyboard uses one button for each finger and two for the thumb of the user’s right hand. The five buttons immediately beneath the fingers are pressed in different combinations to generate all letters.^[4] The second thumb button is used to toggle through a range of modes that allow the user to switch case, enter numbers, insert punctuation and even add ASCII control characters, to be used in editing the document being prepared. To type a letter «T», for example, the user would tap the top thumb button to shift to uppercase, then chord a «t» by pressing the index finger and ring finger buttons simultaneously.

The manufacturers claimed ^{[citation needed]} that most people could learn to use it in just a couple of hours. With some practice, it is possible to become a faster typist with the Microwriter than with a conventional keyboard, providing that what is being entered is just text. Typing is slowed if a substantial number of special characters have to be entered using the «shifting» mechanism.

Learning the chords for the basic letters and numbers is facilitated by a set of flash-cards that show simple mnemonics for each character.

External ports[edit]

At the top end of the unit is a 25 pin D-type connector providing an RS-232 port, an interface to an audio cassette player for saving and restoring files and a small white on/off button. At the other end is the connector for the battery charger and a 37 pin D-type connector that can be hooked up to an optional external unit to allow the Microwriter to be connected to a television and thus to perform full-screen editing. The serial port can be used to connect the Microwriter directly to a printer, or to allow it to be plugged into a computer to function in place of the conventional keyboard.

Reception[edit]

Despite a lack of similar products, the Microwriter was not a success, and ceased production in 1985. Microwriters were sold direct, in the USA the advertised price was US$499.00^[5] which might have been too high for a successful product offering.

A cut-down version of the Microwriter, known as the «Quinkey«, was sold as a keyboard add-on for the BBC Micro computer connecting via the analogue port. It came with a game that helped the user to learn the chords. There were two versions of the interface software, one optimised for entering BBC BASIC commands, the other for word processing.^[6] Later, drivers were created for the Amstrad CPC and PC1512 home computers that worked through the digital joystick ports, and a version for IBM PC’s running MSDOS that used the IBM RS232 port control pins as a digital port for a 2×3 key matrix. These saw limited use.^[7]

Microwriter AgendA[edit]

The Microwriter AgendA was one of the first PDAs.^[8] Released in 1989,^[9] it includes a set of small «conventional» keys arranged inside the half circle of a Microwriter chording keyboard with larger keys.^[10] It has 32k of storage, pluggable memory modules, a 4-line LCD screen, and advertised excellent build quality and long battery life. It was designed for text-mode note-taking without a conventional desk or keyboard. In 1990 it was awarded the British Design Award.^[8]

Interface cables were available for the common serial (RS-232) and parallel (printer) ports of the day. These use a «smart» cable connected to a single I²C bus on the AgendA.

CyKey[edit]

Chris Rainey, the co-inventor of Microwriter, re-introduced Microwriting for PC and Palm PDAs with a standalone miniature chording keyboard called CyKey. CyKey is named after the Microwriter chord system’s co-inventor Cy Endfield.^{[citation needed]}

SiWriter[edit]

The SiWriter is an app for the iPad and iPhone which uses a close variant of the microwriter chording system developed by Cy Enfield. It is available via the Apple app store.^{[11][non-primary source needed]}

The system is let down by the lack of haptic feedback — you can’t tell if your fingers are in the right place without looking, but you get better with practice. The finger pad positions are adjustable to fit your hand size. It also works for left handed users and has a live speech output facility that could be helpful for people with speech impairments.^{[according to whom?]}

See also[edit]

• Stenotype

References[edit]

External links[edit]

• Microwriter page at 1980s Vintage Computers
• Video recording of a Microwriter session