"Carlos E.R." wrote:

The worst of this is that my friend "needs Word" for working at home
because of the pandemic, thus her employer should be providing any
software needed at their expense, but apparently they will not :-/

You sure MS Word is a mandate dictated by her employer? Maybe she just
thinks it is a mandate from her employer? More likely they just want
her to work on Word documents.

At least (being the education administration) they could have some kind
of rebate plan, but apparently they don't. If you are curious, they
contracted gmail for group or enterprises, thus google documents is
certainly an enticing idea.

Not sure how her employer would know she was not using MS Word at home
if the alternative word processors could read and save in .doc[x]
format. Her employer would just be getting a file as the result of her
home-based work. Although possible, it is unlikely her employer's
documents (if not using VBA for scripting) use features available in MS
Word that are not available in the alternatives. If Wordpad, as
suggested by others, is a viable candidate for an alternative word
processor to MS Word, the scripting and esoteric features in MS Word are
non-issues to selecting alternatives to MS Word.

Do any of these documents she is supposed to work on incorporate VBA
macros (i.e., dynamic documents)? That is where compatibility fails
with alternatives, even with LibreOffice. The alternatives may provide
scripting in the documents, but their scripting interpreter/engine won't
be Microsoft's VBA. There also some esoteric functions in MS Word that
may be missing in the alternatives. I remember Pivot Tables (in Excel)
weren't available in some alternatives. Since you can link Excel
spreadsheets into Word documents (the table isn't merged or inserted
into the Word document, but referenced by the document and visibly shown
as though part of the document), not only would the user of the Word
document need support for pivot tables but also have Excel to properly
view that pivot table inside the Word document.

https://forum.softmaker.com/viewtopic.php?t=19628
While Softmaker appearently support pivot tables in their office suite
(PlanMaker), there might be some differences or bugs, and no idea if
their FreeOffice freeware supports them. Freeware from authors of
commercial versions of the product usually cripple the freeware version.
They need a lure to snag the freeloaders to buy.

Supporting the Microsoft or Open Doc file formats does not equate to
supporting all the same features in a different word processor. Also,
how to perform a matching feature in an alternative word processor may
not match how it is utilized in a different word processor. I remember
when starting to use LibreOffice that some features readily accessible
via ribbon bar in MS Word were buring in some submenu in LibreOffice.
Despite trying to be feature compatible, there is still a learning curve
when using an alternate.

https://www.softmaker.com/en/compari...ftmaker-office

I gave that URL before. Obviously the freeware version doesn't have
everything their payware version does. In addition, they won't list (no
one every does) every feature in MS Word to show they have an equal or
similar feature in their payware version. For example, FreeOffice
doesn't support charts in a [TextMaker] document. You could see if
creating the chart in their spreadsheet [PlanMaker], creating a chart in
the spreadsheet from data cells there, and then if you can link or
insert the chart from the spreadsheet into the document. I think the
lack of chart creation solely within their document program (TextMaker)
is why I panned their FreeOffice product. There was some other
deficiency, but too long ago to remember, and after a compounding of
missing or deficient features led me to get LibreOffice. However,
LibreOffice doesn't support Microsoft's VBA scripting language, but then
I never suffered having to create or edit dynamic documents whether at
the workplace or home (for myself or doing work at home). Those using
VBA that I encountered were creating new apps, like just-in-time
inventorying, using VBA to create what looked like a whole separate
program but relied on Excel to interpret the scripts. They bundled
Excel (and Word) with their scripts to produce a new program.

I'd say, if she has a decent always-on Internet connection, to have your
friend try the free online Office web apps to see if they are sufficient
for her use. If so, and if offline access is needed, then consider
offline alternatives, like Softmaker's FreeOffice or LibreOffice, but
she'll still have some learning to adapt to the alternatives. Just
showing a ribbon bar similar to MS Word doesn't compensate for all the
differences between different programs.