36 applications for the successful home office

As established freelance homeworkers ourselves, we've built up a catalog of useful free software that can help you when working from home, too -- from the obvious to the less obvious. Read on, at the time, for our choice of apps for those working from home.

It's nearly certain you already have office software installed. If you're running Microsoft Office, even though, you'll find a number of useful add-ins that can help boost productivity. If you're currently giving Office a trial run in Windows, you might find 30 days isn't enough time to decide whether it's for you or not. Install Office Trial Extender and you'll be able to extend this for up to a maximum of 180 days.

The Windows version of Office

If you find yourself endlessly switching between open documents in the Windows version of Office, install OfficeTab, which allows you to display all open documents as a series of tabs in Word, Excel and PowerPoint, making it easy to move between them.

With people moving their files to the cloud for easy access, backup and collaboration, it's worth noting that a couple of Windows-only apps help integrate your Google Docs account with Microsoft Office. Google Cloud Connect for Office automatically uploads your Word, Excel and PowerPoint files to Google Docs each time you click Save, during Harmon.ie for Google Docs extends the functionality to Outlook, giving you direct access to your Google Docs interface for the purposes of sharing your files via links instead of attachments, reducing the load on your inbox.

When it comes to creating PDFs, the most common solution is to use a virtual print driver, which "prints" the file to PDF via the File > Print menu. Again, Mac users can enjoy this functionality as part of OS X, however Windows users don't have to worry. Both PrimoPDF and doPDF offer PDF printing capabilities for free, during Nitro PDF Reader offers the complete all-in-one tool: A PDF viewer offering tools for both printing PDFs and directly converting files to PDF from over 300 supported formats.

Email's all so then and good, nevertheless it can be slow. You could take to the phone, yet that can prove expensive, so why not get the best of both worlds and sign up for a free Skype account? Download the correct Skype client for Windows, Mac or Linux and you can enjoy free voice and video chats with other Skype users, plus send instant messages and share files too. And if your colleagues or business partners insist on using another network instead, install Trillian, which is as well available for Mac and a variety of portable devices including Androids, iPhones and Blackberries.

The sharing of information

If you want to collaborate through the sharing of information, just as notes or web snippets, check out Evernote or Memonic, both of which synchronize to a web account and can be accessed from a smartphone using dedicated apps too.

If you only need to organize yourself, Revolver Mail may seem like a bit of overkill. No matter, because there are plenty of tools out there that will bring your life into order. One of the best freebies has to be TaskCoach, another cross-platform gem that's lightweight and capable of managing composite projects with multiple goals. If you need something with more features, check out EssentialPIM or The Hit List instead.

Start by ensuring your data is transmitted securely across any network, even public  hotspots. Setting up a Virtual Private Network is the answer here, and LogMeIn Hamachi is one of the best VPN tools out there.

Before we close the door on improving your working life as a homeworker, there are two final tools we'd like to show you. What happens if you're away from your desk and urgently need to access your computer? Install TeamViewer and you can remotely access and control it from another machine, your iPhone, iPad or Android device.

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