Is there a free version of Micorosoft Office, with equivalents to Microsoft Excel, Powerpoint, Access and Word?
Yes! openoffice.org offer an Office Suite which uses the LGPL (GNU Lesser General Public License) Equivalents to Microsoft Office applications are present and can save in open office native format or Microsoft format. To save in Microsoft format by default (for compatibility when transporting your work to other computers) do the following: Within Open Office, go to Tools, Options and then expand the Load/Save category. Now select General and on the right handside of the window change the ‘Always save as’ pull-down menu to Microsoft Word format.
