Office Suites

What are "office suites?" Well, you're probably familiar with Microsoft Office or, at the very least Microsoft Word or Microsoft Excel. Those are two components of the Microsoft Office suite - a collection of apps or programs that, historically, were used in an office. An office suite is a collection of programs or apps. They have come to include, at the least, a word processing program, a spreadsheet program, and a slide creation program. In the Microsoft Office Suite those are Microsoft Word, Microsoft Excel, and Microsoft PowerPoint. It includes other programs, too but those are the ones that most of us care about and use.

There are other office suites which we'll discuss a little later but, for now, let's just look at the Microsoft Office suites. I said suites (plural) because there are several different versions of Microsoft Office:

• a free, web-based version

• a package which you purchase with a one-time fee

• a subscription package that you pay for on a yearly basis.

Microsoft Office on the web

Microsoft Office (hereinafter referred to as MS Office) on the web is really called Microsoft Office Online (or MS Office Online). It is just what it sounds like - MS Office apps that you access and use via a web browser over the Internet. It includes Microsoft Word, Microsoft Excel, and Microsoft PowerPoint as well as a few other apps. You can get started with it by going to https://www.microsoft365.com/. You need a Microsoft account to access it but you can create one from that page or sign in. Along with your Microsoft account you get 5GB of free OneDrive cloud storage. This is important because all files you create or edit with MS Office Online are stored in your OneDrive cloud storage. If you want a local copy, you can download them to your computer or other device. And if you have files on your computer or other device and you want to edit them with MS Office Online you can upload them to OneDrive. The web apps contain most of the commonly used features and functions of the "full" version of MS Office (i.e.those MS Office suites we discuss later) but not all. In all likelihood this won’t cause a problem but if it does you can do a search for alternative ways to replace those features. To the best of my knowledge there is no comprehensive list of features or functions that are missing so it’ll be a matter of using the online version to see.

Microsoft Office Boxed (e.g. Office 2021 or Office 2024)

This is a one-time purchase that you install from provided media or via download. It's a full version of MS Office and includes all the basics we discussed earlier but it works completely offline. Whereas MS Office Online is constantly being updated, the purchased version is NOT updated besides for security updates. It can be very inexpensive if you're willing to look for or wait for discounted versions, often for less than $50. The boxed versions are named by the years they were introduced - Microsoft Office 2024, for instance. If you are a basic user and just do fairly simple spreadsheets or Word documents or PowerPoint decks, a package like this should suffice for you but if you need newer features or functions you will not be getting them because, as I said, your Office apps will not be updated.

Microsoft Office 365 subscription

This is a yearly subscription and provides desktop apps as well as access to the web and mobile apps. The apps (desktop, mobile. and web) are constantly being updated. The subscription comes with 1TB of OneDrive cloud storage .There are several versions of the subscription, two of which we’ll highlight here. The Personal subscription is only available to one user. The Family subscription allows the owner to add up to 5 additional users. Each of the additional usersn also get 1TB of OneDrive cloud storage. Everyone needs to have and sign in with their Microsoft id. And each member, including the original purchaser can install on up to 5 devices.

Other suites

MS Office is pretty much the standard office suite but there are others. We won’t discuss the Google or Apple suites. We will discuss two of others that are pretty popular: Apache OpenOffice and Libre Office. Apache OpenOffice, at https://openoffice.org, has no official mobile apps or web version and it’s updated infrequently. That said, it’s been around for around 20 years so it’s a mature product. It can read and write pretty much all of the current file formats created by MS Office.

Libre Office, at https://www.libreoffice.org/,is the more actively maintained suite. It has Android and iOS apps (see https://www.libreoffice.org/download/android-and-ios/) but no official web app. It too supports all of the standard document types created by MS Office as well as a few document types that sprang up from alternative office suites. A list is available at https://books.libreoffice.org/en/GS75/GS7510-FileFormatsSecurityExporting.html.

That’s all for this time

I hope you have a better understanding of some of the various alternative office suites that are out there. Don't hesitate to write to me if you have questions!

As always, my intent is to help you understand the basics and equip you to search for more detailed information.

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