Jun 10,  · Microsoft Office Free Download – About 2 years after Microsoft Office was released, Microsoft launched Microsoft Office In general, the appearance has not changed much but its performance is better than Microsoft Office with the same package contents, namely Microsoft Word, PowerPoint, Publisher, Excel, Visio Viewer, . Nov 06,  · Best Free Antivirus; Gaming Bests Page 1 Office Review; Page 2 Word, With , though, Microsoft is moving towards real-time collaboration where multiple users can edit a document at. Program license Full Version. Version Works under: Windows / Windows 8 / Windows 7. Program available in English. Program by Microsoft. Review. Comments. Office is the latest version of the flagship productivity suite from Microsoft that includes a range of programs from a word processor to a spreadsheet.
 
 

Microsoft Word review: Finally! Much needed updates make for a better Word – PowerPoint shows collaboration’s pain points

 

Office arrives today with big updates to how you work with others. But how does it stack up against its number one adversary Google Docs?

Roughly three years since its last major update, Microsoft has finally brought Office into the modern working world. This new version, called Office on both Mac and PC, is the first to have collaboration and sharing tools that closely match what Google Docs has had for years.

You can finally work with other people on a document, spreadsheet or presentation in real time, seeing what they are editing as they make changes. Microsoft also added integrations with its search engine Bing and messaging and video-calling app Skype. These welcome additions blend seamlessly into the apps and continue Office’s tradition of having special extra features that it’s competitors don’t. For Office, which in recent years has been challenged by cheaper or free alternatives, the news is a big deal.

It keeps Microsoft ahead of the pack, especially for customers who can’t get by with another application. But can the updates do anything to win back folks who switched to the apps that Google and Apple have? There’s no definitive answer to that question, because it all comes down to what you need from these kinds of programs. Office and Google Docs, the two apps I’ll focus on here, both have pluses and minuses.

I’ll explore the features in both that make them worth your while so you can ultimately decide which program to pick. Using it, you can right click on a word to run a Bing search and get more information, without leaving Word, Excel or PowerPoint.

Search results pop up in window on the right side, next to whatever you’re working on, and include results from Wikipedia, Bing images and Web results.

Click any of the links to open your browser and read more. The best part of Smart Lookup is that uses the context of the words around the one you selected to get the best search results. For instance, if you run Smart Lookup on the word “dating” in sentence about carbon dating, Bing will show results for carbon dating, not romance. Google Docs has had a similar research tool for years, but it’s nowhere near as powerful as a this new Smart Lookup feature or even a regular Google search.

Microsoft acknowledges that the Office apps have so many features that it can be hard to remember where to find all of them in their various menus. So Microsoft’s Office team created a new search tool to help you find them. Think of it as a far less annoying and more helpful Clippy. In the ribbon main menu bar at the top for Word, Excel and PowerPoint, click on “Tell me what you want to do” and start typing the name of a feature you need.

The app will find it and display the exact menu you need, without needing to dig around for it. It’s a simple addition, but one that would have come in handy for me many years ago writing college papers and constantly forgetting where to find the footnote tool.

The new Share menu in each app shows everyone who has access to that file. Hover over a name and you’ll see a pop-up menu with quick links to send a message or start a voice or video call with Skype, without opening the Skype app on your computer. The only downside to this feature is that it only works if you have the Skype app installed on your machine and use Skype for Business.

While it includes several big changes, Office is all about the small touches. One little new feature that adds a lot of functionality is the ability to pick up where you left off in a document.

When you reopen a file you’ve been working on, Word shows you where you last worked and lets to jump to that place with one click.

It’s essentially a bookmark for your documents, and it’s a fantastic tool for anyone working on a lengthy project over several days or weeks. Microsoft Office has long been the standard for those who use word processors, spreadsheet tools and presentation builders at work. That’s because Word, Excel and PowerPoint are packed with advanced features, like mail merge, detailed charts and animated slides that are missing or limited with other programs. And for many people, Excel is the gold standard program for crunching large amounts of data.

Not to mention, Office was designed to work both online and off, so you can do your work no matter where you go. Google Docs can work offline, but you’ll need to have opened your file before you go off the grid. Google has improved Docs over the years, adding new features and making it work better, it still pales in comparison to what Office has been able to do for the last decade.

If your work requires a full range of features and offline editing, it’s still very hard to beat Office. Office introduces real-time typing to Word, where two or more people can work on a document at once, and you can see what everyone is typing. Each person is shown as a colored text cursor with their name that moves as they type. This works well, and as long as every person editing has a stable Internet connection, you’ll see changes and additions almost immediately.

Multiple people can work at once, but this feature is only available in Word. Google Docs has had this same feature for several years now, and what makes it better is that it works in Google’s presentation app Slides and in Sheets, the spreadsheet app. That gives Google the upper hand here — at least for the time being. Microsoft has worked hard to make sharing much more seamless in Office , but unfortunately, it still doesn’t feel as easy as sharing in Google Docs. Type in an email address and decide if that person can only view the file or edit it, and click share to send them a link to the file.

In my tests, sharing a file send an email to recipient, with a link to that file, instead of sharing an attachment. Microsoft designed it that way to make sharing easier, without requiring that you download the file before you open it. However, clicking the link opens Office. You can then open the file in the desktop versions of Word, Excel or PowerPoint for more advanced editing tools. The whole process feels like more work and more steps than sharing a file created in Google Docs.

For students, teachers, workers or anyone who just needs to write, edit, build spreadsheets and create presentations, it’s hard to beat Google Docs’ free tools. Google Docs, Sheets and Slides don’t have as many features as Office, but for many people they have enough to get the job done. The full version of Office is going to cost you.

Now, that’s what you’ll pay for the full version of Office, but Microsoft also has free tools with Office. You only need a free Microsoft account to use them. They offer all of the basic tools you’d need in each, and in most cases are only missing advanced features like tracking changes and a few chart types in Excel. The Office apps for Android and iOS are a bit more limited, but still free. Even without an Office subscription, you can use them to create documents and make minor edits.

If you have a subscription, you get advanced features, like tracking changes. Office isn’t just a fresh coat of paint — it’s a significant upgrade to Microsoft’s iconic productivity software. It makes meaningful changes to how you can work together with others on a single file or an entire project.

Office has come a long way since in the last few years and the extras you get with the versions are enticing, if you’re willing to pay.

If you’re already an Office subscriber, you’re getting Office for free, included with your membership cost. There’s no reason not to upgrade, since you’re keeping all the same features from Office on PC and Office on Mac , plus getting the new features added in Office For those who don’t have an Office subscription and are considering getting one, Office might be the reason to bite the bullet.

It’s already brimming with every feature you could need, and now it’s especially useful for collaborating with others. Plus, with , you get 1TB of online cloud storage space, where you can save the files you create in Office so they’re accessible everywhere. It’s a good deal if you really need the extra features that Office has.

If money is a factor in your decision, check out Office. Though it doesn’t have every single feature that the desktop apps do, the free online versions of Word, Excel and PowerPoint have been updated for Office too. Many of the sharing and collaboration tools I outlined above are included, and using those tools can help you decide if you need to spend the money for the full versions.

Like Google Docs and Apple’s iWork productivity suite, Office and the cloud-based tools included with Office will continue to evolve, changing how we work.

These three systems are getting closer in features and function with every new update, making it harder to deem one the best. We’ll be revisiting Office, Google Docs and other office suites in the near future, to explore them further and help you determine which one is right fit for your needs. Five reasons Microsoft Office is better than Google Docs, and three reasons it isn’t Office arrives today with big updates to how you work with others.

Sarah Mitroff. Sarah Mitroff Senior Editor. Watch this: 4 reasons to get excited about Office What’s new in Office pictures.

 

Microsoft office word 2016 review free

 
For home users Microsoft Word and Office in general is good, but its benefits are biggest for medium and large businesses. At the bottom, Outlook now adds Groups. Version history is now easy to access, and you can quickly restore an old version in seconds. Its card-based format reminded me a bit of Trello, although the functionality is probably closer to Zoho Projects. Microsoft’s “support” of office is beyond a joke considering Microsoft hasn’t significantly updated the suite or added meaningful features since See full bio. Note that you still get free Microsoft technical support for the duration of your subscription, even if you buy your subscription outside of Microsoft.