Don’t Pay For Word! 5 Reasons You Should Use Office Online
Microsoft
is not known for its quick adoption of new trends, but when it does get
on board, it often tries to make up lost time with gobs of money and
hoards of experienced software engineers.
This strategy seems to be working with
Office Online,
a cloud-connected version of the world’s most popular productivity
software that is free to use (with limitations) and offers a buffet of
useful features. You’ll even find Office Online useful, if you already
have a copy of Office installed on your computer.
Office Online Is Free
There’s
always been one big, fat problem with Office; the price.
It’s expensive, and many users simply can’t afford it, even if they
prefer it over .
Office Online, however, is one of the few ways
you can use Office entirely free of charge, forever,
and without any specific limitations. Office’s web apps are the same
whether you pay or not, and free users even receive 15 gigabytes of
cloud storage, which is far more than you’re likely to need, if you’re
only using said storage for Word documents or PowerPoint presentations.
What’s
the catch? Well, while Office Online is great, it isn’t a full-fledged
version Office. Just like web document editors from Google, Zoho and
others, there are limitations on what you can accomplish. Word’s
advanced formatting options are not present, Excel’s graph functionality
is limited, and PowerPoint can’t be used to insert video.
What
you can do, however, is create, edit and open Word, Excel and PowerPoint
files. You may not want to use Office Online to craft a presentation
for a Fortune 500 company, but it’ll work fine for banging out a resume
or budgeting your finances.
Access Your Documents From Anywhere
One
of the Office Online’s most obvious advantages is its cloud storage
connectivity. Documents, spreadsheets and presentations edited used the
online interface are automatically and can be opened from any computer. You can also save files to your local PC, but that is not the default behavior.
In
short, it works like any other cloud productivity service. This is not
an advantage relative to those, but it is an advantage to a huge number
of Office owners who might be reading this article. Office did not
bundle OneDrive connectivity until the
introduction of Office 2013, so there’s a ton of users with older versions of Office (for PC
and for Mac) who lack this feature.
Sure,
you could grab cloud connectivity by paying for an upgrade, but that’s
not going to look attractive if you’re already satisfied with what your
version of Office can handle. Office Online is free and
instantly available, making it a perfect upgrade path for the
budget-minded user.
Share & Collaborate On Documents In Real-Time
Office
has included collaboration tools for many years, but it has been
consistently behind the curve in the online collaboration, and important
tool that many organizations love to use. This remains a problem in
the desktop apps, but Office Online is a bit more welcoming.
Documents
created in Office Online are easy to share with others because they’re
automatically stored in OneDrive, which lets you share with other people
with a Microsoft account or by generating and sending a link. Other
users given editing permission , and each user can see the others as they work.
For
better or worse, this remains a trick you can only pull off with the
online version. Even Office 365 subscribers can’t do the same from the
desktop application, though they do have access to a broader range of
offline collaboration options. You can add, edit and view comments in
Office Online, but you can’t use Track Changes or add advanced markup to
comments.
Easy Cross-Platform Compatibility
While the
cloud connectivity of Office Online can be partially replicated by
paying Office 365 owners, the desktop applications remain restricted to
Windows and Mac.
Office
Online, however, is available on anything that can run a web browser.
There’s also free apps for Android and iOS phones, though for some
reason iPad owners have to
for this advantage. While not called Office Online, the app versions of
Office 365 are basically that; they share the same restrictions and
advantages.
This makes Office Online great for anyone who owns an
Android tablet with a keyboard, a Linux PC or a Chromebook. Yes, you
could use Google Documents and other services instead, but Office Online
provides highly accurate Office file format support, fifteen gigabytes
of free storage and easy connectivity with Office 365, if you use it or
plan to in the future.
Simplify Your Workflow
has value to users. Limited options mean less distraction, and saving
items to the cloud eliminates the need to navigate folders or
organize libraries. Fewer options result in a more efficient workflow,
if the extras aren’t necessary.
Office
Online provides this same advantage in a familiar interface. No, it is
not as powerful as the full version, but it does enough to handle the
document editing needs of many home and even professional users. And you
already know where to find the menus and buttons you need.
The
online version is also surprisingly fast; in fact, it sometimes feels
quicker than the desktop application on old systems with
and a slow mechanical hard drive. And, since files are stored in the
cloud, they don’t eat into your valuable hard drive space or become lost
in a tangle of folders you really should have organized by now.
I speak of Office Online’s efficiency from experience. I own
Office 2010 for my PC
and Office 2011 on my Mac, and use both regularly. Yet, I’ve found that
the vast majority of my work is just as easily accomplished in Office
Online – and, when I use it, I benefit from its cloud storage, which
makes syncing between my PC and Mac dead-simple. Give the online tools a
chance and you may find they completely change your workflow.
Should You Use Office Online?
Microsoft Office Online is not
and doesn’t stand out as the best online platform, but it’s the obvious
choice for users already hooked into Microsoft’s ecosystem. The
interface is exactly like the desktop apps, missing features aside, so
there’s no need to learn new tricks. Office Online is free, quick and
instantly familiar, and for those reasons it’s worth a second look
from any skeptical eyes that passed on its earlier incarnations.
Have
you tried Office Online? Let us know what you though of it! And if
you’ve tried other solutions, let us know about your experience with
those, too!
Source:
http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/dont-pay-word-5-reasons-use-office-online/
