Office 365 is also the only way to edit documents on your tablet or phone, as you need a subscription to use the Android, iPhone, and new iPad app. You can download one or all of the Office apps on up to five machines and share your work in real time with other people. Office 365 is a yearly subscription service that starts at $100 for individuals (business plans start at $150 and there's a student plan for $80). However, Microsoft has been heavily pushing its Office 365 service for the last few years. You can buy the desktop suite, which starts at $140 for the student edition and can be downloaded on only one machine. There are also plenty of built-in tools to make collaborating easy, such as tracking changes and leaving comments. Office has stayed popular for so long because each application has more features than most of us will even use, from extensive templates in Microsoft Word, robust calculations and programming in Excel, and animated transitions and multimedia options in PowerPoint. Even Microsoft's cloud storage service OneDrive is now getting looped into the Office family. Those are the big three applications, but Office also encompasses the desktop email software Outlook, note-taking app OneNote, and HTML editor SharePoint Designer. Chances are you've encountered at least one of the Office applications, whether that's Word, Excel, or PowerPoint.

Microsoft's productivity software, Office, has been the gold standard for almost 26 years. I'll also give you guidance on which service is right for your needs and your wallet. I won't dive too deep into how each program works, but instead point out the important features you should know about from each productivity suite. Those are a word processor for writing and editing text documents, a spreadsheet tool for organizing and analyzing data, and a presentation builder for creating slide shows. I also highlight two free offerings, Apache's OpenOffice and LibreOffice.Įach suites outlined in this post have three core programs. This guide takes you through the big three productivity suite options: Microsoft Office, Apple iWork, and Google Docs. We're taking this opportunity to take a look at the most popular productivity suite offerings to see how they compare. Now that Microsoft Office is available on the iPad, we all have yet another option to write, create spreadsheets, and build presentations on the go.

Editor's note, May 12, 2014: This post was updated to include details about Google's new Drive apps for Android and iOS.

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