Microsoft Office Online

The IT Department has been evaluating a move from WordPerfect to MS Word.  In case you missed it, you can read my log from last month on Word vs. WordPerfect.

As we continue with our evaluation, you may want to consider trying MS Office Online.  Recently, Microsoft made Office Online free for personal use.  If you have a Microsoft account, (or create a free one) you can access Office Online and use it.

MS Office online comes with online versions of Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, and several other applications. It also offers a free terabyte (~1000 GB) of online storage space with OneDrive.

I tried a few features of Office Online but have not used it extensively yet.  It can perform most of the basic functions of the standard version of Office, but it definitely is a light version.  Don't expect  to have all the same features you have on your disk based version of Office.  For example, I tried to create a dual column document, as I know I cannot do that in Google Docs.  I was unable to do so using MS Office Online either. There are probably many other similar shortcomings if you are working on more complex documents.

Still, the program had the same basic look and feel of MS Office, with a limited version of the ribbon toolbar.  You also have the ability to open and edit MS Office documents and download documents you have created in MS Office format.

If you want to give this a try, I have a few warnings:

1. Only the home version of Office Online is free.  By its terms of service, you are not permitted to use it for commercial use.  Using this service for work documents would seem to violate its terms of service.
2. If you have to create a new Microsoft Online account, I strongly recommend using a personal email address rather than your work email.  We have used some of your work emails to create accounts in order to install MS Office 2013 on your computers.  Also, we may use your work emails in the future if the firm decides to purchase Office 365 in the future.  If you have a personal account using this same email address, it will only lead to complications and conflicts.
3. Microsoft seems to limit an IP address to the creation of three online accounts per day.  So if you try to create an account from work and are told you have reached the daily limit, there is nothing we can do about that.  You will have to wait for another day, or set up your account from home.
4. Do not store work documents in this online account.  If your account is closed for any reason (such as violating terms of service for commercial use) we would have no way to recover this information.
5. Keep in mind that the Help Desk does not support MS Office and has no experience with the online version, so if you have problems, you are on your own.

If the firm does eventually decide to move to an Office 365 subscription and phase out WordPerfect, we would get the full subscription which includes a traditional version of MS Office, not just the online version.  But this free version is a great opportunity for you to give it a try and decide if it is something that could be useful.

MS Office also now offers versions of its Office suite for use on iPhones, iPads, and Android devices.  Just go to the App Store or Google Play and download the App to your device.