Microsoft Word Starter Opens All Documents as Read Only

Microsoft 365—the new name for the apps and services formerly known as Part 365—is the behemoth of office suites and the one that every competitor tries to match. It runs nearly everywhere, with full-featured editions for Windows and macOS, surprisingly powerful apps for iOS and Android, and slick web-based versions. Microsoft 365 has all collaborative features constitute in deject-but suites like Google Workspace, plus all the benefits of disk-based apps: speed, security, and the ability to work offline. Microsoft's apps aren't perfect, and a few features are bad-mannered and unwieldy, but you lot'll need strong reasons to cull anything else. Microsoft 365 is an Editors' Option document-editing suite.

How Much Does Microsoft 365 Cost?

Subscription prices starting time at $69.99 per year for Microsoft 365 Personal, which includes access to Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote, Outlook, and Skype apps for one user on up to five devices. Yous too become Sway for interactive reports and presentations, forms for creating surveys and quizzes, and Microsoft's To Practice app. At the other end of the pricing calibration, the $99.99-per-year Microsoft 365 Family unit tier provides access to the aforementioned apps and supports up to six users. The premium version of the Microsoft Family app is included in this subscription tier, as well.

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Microsoft 365'south spider web interface has a button at the lower left corner that opens links to all the available apps.

These prices are roughly comparable to Google Workspace, which changes $6 and $12 per month, respectively, for its Concern Starter and Business Standard plans. Microsoft's prices are notably higher than SoftMaker Function, which runs between $29.90 and $49.90 per year, only SoftMaker doesn't include web-based apps and simply offers a beta version of an Android app.

All plans include 1TB of OneDrive storage per user. Microsoft likewise supports two-gene authentication logins for web access, which is a security characteristic we like to see.

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You can purchase a standalone version of Part Home & Student 2019 (archetype versions of Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and OneNote) for a one-fourth dimension cost of $149.99. If you opt for this edition, yous don't get automatic updates or any OneDrive storage.

Microsoft 365 Business plans first at $five per user per calendar month and the meridian-end Business Premium plan costs $twenty per user per calendar month. All Business plans add together Teams, SharePoint, and Microsoft Exchange cloud services over the Personal plans. Windows-only apps Publisher, for creating layouts too complicated for Give-and-take, and Admission, for building databases, are function of the Business packages, besides. Business organisation Premium users get mobile-device management tools and the Azure Information Protection service.

You can use Microsoft 365 on the spider web or download apps for Windows, macOS, Android, and iOS devices. Microsoft recently updated its macOS version with a new build that runs natively on Apple Silicon Macs (such as the latest MacBook Air); these new apps run at amazing speed.

The right function suite for y'all may very well depend on the platforms and devices y'all use. Microsoft still does not offer versions of Part apps for Linux platforms—hopefully, the release of Border for Linux is a sign that Microsoft will more broadly support those systems. There'southward nothing to stop you lot from using the spider web-based version of any office suite on Linux. The open-source LibreOffice and SoftMaker Office offer dedicated apps for that platform.

Google Workspace is the closest rival to Microsoft 365, only its apps are online-but. LibreOffice doesn't offer mobile apps except through a third-party version called Collabora Office. Softmaker Office and Corel WordPerfect Office are desktop-only suites.

Lots of Features in Slick Apps

The suite's core apps—Discussion, Excel, PowerPoint, and Outlook—have been growing and irresolute for almost forty years, and they're blimp with features that tin can make them seem heavy and unwieldy compared to relative newcomers like Apple's Pages and Numbers. Also, Microsoft still uses a single app, Outlook, for the e-mail, contacts, calendar, and to-do-list features that other vendors, such equally Apple tree and Google, have separated into smaller, sleeker apps that work together smoothly.

Give-and-take, like virtually modernistic discussion-processors, offers over-elaborate templates that you lot can employ to organize your own documents, though you're probably better off using them simply equally examples to learn from when building your own documents.

Every bit far equally the design of Microsoft's individual offices apps goes, the company has clearly outdone itself. They're easy on the eyes, highly customizable, and offer a spacious interface that feels at home in modern hardware in ways that rival apps don't. Microsoft keeps improving its Dark mode back up, and the latest enhancements include subtle color-shifting effects. These are available at present in the beta aqueduct and will probably before long get in in the release version. Another nifty fob is that if you change a setting, such as the default color scheme, on 1 platform, the change automatically gets applied to all your Microsoft apps on other platforms. The ribbon can still be confusing—I have to proceed reminding myself to get to the Insert tab to edit an existing header or footer—but a "Tell me what you want to practice" icon on the tiptop-line menu lets me bound instantly to the feature I want.

A Familiar Office Suite Keeps Improving

Word and Excel are probably the near-used apps in the suite, and for skillful reason. Both run well, are highly polished, and get frequent updates that brand them easier to use. For case, while Excel already towers over all rival spreadsheet apps and has no trouble handling enormous worksheets without strain, Microsoft keeps adding features. I recent improver is the Permit function, which enables y'all to use named variables inside a formula and insert that function multiple times in a worksheet; this makes calculations faster and easier to maintain. This is typical of the types of updates that Microsoft 365 subscribers get, but which don't get added to the standalone Office version.

Both Word and Excel also offering conveniences that you won't find in any competitor. For example, Discussion makes it possible to type long documents in a viewing style that shows the actual formatting on the page but hides the white space at the top and lesser of each printed folio. That fashion, a judgement that extends across a page break doesn't have two inches of white space between the beginning and terminate of it. Double click on the space between pages to turn on this feature.

This is simply a sampling of Word's dozen of fine-tuning options for formatting and organizing documents. If yous open a document created by an older version of Discussion, or import documents from other formats, the options includes dozens of settings that preserve the imported format or adjust to Word'due south preferred formatting.

Here's another example with Excel. If your worksheet has a list of people with their first names in one column and their last names in another, you can quickly build a column where each jail cell contains each person's first and last name. Start by going to an empty cavalcade and typing the outset person'southward commencement and last names in the first prison cell. When yous motion to the adjacent cell and brainstorm typing the 2nd person's start and last proper name, Excel volition offering to automatically make full the whole cavalcade with the first and last names of everyone else on the list. That'south a smart and handy productivity characteristic.

Excel also gives clear feedback before actually applying an automated characteristic. For example, when yous Autosum a column of figures, Excel displays the formula that it volition insert into the current jail cell. Or, when you lot use the higher up technique for combining outset and concluding names in a unmarried column, Excel offset displays the combined names in grayness and gives you a gamble to cease the action.

Excel'southward charting characteristic easily handles massive information, and offers subtle colour palettes, dissimilar the garish colors used by older spreadsheet apps.

Excel supports dozens of third-political party extensions and features for performing specialized functions. For example, a new Money in Excel feature partners with the Plaid service for user-friendly personal money-management.

PowerPoint is the just presentation app that's comparable to Apple's KeyNote in terms of features. Like its counterpart, PowerPoint lets you manage and edit videos within the app, without using a separate video-editing app. It also lets you add online videos to your presentations. As with KeyNote, yous can waste endless hours in PowerPoint customizing transitions and making other subtle changes. For those non working in the Apple tree universe, PowerPoint is our top choice among desktop-based presentation app for creating dazzling effects.

Some of Word'due south automated features tin can be annoying, however. For example, yous may not want Word to format ordinals (the messages that follow the numbers in 1st and 2nd), just Word superscripts them automatically unless you backspace over the ordinal number and type it again. If yous want to plow off this automated characteristic, you lot'll need to know plenty almost Word to go to the Options > Proofing > AutoCorrect Options > AutoFormat section. Not many ordinary users will figure this out. Give-and-take has other bad habits too, such as inserting horizontal lines when you type a series of hyphens—another automatic format feature that requires multiple steps to plow off. Discussion's massive Options card gives you lot some idea of the dozens of settings you can use to fine-tune the manner Word formats and manages files.

If you lot use Word'due south powerful Styles feature, in which you choose a set of layout and formatting options that can easily be applied to a section of text, you'll find that Word sometimes, only not always, removes existing formatting (like italics) when yous apply a style. In situations similar this, Give-and-take seems unpredictable. That's generally because Microsoft doesn't document the rules information technology uses when applying styles. For instance, Give-and-take will remove any existing formatting when applying a style if the existing formatting affects more 50% of the text in the paragraph. I know this only because an anonymous source deep inside Microsoft whispered it to me years ago.

In the course of Word's almost 4-decade history, many of its near powerful and once prominently displayed features have gradually disappeared from the interface just remain available to expert users who know where to find them. For example, Word pioneered the use of variables in fields. If y'all place the title of your book in a field chosen BookTitle utilize the field in place of the actual championship everywhere in your document. If you make up one's mind to change the title later on, for instance, from War and Peace to Captain Underpants; you could simply change the content of the field to update every instance. In the electric current version of Word, this feature isn't available in Discussion'south ribbon toolbar; the help system at least tells you which keystrokes to employ to manage it.

Mail and Web Apps

Outlook manages to pack all its many features into an impressive parcel, but it can feel a bit overwhelming. For personal use, I prefer leaner apps similar the open-source Thunderbird, commercial newcomers like Mailbird on Windows, and Apple tree Mail service on the Mac. Even Window 10's built-in Mail app has merits. Merely for corporate use, Outlook'southward ane-end interface for managing postal service, calendars, and contacts offers power and flexibility that rivals don't.

Outlook'south interface sometimes seems to have every bit many controls as a colossal jet'due south instrument panel, but it puts a massive number of features within easy accomplish.

Microsoft'south browser-based apps stand out for their elegance and usability, surpassing even the minimalist design of Google's Workspace suite. Like Google'southward apps, Microsoft's apps allow you lot dictate text through a microphone as well as transcribe text from an existing recording. For me, Microsoft's voice-to-text feature worked impressively well from mobile apps on a phone or tablet, just I could never get it to piece of work within a desktop or laptop browser on either a Mac or a Windows automobile.

I had endless trouble even accessing my Office documents through most browsers that I used on a Windows or a Mac device. I could open and edit in Firefox or Safari, just Chrome and Microsoft'southward Edge browser said they couldn't find the address of the remote files. This seems to be a longstanding problem, and before you commit to using Office through a browser, you should see whether you take the same problem.

Both Microsoft 365 and Google Workspace allow you interact in existent-fourth dimension through a browser in similar means, with plenty of visual cues to indicate what your colleagues are doing. If you store your documents in OneDrive, Microsoft enables you to collaborate with others in the desktop apps and take advantage of all of the convenience and power that those desktop apps offer. Google Workspace tin can't match that capability. LibreOffice, in contrast, has collaboration features only in its Calc spreadsheet, without existent-time collaboration.

Microsoft 365 on Mobile

The mobile versions of the cadre Word, Excel, and PowerPoint apps are surprisingly powerful and elegant. If you lot don't want to ataxia your phone with the full characteristic sets of split up mobile versions, you can download a combined iPhone app called Office with the chief features of the carve up apps.

If yous want Office on a phone, consider the all-in-one Office app that works with documents, worksheets, and presentations.

The dissever mobile apps—I tested only the iOS versions—feel similar native mobile apps, non miniaturized versions of the desktop apps. They have more usable interfaces than Google's counterparts. The Microsoft apps likewise include many great features that I value on the desktop, like a Welcome Back banner that tells me where I was working when I final saved a file and the ability to consign in multiple formats.

Mobile Outlook and OneNote circular out the offerings, but yous may besides want Microsoft Lens, a mobile scanning and OCR app that lets yous photograph text with your camera and insert it into an role document. I got mixed results when I snapped photos of books, but information technology was amend than nothing, and the smooth integration with Give-and-take and Excel is a major plus.

New Name, Aforementioned Excellence

Microsoft's Office apps are the all-time at what they exercise, bar none. If you lot desire to exchange editable documents with anyone else, you'll almost certainly want to ship your documents in a format that is compatible with Microsoft's apps—a reasonable way to ensure that everyone else can work on them. The only serious glitch I establish with Microsoft's suite was the spotty online access I experienced on many browsers during testing.

On my desktop, laptop, and mobile devices, I've been using Microsoft's Office apps for many years. If you demand to go serious piece of work washed in documents or worksheets, Microsoft's suite is not only worth the money, but an amazing bargain. Google's Workspace is another elevation choice for users and businesses who are comfy with a cloud-start document-editing arroyo.

Microsoft 365 Personal

Cons

The Lesser Line

Microsoft 365 is the world's standard for office suites and the simply one that's equally powerful online and on the desktop. Despite a few glitches, nothing else comes shut in ability, flexibility, or ease of use.

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Microsoft Word Starter Opens All Documents as Read Only

Source: https://www.pcmag.com/reviews/microsoft-365-personal

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