Many of the 1.1 billion people out there who use Microsoft Office
live in tiny Excel cells and PowerPoint decks because it's what the IT
department ordered. But if you just bought a new computer or need to update
your productivity software, it's time to ask one of today's toughest tech questions:
Do I really need to buy Microsoft Office?
You can find most Office features in the free
competitors—all of which can open and edit Office documents. These rivals
provide better Web functionality and online collaboration. But Microsoft's
Office 365 subscription now includes perks that make the expense easier to
rationalize. Here's a look at what Microsoft Office 365 and its two rivals have
to offer:
Microsoft Office 365
Like Adobe and Salesforce, Microsoft has embraced the
subscription model, betting we'll pay smaller installments for longer periods
of time in exchange for constantly fresh features and services delivered via
the Internet.
Because of that, you almost need a spreadsheet to understand
Office 365 pricing. You pay $7 a month for the right to install it on one
computer and access it on an iPad and other mobile devices. For $10, you can
put it on as many as five computers. But you don't just get software for the
money: Microsoft gives each user on your Office 365 account a terabyte of
OneDrive cloud storage. So you get up to 5 terabytes online, plus all that
Office software.
Compared with the offerings of Google and Apple, Microsoft
has the most powerful features, ranging from Excel macros to Word mail-merge
tricks. Once you sign up with a Microsoft account, you can create and edit
documents, spreadsheets and presentations, and you even get 15 GB of free
online storage to go with it.
The Web versions are missing features—you can't create a
text box in Word, or 3-D charts in Excel, for instance. But they feel like the
classic programs and perform better when it comes to saving files online and
collaborating with colleagues.
Google Docs, Sheets, Slides
Unlike Microsoft or Apple, Google doesn't offer desktop
versions of Docs, Sheets and Slides. For better or worse, everything happens
within the Web browser. You have to upload a document just to open it. Those
documents are immediately stored in your Google Drive cloud storage account.
Google says it doesn't target ads to you based on the
content of your files, though the search giant does scan them for viruses
and to provide features such as fast search.
Similar to Microsoft, Google offers 15 GB of free cloud
storage and you can buy more. One terabyte will cost you $10 a month.
Most of the basics are there—you can even open and export
Office-compatible files—and if they aren't built in, third-party add-ons can
fill in the gaps. For instance, I found thesaurus and mail-merge plug-ins.
Still, Google can't pull off all of the formatting and templating that made Microsoft
legendary. And Google's plain gray and black interfaces are starting to look
pretty tired.
But Google deserves accolades for superior collaboration and
the ability to edit documents easily on any device, via the Web or free Android
and iOS apps. There's even an instant-messaging feature, so you can discuss
things without taking your eyes off the page.
For Google, it's the offline part that's an Achilles' heel.
You can set up offline access in Google's Chrome browser and even create new
documents without an Internet connection, but you lose many Internet-dependent
tools, and you may have to plan ahead and save important documents to your 5 GB
offline cache.
For those times, use LibreOffice. It's a free open-source
productivity suite. While it isn't quite on par with Microsoft, Google or Apple
in terms of design, it has long offered close feature parity. It even has a
plug-in that lets you save directly to Google Drive.
Apple iWork
Apple's iWork is the third major office suite, and it's
free—well, free with the purchase of Macs and iPads. There are also iCloud Web
versions that anyone with an account can use, but they're still in beta and a
bit buggy.
Pages, Numbers and Keynote all suffice to make your
documents shine, and its Web and desktop apps are the user-friendliest of them
all.
Although the Web versions have some lag in loading documents
and are missing obvious features, their online collaboration is now quite good.
Even people without iCloud accounts can jump right into a shared document. But
Google trumps it with commenting and real-time chat.
Apple is catching up on cloud storage, too. Its new iCloud
Drive will be released this fall with competitive pricing and Windows support.
Conclusion
Buying Office 365 is like buying an overflowing tool set but
how many will you really use?
At this point, the free options from Google, Apple and even
Microsoft do just enough, which means paying only makes sense if you're
shopping for cloud storage, too. That's where Office 365 adds up: Not only do
you (and your spouse and your kids) get a terabyte of online storage but you
get all the Office extras. If it's just you, though, a terabyte from Google
will cost about the same.
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article on The Wall Street Journal.