I have just bought my granddaughter a laptop for her university work, but it does not have Microsoft Office. I want to know which edition of Office I should buy to put on two laptops. I want to make sure they are for continuous use and will be eligible for upgrades as they are released. Any other advice such as cost and the best place to buy would be very helpful. Desperate grandmother of Brighton
Some universities recommend specific software for their courses, and some have deals with Microsoft and other suppliers that enable them to offer programs at low cost. Ideally, your granddaughter will have this information already. If she’s doing a course that requires specialised software, it’s worth checking. If Microsoft Office is a general requirement, it may not be worth the effort.
Current Office application versions available for one-time purchase are Office 2019. Previous versions include Office 2016, Office 2013, Office 2011 for Mac, Office 2010, Office 2007, Office 2008 for Mac, and Office 2004 for Mac. Office 2010 and Office 2007 are compatible with Windows 8.1 and earlier. The Best Office Suites of 2018. The Publisher desktop-publishing package. Microsoft Office 2016 for Mac is by far the most powerful set of productivity apps for Apple computers.
For students, the simplest, cheapest, and most powerful option is Microsoft Office 365 University, which she can buy online. It’s a fantastic deal. It bundles together the main Office applications – Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote plus, for Windows users, Outlook, Publisher and Access – with a terabyte (TB) of cloud storage for four years, all for only £59.99.
Best Office Package For Windows 10
Microsoft Office 365 University will enable your granddaughter to run Office on two Windows PCs, Macs or tablets, and two smartphones. The tablets can be running Windows, Android or Apple iOS. Check online to see which operating systems are supported – Windows XP and Vista are not.
The Office 365 University programs get updated and upgraded free, via an internet connection. But if smartphones are updated over the mobile phone network (instead of Wi-Fi), the network operator may charge for the data transfer.
Of course, your granddaughter will have to prove that she is eligible for Office 365 University. Printer driver software for mac. Usually this means having a confirmed email address from a recognised university or college. This is why you can’t buy it on her behalf.
The free online storage is valuable – 1TB would usually cost £6.60 to £10 per month, or around £320 over four years. Please encourage your granddaughter to use it to back up all her files. There’s never a shortage of sob stories from university students who have lost several years’ work, or the sole copy of their PhD thesis, when their laptop was stolen or the hard drive failed.
One catch is that the 1TB of cloud storage expires with the Office 365 subscription. At this point, users are left with just 15GB of free storage in OneDrive. If they have used more, they can download and delete any files they don’t want to keep online, or switch to Office 365 Personal. This includes 1TB of free storage for £59.99 per year.
Four years is enough for most students to complete their degrees and/or other courses. If they need more time, Microsoft allows students to buy a second copy of Office 365 University after three years.
Office 365 University is also available in the USA, where it costs $79.99 (£50.79) for four years. In European countries such as France, Germany and Italy, it costs €79 (£57) for four years. Check the web or the online Microsoft Store for details for these and other countries.
Given the very high cost of attending university nowadays, it would be very silly to risk compromising her work for the sake of £15 or €20 per year.
Office for the rest of us
Microsoft Office 365 University will run on two desktops or laptops, so that may answer your question. However, your granddaughter only seems to have one laptop, so I wonder if the second copy is for you …
Both Office 365 University and Office 365 Personal, mentioned above, are for individuals. If you want a version that can be used by two or more people at once, the best option is Office 365 Home. This allows five people to use Office 365 on PCs, tablets and smartphones, and each user gets 1TB of OneDrive cloud storage.
At £79.99 per year, Office 365 Home is much better value for a typical family than Office 365 Personal at £59.99 per year. However, even if five students club together for 365 Home, it’s still cheaper – and, I think, better – for them to buy their own subscription to Microsoft Office 365 University.
Otherwise, the cheapest way to acquire Office 365 Home is to get a year’s free use with a new tablet or laptop. This includes some Windows 8.1 tablets priced at £79.99 to £99.99, or even less. The obvious drawback is that you have to pay for the second and subsequent years, which is not the case with software that you buy rather than rent.
On the other hand, everyone can use Office for free nowadays, because there are versions of Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote and OneDrive online as part of the Outlook.com (and Hotmail) email services. Obviously these are not full-featured versions – and you can’t download them for offline use, as you can with Office 365 programs – but they do the job for people who don’t need complex features. Also, they’re much more “Microsoft Office compatible” than free alternatives such as the open source LibreOffice or the closed, proprietary Google Docs.
Buying not renting
Companies that provide software (Microsoft, Adobe etc) and data (Netflix, Spotify etc) are moving from sales to subscription models, which are cheaper in the short term but more expensive in the long term. However, Microsoft still sells standalone copies of Microsoft Office and, indeed, separate copies of Office programs such as Microsoft Word.
In this case, you could buy your granddaughter a copy of Microsoft Office Home and Student 2013 from Amazon.co.uk for £94.98. This does not include a DVD. It comes as a Product Key Card (PKC) with instructions to download and activate Office. This will keep working “forever” on one PC, and can be moved to another PC in the event of hardware failure.
The drawbacks are that it only works on one PC not two, and it doesn’t include any extra Office programs (Outlook, Publisher, Access) or tablet and smartphone versions. Further, it doesn’t include 1TB of cloud storage, or a free upgrade to the next version of Office.
https://dnever866.weebly.com/run-microsoft-publisher-on-mac.html. Office Home and Student 2013 is good value, as it stands, but not as good as Microsoft Office 365 University.
Microsoft usually supports software for 10 years, and support for Office Home and Student 2013 will end on 11 April, 2023. It will still work after this date, of course, but it will no longer get security patches.
UPDATE: Microsoft UK says that students can get the full Office 365 free if their school or university has a site-licensing agreement, and that “most universities in the UK are part of the scheme”. Students can find out if they qualify by going to Office 365 and clicking the green “Find out if you’re eligible” button.
If the school or university does not have a site-licensing agreement, students can still get Office 365 “entirely free”. Microsoft says that Office 365 Education E1 “is available to any bona fide UK institution and their students”: the school just needs to contact Microsoft via the website. The E1 deal only provides access to the full online version of Office, not the one that you can download and install. However, students still get the free 1TB of cloud storage and a 50GB email inbox.
If the school or university does not have a site-licensing agreement, students can still get Office 365 “entirely free”. Microsoft says that Office 365 Education E1 “is available to any bona fide UK institution and their students”: the school just needs to contact Microsoft via the website. The E1 deal only provides access to the full online version of Office, not the one that you can download and install. However, students still get the free 1TB of cloud storage and a 50GB email inbox.
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You don't have to leave Microsoft Office if you decide to switch from PC to Mac. Microsoft has a perfectly good version of Office 365 for Mac that comes with Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote, Outlook, and more. If you've been thinking about switching away from the Office productivity suite, there are alternatives that offer many of the features you love in Microsoft's programs, plus some features you can't get anywhere else.
iWork Suite
Apple's alternative to Office is iWork. It's the most comparable alternative to Microsoft's productivity suite, only it comes free with every Mac. The interface is different, and will take some time to get used to, but if you're really interested in kicking Office to the curb, the iWork suite is the best alternative on Mac.
Realguitar 3 ableton. If you're ready for change, and Office's user interface, design, and tools aren't burned into your psyche, get Apple's iWork suite of apps. It comes preinstalled on new Macs, but you can also find it in the Mac App Store.
- Pages - Download now
- Numbers- Download now
- Keynote - Download now
OpenOffice
OpenOffice by Apache is probably the most similar to Microsoft Office in look and design. It comes with a word processor, a spreadsheet maker, and a presentation creator, all with many of the same features their Office counterparts have. Files are saved as open document format files, so they can be opened with any document viewer, including Office apps, without needing to be converted first. The best part is that OpenOffice is completely free.
Best Office Suite For Mac Free
If you're looking for an alternative to Microsoft Office that looks and works pretty much exactly the same, but doesn't cost a dime, OpenOffice is for you.
LibreOffice
LibreOffice is an open source productivity suite very similar to Microsoft Office that comes with a word processor, spreadsheet maker, and presentation creator. It also includes a vector graphics editor, a math formula editor, and a database manager. Best programming app for mac. Files are saved as open document format files, so you can open them with any document viewer, including Office apps, without needing to be converted first, though it does provide tools for saving a document as an Office-specific file. LibreOffice is totally free. It is very similar in design to Microsoft Office, with some minor differences in the design.
LibreOffice is a solid replacement for the Office apps and includes some useful extra programs that Office doesn't even have.
Google Docs
Best Office Software For Macbook
Google Docs is the easiest replacement for Microsoft office because it's so accessible. If you have a Gmail account, or a Google Hangouts account, or a YouTube account, you have Google Docs. Just visit the web-based app from your browser and you can create word processor documents, spreadsheets, and presentations. There is a Google Drive app you can download onto Mac so you can work offline. The changes will be made when your Mac is back online. Google Docs doesn't look at all like Microsoft Office, and has a very different user interface, but it does have many of the same, familiar features you know from Office.
Best Office Software For Mac Os X
The thing that makes Google Docs so useful, however, is it's real-time collaboration, which works seamlessly Download sata drivers windows 7 64 bit. with multiple users. I've worked alongside a dozen other people in one document. I am able to see where everyone is within the documents and can see exactly when changes are made. Best mac os x for ableton live suite 9.7.5.
If you're looking for a very easy to use Office replacement that is ideal for working with others in real-time, you'll be pleased with Google Docs.
What's your pick?
Do you use a Microsoft Office alternative you'd recommend to our readers that are new to Mac or just want to switch from Microsoft? Put your suggestion in the comments below and tell us why its the one you chose.
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