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That means you’re unlikely to get the full 10 years we used to get by moving Office to new PCs, and perhaps explains Microsoft’s attempts to reduce its 10-year support lifecycle. If you lose the activation code, you can’t get a new one without giving Microsoft proof of purchase.Ĭheaper versions of Office are locked to the PC on which they were originally installed. If you lose the DVDs, you can download the software.

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Boxed copies have more or less disappeared, but if you own one, you need to keep the code marked on the box to reinstall it. The traditional advantages of buying boxed copies of Office were that you could use it on two PCs (a desktop and a laptop, but not at the same time) and that you could transfer it to a new PC. But even if you switch to a free alternative, you’ll spend time learning a new interface and handling your old documents. If you are not a business, you can certainly live without it or use the free online version. If you’re paying staff, say, £20,000 to £60,000 a year, and can’t afford £100 a year for Office 365 – less for a boxed version – then you have bigger problems.ĭecide where you are on the spectrum from “I like it” to “can’t live without it”.

#Microsoft software for apple mac how to#

This isn’t going to change in a hurry because Microsoft Office is also a platform with hundreds of add-ons and plug-ins, it’s supported by thousands of books, video tutorials, websites and consultants, and it’s what most office workers already know how to use.Īnd when time is money, the cost of sorting out incompatibilities and usability issues is far higher than the cost of Office. This applies in spades to files that use VBA (Visual Basic for Applications) and macros, and to Excel spreadsheets where errors can have career-ending financial consequences. The third reason is that we live in a world where Microsoft Office is the de facto standard for business documents, and you absolutely have to be able to read them accurately. But I found I still needed Word to compare files, and to cope with the publishing industry’s use of styles, comments and “ track changes”. Being text based, it’s hopeless for storing images, but it’s perfect for texts with simple formatting. rtf (rich text) file format, which almost any word processor can read. I tried to avoid this problem by saving all my files in Microsoft’s. But if your documents are simple text files, then a lot of programs will load them. If your documents include multiple columns, embedded images, custom fonts, footnotes and similar features, you can more or less forget about using anything else. This depends on the complexity of your files. The second reason is that you need it to read old files, which is one of your problems. That’s why I’ve used it for a couple of decades. The best is that you like using it, because of its power, rich feature list, ease of use or whatever. Word is powerful and flexible, but you pay for that utility.

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Office 365 includes online, desktop, tablet and smartphone versions for both PCs and Macs, Android and Apple’s iOS. So, if you want to use Word, you have three choices: the online version (free), the desktop program (one-off payment), and Office 365 (annual subscription). I expect this list will continue to grow in the future. Microsoft’s free suite also includes OneNote, Skype, Calendar, People, Tasks, Photos, Sway, Flow and Forms. The main difference is that Microsoft’s programs are better, except for multiuser simultaneous editing. This is exactly the same as Google’s online suite. All you have to do is create a Microsoft Account using any working email address – it doesn’t have to be a Microsoft email address – and you can use online versions of Word, Excel and PowerPoint with free online storage in OneDrive. In fact, you can already use some Microsoft Office programs online, including Word, without paying Microsoft a penny.

Microsoft would prefer both Mac and Windows users of Office to move to the online version, Office 365, but it’s still entirely up to you. Is there is a cheaper way of carrying on with Word, or, failing that, an alternative word processor with which I’ll still be able to open and edit my existing Word documents? Ed As a writer, I have a very large number of Word files, but with Microsoft moving to an annual subscription model, the cost of remaining with Word is looking prohibitive.

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I chose Microsoft Word for Mac when I switched to a MacBook Pro some years ago.