Microsoft Office is a collection of office-related applications. Each application serves a unique purpose and offers a specific service to its users. For example, Microsoft Word is used to create documents. Microsoft PowerPoint is used to create presentations. Microsoft Outlook is used to manage email and calendars. There are others as well.
Because there are so many applications to choose from, and because not every user needs all of them, Microsoft groups the applications together in collections called suites. There’s a suite of applications for students, a suite for home and small business users, and a suite for large corporations. There’s even a suite for schools. Each of these suites is priced based on what’s included in it.
What Is Microsoft 365?
The latest version of Microsoft Office is called Microsoft Office 2019, although the web-based Microsoft 365 is the version that Microsoft would prefer users to adopt. Various versions of the suite have been around since 1988, including but not limited to Microsoft Office Professional, Microsoft Office Home and Student, and various collections of Microsoft Office 2016. Most people still refer to any version of the suite as Microsoft Office though, which makes distinguishing among editions difficult.
What makes Microsoft 365 stand out from older editions of MS Office is that it integrates all aspects of the apps with the cloud. It’s a subscription service too, which means users pay a monthly or yearly fee to use it, and upgrades to newer versions are included in this price. Previous versions of Microsoft Office, including Office 2016, didn’t offer all of the cloud features that Microsoft 365 does and was not a subscription. Office 2016 was a
