Microsoft Office


Microsoft Office, MS Office, or simply Office, is an office suite and a family of client software, server software, and services developed by Microsoft. The first version of the Office suite, announced by Bill Gates on August 1, 1988, at COMDEX, contained Microsoft Word, Microsoft Excel, and Microsoft PowerPoint, all three of which remain core products in Office. Over time, the Office suite has grown substantially, adding programs such as OneNote and Outlook; the suite has also been made highly extensible with the use of the VBA scripting language.
The suite currently includes a word processor, a spreadsheet program, a presentation program, a note-taking program, and an email client ; the Windows version also includes a database management system. Microsoft Office previously offered desktop, mobile, and web applications; out of these, only the desktop suite is still maintained.
Since Office 2013, Microsoft has promoted Microsoft 365 as the primary means of obtaining Microsoft Office: it allows the use of the software and other services on a subscription business model, and users receive feature updates to the software for the lifetime of the subscription, including new features and cloud computing integration that are not necessarily included in the "on-premises" releases of Office sold under conventional license terms. In 2017, revenue from Office 365 overtook conventional license sales.
Microsoft continues to sell the perpetually-licensed Office suite, the latest version of which is Office 2024.

Components

Core applications and services

  • Microsoft Word is a word processor included in Microsoft Office and some editions of the now-discontinued Microsoft Works. The first version of Word, released in the autumn of 1983, was for the MS-DOS operating system and introduced the computer mouse to more users. Word 1.0 could be purchased with a bundled mouse, though none was required. Following the precedents of LisaWrite and MacWrite, Word for Macintosh attempted to add closer WYSIWYG features into its package. Word for Mac was released in 1985. Word for Mac was the first graphical version of Microsoft Word. Initially, it implemented the proprietary.doc format as its primary format. Word 2007, however, deprecated this format in favor of Office Open XML, which was later standardized by Ecma International as an open format. Support for Portable Document Format and OpenDocument was first introduced in Word for Windows with Service Pack 2 for Word 2007.
  • Microsoft Excel is a spreadsheet editor that originally competed with the dominant Lotus 1-2-3 and eventually outsold it. Microsoft released the first version of Excel for the Mac OS in 1985 and the first Windows version in November 1987.
  • Microsoft PowerPoint is a presentation program used to create slideshows composed of text, graphics, and other objects, which can be displayed on-screen and shown by the presenter or printed out on transparencies or slides.
  • Microsoft OneNote is a notetaking program that gathers handwritten or typed notes, drawings, screen clippings and audio commentaries. Notes can be shared with other OneNote users over the Internet or a network. OneNote was initially introduced as a standalone app that was not included in any Microsoft Office 2003 edition. However, OneNote eventually became a core component of Microsoft Office; with the release of Microsoft Office 2013, OneNote was included in all Microsoft Office offerings. OneNote is also available as a web app on Office on the web, a freemium Windows desktop app, a mobile app for Windows Phone, iOS, Android, and Symbian, and a Metro-style app for Windows 8 or later.
  • Microsoft Outlook is a personal information manager that replaces Windows Messaging, Microsoft Mail, and Schedule+ starting in Office 97; it includes an e-mail client, calendar, task manager and address book. On the Mac OS, Microsoft offered several versions of Outlook in the late 1990s, but only for use with Microsoft Exchange Server. In Office 2001, it introduced an alternative application with a slightly different feature set called Microsoft Entourage. It reintroduced Outlook in Office 2011, replacing Entourage.
  • Microsoft OneDrive is a file hosting service that allows users to sync files and later access them from a web browser or mobile device.
  • Microsoft Teams is a platform that combines workplace chat, meetings, notes, and attachments.

    Windows-only programs

  • Microsoft Publisher is a desktop publishing app for Windows mostly used for designing brochures, labels, calendars, greeting cards, business cards, newsletters, web sites, and postcards. Publisher will be discontinued in 2026.
  • Microsoft Access is a database management system for Windows that combines the relational Access Database Engine with a graphical user interface and software development tools. Microsoft Access stores data in its own format based on the Access Database Engine. It can also import or link directly to data stored in other applications and databases.
  • Microsoft Project is a project management app for Windows to keep track of events and to create network charts and Gantt charts, not bundled in any Office suite.
  • Microsoft Visio is a diagram and flowcharting app for Windows not bundled in any Office suite.

    Mobile apps

  • Office Lens is an image scanner optimized for mobile devices. It captures the document via the camera and then straightens the document portion of the image. The result can be exported to Word, OneNote, PowerPoint or Outlook, or saved in OneDrive, sent via Mail or placed in Photo Library.
  • Office Mobile is a unified Office mobile app for Android and iOS, which combines Word, Excel, and PowerPoint into a single app and introduces new capabilities as making quick notes, signing PDFs, scanning QR codes, and transferring files.
  • Office Remote is an application that turns the mobile device into a remote control for desktop versions of Word, Excel and PowerPoint.

    Server applications

  • Microsoft SharePoint is a web-based collaborative platform that integrates with Microsoft Office. Launched in 2001, SharePoint is primarily sold as a document management and storage system, but the product is highly configurable and usage varies substantially among organizations. SharePoint services include:
  • * Excel Services is a spreadsheet editing server similar to Microsoft Excel.
  • * InfoPath Forms Services is a form distribution server similar to Microsoft InfoPath.
  • * Microsoft Project Server is a project management server similar to Microsoft Project.
  • * Microsoft Search Server
  • Skype for Business Server is a real-time communications server for instant messaging and video-conferencing.
  • Microsoft Exchange Server is a mail server and calendaring server.

    Web services

  • Microsoft Sway is a presentation web app released in October 2014. It also has a native app for iOS and Windows 10.
  • Delve is a service that allows Office 365 users to search and manage their emails, meetings, contacts, social networks and documents stored on OneDrive or Sites in Office 365.
  • Microsoft Forms is an online survey creator, available for Office 365 Education subscribers.
  • Microsoft To Do is a task management service.
  • Outlook.com is a free webmail with a user interface similar to Microsoft Outlook.
  • Outlook on the web is a webmail client similar to Outlook.com but more comprehensive and available only through Office 365 and Microsoft Exchange Server offerings.
  • Microsoft Planner is a planning application available on the Microsoft Office 365 platform.
  • Microsoft Stream is a corporate video sharing service for enterprise users with an Office 365 Academic or Enterprise license.
  • Microsoft Bookings is an appointment booking application on the Microsoft Office 365 platform.

    Office for the web

Office for the web was a free web version of Microsoft Office that included three web applications: Word, Excel and PowerPoint. The offering also included Outlook.com, OneNote and OneDrive; these are accessible through a unified app switcher. Users can install the on-premises version of this service, called Office Online Server, in private clouds in conjunction with SharePoint, Microsoft Exchange Server and Microsoft Lync Server.
Word, Excel, and PowerPoint for the web could natively open, edit, and save Office Open XML files as well as OpenDocument files. They could also open files with legacy Office formats, but these were converted to the newer formats once edited. Password-encrypted Office files could not be opened. Files with macros could be opened in the browser apps, but the macros could not be accessed or executed. In July 2013, Word gained the ability to render PDF documents or convert them to Microsoft Word documents, although the formatting of the document may have deviated from the original. In November 2013, the apps started supporting real-time co-authoring and autosaving files.
Office for the web lacked a number of the advanced features present in the full desktop versions of Office, including the programs Access and Publisher. However, users were able to select the command "Open in desktop app"; this brought up the document in the desktop version of Office on their computer or device to utilize the advanced features there.
The Personal edition of Office for the web was available to the general public free of charge with a Microsoft account through the Office.com website, which superseded SkyDrive and Office Live Workspace. Enterprise-managed versions were available through Office 365. In February 2013, the ability to view and edit files on SkyDrive without signing in was added. The service could also be installed privately in enterprise environments as a SharePoint app, or through Office Web Apps Server. Microsoft also offered other web apps in the Office suite, such as the Outlook Web App, Lync Web App, Project Web App. Additionally, Microsoft offers a service under the name of Online Doc Viewer to view Office documents on a website via Office on the web.
In 2017, Office for the web was replaced by Microsoft 365; the service, including the former Word, Excel, and PowerPoint web applications, is no longer accessible.