MicroSoft 365 ?

Hi,

Does anyone here use Microsoft 365 ?

Just that a friend was asking us about it as some of his contacts had been saying how he ought to get it as its the best thing around etc etc, though at cost !

No experience of it and said that we use the free Libre Office suite that does more than we need, though gather 365 allows you to use it on lots of different devices/platforms and cross communicate, plus it integrates all the modern Microsoft things like One Drive etc.

Is it as worthwhile as they say or really more suited to eg student use than for recently retired folk ?

 

My new laptop has been hassling me to use it but TBH I dont understand what it does and managed to live 68 yrs without it
So how essential must it be?

I'll be interested to find out in simple terms what it does.

 

Depends what you want from it. It's basically a subscription based and cloud based evolution of good old Microsoft office. It saves having to pay up front for MS Office, and having to install it and keep it up to date, and being cloud based, you can use your instance of it on any computer.

So yes it's good. But whether it's better than free open source alternatives really depends on what you want from it.

 

Plenty of sites detailing what 365 is all about -
Everything you ever wanted to know about Office 365

The question is for someone just retired and not into all the latest modern ways, is it really the right package for them, or are I suspect more for the younger ones, partic students, who are more used to using the cloud and internet communication etc.
Its not a cheap package each year either and get the feeling they will always want you to take on more for extra money.

Think you should be able to unistall 365 , just find it in Apps and right click for a sub menu to Uninstall it.

 

On my laptop its stating 365(office).

 

You don't have to pay monthly you can buy it on life time licence, can't remember if our's is M 365 office or not but we paid about £200 for it

I think i'm on M office home & busness 2019 as Miss Jiff has always work with M office we went for this, but Miss Jiff says it's slightly different to the M office when it was on an XP machine, the new M office which we have has some different ways of doing things and she can't get use to it, but if you haven't use one before you may find it ok to use, i don't use it much but some times i have to think when doing things, some thing just seem to be more harder to do than it should be if you know what i mean

 

Yep read it, dont think it would do much for me.
I used to be able to write letters etc. about 10yrs ago but I dont have a printer any more so a waste of time for me.

 

Though there, we do not get any Microsoft 365(office) pop up messages on either machine ??

Seems they cause a lot of folk a lot of annoyance as like many Apps Microsoft add in, even if uninstalled or deleted, they just reinstall them at the next update etc !!
Often you can only Disable them or remove then from the taskbar.

What is the exact pop up message you get, To Log in or Join up etc ?

 

Again, it depends what you want. There's nothing extra fancy in it. It's basically Ms Office but with the option to run it in the browser.

Being retired and or not tech savvy doesn't come into it. Plenty of retired folks use it, but plenty don't. Plenty of young techies use it, and plenty don't.

If you just want a nice word app for letters and such, there are plenty of free open source apps.

A completely free and perfectly credible alternative for most purposes is Google's offering. This includes a half decent word processor, Google Docs, and spreadsheet app, Google Sheets, email through Gmail, and various other office apps. All of which are available directly in your browser with no download or install necessary. You need a Google account to use it, but it's free to set one up. For those of us with Android mobiles who like to take photos on our phones, the Google suit has the added bonus that if you install Google photos app on your phone, and log into Google suite with the same Google account on your computer, then all your pics are automatically just there.

But it really is up to the individual. MS Office 365 is good, but it costs, and if you're don't need the maturity of Microsoft's offering, then the Google suite is a very credible rival, and if you don't like the idea of your stuff being securely on the cloud, then there are free open source apps. I think Libre Office has already been mentioned. I can't comment on that as I've never used it but it is popular. There also used to be OpenOffice, but I don't know if that still exists. I seem to remember reading it got merged with Libre Office.

 

TBH I just get rid of it without reading too much since I first spotted it, I've been getting all kinds of microsoft pop ups but I get the feeling they are petering out a bit now as time progresses.
I tried to uninstall power point and I get a list come up of, one drive, microsoft one note and 365.

 

As an engineer in my working life I used MS Office extensively. Excel, Word, Powerpoint, Project, they are all excellent and very powerful programs. At home, I have a full working copy of Office 2007 which works fine, but if I get a new PC Windows may not let me use it.
For home use Libre Office, from a very brief play with it should easily complete all your tasks. Save your money Microsoft don't need it.

 

I also see MS 365 ads whenever MS Edge opens - which isn't very frequently! But I have no use for it & can't afford it anyway. I've been using OpenOffice for quite some years now & when I got this new PC a couple of months ago I downloaded the latest version. I did a custom install & only installed OpenOffice Writer. All the other components that I have no use for were not installed. With MS Office you have to have everything or nothing (the same with Google).

I still have a couple of DVDs with MS Office Pro from quite a few years ago. I used to use that programme on my different computers but I haven't installed it on any more machines since discovering OpenOffice! And certainly not on this latest PC!

 

No install necessary with Google. It's all on line. You access it through your web browser.