Office 365 Pro Plus, the cloud-connected version of Office, delivers the most productive and most secure Office experience—with the lowest total cost of ownership for deployment and management. Office 365 Pro Plus delivers continuous cloud-powered innovation for increased productivity, better security,. Microsoft's announcement today of a less expensive Office 365 subscription for consumers was the strongest hint yet that the company will soon offer an edition for Apple's iPad, an analyst said. Collaborate for free with online versions of Microsoft Word, PowerPoint, Excel, and OneNote. Save documents, spreadsheets, and presentations online, in OneDrive. Share them with others and work together at the same time. The trap is in the screen size, at 10.2' it's 0.1 inches more than Microsoft allows for using Office apps without an Office 365 plan. Why does Office cost more on a 10.2' iPad? Microsoft uses screen size to ‘draw a line' between mobile devices (which can use Office apps for free) and computers (which need a paid Office licence). Shop Microsoft Office 365 Personal (1 Mac or PC + 1 iPad or Select Windows Tablet) (1 Year Subscription) at Best Buy. Find low everyday prices and buy online for delivery or in-store pick-up. Price Match Guarantee.
On Thursday Microsoft finally released iPad versions of its Office apps, answering the pleas of productivity workers everywhere.
As it did with Office for iPhone, Microsoft is making the actual apps themselves free. That means you can download the tablet versions of Word, Excel and PowerPoint without forking out any cash.
See also: Microsoft Office for iPad Isn't Perfect, But It's What We Needed All Along
That is, unless you want to actually use the apps.
It costs users nothing to use the Office for iPad apps to view a document. Making changes to a document or creating a new file, however, requires a paid Office 365 subscription.
Microsoft offers a few different options for individuals and families interested in getting an Office 365 plan.
The most economical option — especially if you have multiple Office users in your household, is to get the Office 365 Home Premium plan. For $9.99 a month or $99.99 a year, users can install full Office desktop apps onto up to 5 PCs of Macs, install the tablet Office apps onto up to five Windows tablets or iPads and access the iPhone, Windows Phone and Android phone versions of Office apps.
Office 365 Premium users also get online access to Office apps, 20GB of extra OneDrive storage for each of up to five users and 60 Skype world minutes each month.
If you're the only person in your household — or you don't have multiple machines — Microsoft announced a Office 365 Personal plan earlier this month. Office 365 Personal will be $6.99 a month or $69.99 a year and will allow users to install desktop Office apps on one Mac or PC, install Office apps on up to two tablets and use Office apps for your smartphone.
If you're a student, Microsoft actually has a very compelling Office 365 University package. It allows users to install Office on two PCs, Macs or tablets, use it on their smartphone and online. Students also get 20GB of extra OneDrive space. The price? $79.99 for four years of access.
Comparing Office 365 to the Competition
The price of Office 365 Home Premium is fairly reasonable — particularly for households with multiple Office users. If you're a heavy user of Microsoft Office desktop apps, it's an affordable solution, now with the added benefit of iPad support.
Of course, not everyone who wants to use Office for iPad necessarily wants or needs to use Office on the desktop. For those users, the entry fee for actually using Office on the iPad is significantly than its competition.
Just because Microsoft took four years to join the iPad party doesn't mean other companies waited. Various third-party productivity apps are available for iOS that allow users to edit Microsoft-formatted documents on their iPad.
When it launched iOS 7 last fall, Apple made its iWork applications of for iPhone and iPad free to new users. That means that if you bought an iPhone or iPad after Sept. 2013, you get all of Apple's productivity apps for free. Apple also made iWork for OS X free for all users. And thanks to iCloud.com, users can access web versions of Pages, Numbers and Keynote for free.
Likewise, Google's office suite — Docs, Sheets and Slides — is accessible through the Google Drive app for iOS as well as its QuickOffice iPad app.
QuickOffice was at one time the premiere Microsoft Office-like app in the App Store. The app is now free — and it may not be as good as it used to be (it could definitely use an interface update) — but it allows users to create new Microsoft-formatted documents and also edit documents stored on Google Drive or locally on an iPad.
For users who want a pure Office reader and editor, without forking out the cash for an Office 365 subscription, Polaris Office 5 is a $12.99 app that offers full Office compatibility, as well as integration with cloud services such as Dropbox and Box.
Other Office editing and creation apps include the classic, Documents to Go Premium, which sells for $16.99.
Obviously, Microsoft's Office apps for iPad will have certain advantage over other apps — especially when it comes to OneDrive integration. Depending on how you use and access Office documents, however, that might not matter. Easy viewer lite pc p2p.
The challenge Microsoft will face — now that Office for iPad is available to users — is convincing those that aren't interested in an Office 365 subscription (maybe you have a copy of Office 2011 for Mac or Office 2013 for Windows) that iPad support is worthy of an upgrade.
Fortunately, Microsoft is giving users a one-month free trial of Office 365, so you can try it out and see if it's worth forking over the monthly or yearly fee.
We want to know what you think about the Office 365 requirement for the Office iPad apps. Does that make you less interested in using Microsoft's official apps, or are you just excited to have official Excel support on the iPad, no matter what outside requirements exist?
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