Oct 06, 2018 As the two prior reviewers have stated, this product is not ready to be purchased. I have spent the last hour waiting in queue with Microsoft's online chat, only to find out that the technical team has experienced difficulties and the product keys are not able to be verified. Nov 01, 2004 I was doing a Google search to find out how many computers I can install Microsoft Office Student & Teacher OEM on at one time. If your work as a “home use program” with Microsoft, you can get Office for practically nil, but you can only install it on one machine at your home for as long as you are an employee of the company with the.
Microsoft Office remainsthe gold standard of productivity suites, but there are several different versions/editions of Office available for users of Apple hardware. Together with Parallels Desktop and Parallels Access, the Apple user can access just about any of these versions/editions on each of their hardware platforms.
While Microsoft produces all of these suites and the suites have a very high degree of similar functionality and visual fidelity, they are not identical, and no single suite has all the features of the entire group.
This blog post will enumerate most of the differences between the following suites and their apps:
- Office 2016 for Windows (“WinOffice 2016”)
- Office 2016 for Mac (“MacOffice 2016”)
- Office 2013 for Windows (“WinOffice 2013”)
- Office 2011 for Mac (“MacOffice 2011”)
- Office for iPad (“iPad Office”)
The vast bulk of the content in this post is in the following five tables, which list the differences I found. Note that because the tables lists differences, no row of the table will be all checkmarks (since this would mean that all the suites had this feature, and thus this wasn’t a difference) nor will any row be all “X”s (since this would mean that no suite had this feature, and thus it isn’t a difference either). I am listing the differences because listing the similarities would take much too much room—the suites are that identical.
Hopefully, this will assist you in choosing the best version/edition for your use. In addition, I will describe my personal Office setup.
Here are the five tables (click on each thumbnail for an enlarged view):
Table 1: Suite-wide differences
Table 2: Word differences
Table 2
Table 3: Excel differences
Table 4: PowerPoint differences
Table 4
Table 5: Outlook differences
What differences surprised me the most? These two:
Right-to-left language support in iPad Office:
WinOffice has had support for right-to-left languages like Arabic and Hebrew for many years. While Mac users have been asking for such support, no version of MacOffice, even the latest MacOffice 2016, has had such support. Therefore, I was quite pleasantly surprised when iPad Office added support for Arabic, Hebrew, and Thai.(See Figure 1.)
Figure 1: Arabic text in iPad Word on iPad Pro
No multiple selection support in iPad PowerPoint:
All Office programs provide some way to select content in a document (text, cells, or shapes, for example). This is needed so that the user can apply some operation on just that content (change the color, for example). The Windows or Mac Office applications also provide for “advanced” types of selections. In Word, this is non-contiguous text selections; in Excel this is non-contiguous cell selections; and in PowerPoint this is the simultaneous selection of multiple objects. In Word and Excel, these really are advanced types of selections that are rarely needed by even sophisticated users of Word or Excel. (See Figures 2 and 3.)
Figure 2: Non-contiguous cell selection in MacExcel 2011.
Figure 3: Non-contiguous text selection in MacWord 2011.
But in PowerPoint, the ability to select multiple objects is a pretty basic capability. (See Figure 4.)
Figure 4: Multiple selections in MacPowerPoint 2011.
I wasn’t surprised to learn that non-contiguous selections were not supported in iPad Word or iPad Excel, but I was astonished and very disappointed to learn that multiple selections were not supported in iPad PowerPoint.
My Use of Office
So, which do I use? The short answer is that I use all of them.
I worked on the MacOffice team at Microsoft for several years, and at that time I also worked closely with colleagues on the WinOffice teams. Because of this background, I am often able to pick just the right Office app that will make a given task the easiest to do. One task might be particularly well suited to MacWord 2011 because Publishing Layout View—a feature only in that one Word version—will make this task easy. Another task might be suited to WinPPT because of the Animation Painter, which is not in any MacPPT version. Yet another task might be best suited to WinPPT 2013 because it needs an Office extension not available in other Office suites.
Having all the versions of Office at your fingertips used to be rather hard to setup, not to mention very expensive. Luckily, that is no longer the case.
With a single Office 365 Home subscription, you get five installs of the Office suite and you can pick which versions make up this set of five. Since I have Parallels Desktop for Mac Pro Edition on my Mac, I can run any version of Windows without rebooting. Because I have different versions of Windows running on my Mac, I can also run different versions of WinOffice on my Mac and have everything I need on one computer. (You can download a free trial of Parallels Desktop for Mac here.) Here’s my setup:
- MacOffice 2011 is my main productivity suite and is installed on my El Capitan MacBook Pro. MacOutlook 2016 came out long before the entire MacOffice 2016 suite, and because of the vastly improved performance of MacOutlook 2016, I use it as my main email client, instead of MacOutlook 2011.
- WinOffice 2013 is installed in a Windows 7 virtual machine (VM) (under Parallels Desktop for Mac Pro Edition) on my MacBook Pro.
- iPad Office is installed on my iPad. As you saw in the tables above, iPad Office is lacking many of the features of WinOffice and MacOffice, so I also haveParallels Accesson my iPad which lets me access and run the full featured versions of any Office suite (or any other application) on my computers and use them with natural iPad gestures. (You can download a free trial of Parallels Access for iOS and Android to access your Mac and/or PC atwww.parallels.com/access).
- MacOffice 2016 is installed in an El Capitan VM (under Parallels Desktop for Mac Pro Edition) on my MacBook Pro.
- WinOffice 2016 is installed in a Windows 10 VM (under Parallels Desktop for Mac Pro Edition) on my MacBook Pro.
So, why don’t I use MacOffice 2016 as my main productivity suite? Four reasons:
- Only MacWord 2011 has Publishing Layout View, a feature I depend on heavily and consider essential.
- To me, MacOffice 2016 has a kind of cartoon-like look to the user interface that just doesn’t appeal to me.
- There was no compelling feature pulling me to MacOffice 2016, and
- Inertia was keeping me in MacOffice 2011.
Those are my five installs, and with this setup, I have easy and immediate access to the best Office app for any particular task. I tend to store all my documents on Dropbox so that I have easy access to them from any of my Office suites or Apple platforms.
Which Office suite(s) do you use, and what’s your setup?
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-->What are the different Open License Programs, what are the differences, and who are they for? This is a relatively common set of questions I have seen over the years, and one that you have probably seen addressed in some fashion on the blog over the years in various different posts. Let me provide a quick overview of that the various programs are, who they are for, and some high-level differences below. Please note, the Microsoft Open Licensing Programs are designed for companies with between 2 – 250 PCs (with the exception of the Open License Volume Program which spans up to 750 PCs), so if your organization is larger than 250 PCs, you will should also consider the Microsoft Select and Enterprise Agreement licensing programs.
Open Licensing Programs:
- Open License – Microsoft Volume Licensing program designed for businesses with between 2 and 250 computers that want to purchase in a very transactional way and prefer to pay-as-you-go. It offers the option to purchase Licenses, Upgrades (Windows Desktop O/S), License with Software Assurance, and Software Assurance (however, I believe you should utilize Open Value for your Software Assurance purchases, not Open License). Offers perpetual licenses and is a two year program. Available through any Microsoft reseller. See more online.
- Open License does offer an option called, “Open License Volume” which provides further discounts for large quantity purchases of Microsoft products.
- Open Value - Microsoft Volume Licensing program designed for businesses (in regions where available) with between 2 and 250 computers that are looking to take advantage of the various benefits of Microsoft’s Software Assurance offerings (Like Upgrade protection, Home Use Rights, eLearning, etc.), with the ability to make annual payments instead of the up-front payments required by Open License. It offers the option to purchase Licenses with Software Assurance, Upgrades with Software Assurance (Windows Desktop O/S), and Software Assurance (for adding to qualified licenses). Offers perpetual licenses and is a three year program. Available through any Microsoft Reseller. See more online.
- Open Value does offer an option called, “Open Value Company-Wide,” which provides further discounts and benefits in exchange for licensing certain Microsoft technologies for all of the computers in your company (such as Microsoft Office or Microsoft Windows, etc.)
- Open Value Subscription - Microsoft Volume Licensing program designed for businesses with between 2 and 250 computers that are looking to take advantage of the various benefits of Microsoft’s Software Assurance offerings (Like Upgrade protection, Home Use Rights, Spread Payments, eLearning, etc.), in addition to the flexibility of subscribing to Microsoft technology instead of purchasing perpetual licenses, which provides lower up-front costs, flexible license counts per year, and more. It offers the option to subscribe to Licenses with Software Assurance and Upgrades with Software Assurance (Windows Desktop O/S). Offers non-perpetual licenses and is a three year program. Available through any Microsoft reseller. See more online.
- Open License for Charities – Microsoft Volume Licensing program designed for eligible charity organizations (in regions where available) that meet certain requirements in order to be able to purchase licenses through Open License for Charities. Similar program to Open License; however, it offers lower acquisition costs for the included items for qualifying charity organizations. Available only through Authorized Open License for Charities resellers. Offers perpetual licenses and is a two year program. See more online.
- Open License for Governments - Microsoft Volume Licensing program similar to the Open License program, but with different pricing and partner channels. In some regions, government organizations may also participate in the Open Value for Government and Open Value Subscription for Government programs. Available only through Authorized Open License for Government resellers. Offers perpetual licenses and is a two year program. See more online.
- Open License for Education - Microsoft Volume Licensing program designed for eligible academic organizations (in regions where available) that meet certain requirements in order to be able to purchase licenses through Open License for Education. Similar program to Open License; however, it offers lower acquisition costs for the included items for qualifying educational organizations. Offers perpetual licenses and is a two year program. Available only through Authorized Open License for Education resellers. See more online.
- There are additional licensing options for educational organizations besides Open License for Education, so be sure to look online for some of those additional options.
A document that you may find helpful, in addition to the links I have provided above, is the Microsoft Volume Licensing Reference Guide that you can download. Hopefully the quick overview above helps give a baseline understanding of the what the various Open License Programs available are and will work as a foundation for further Microsoft Open License Basics posts I will be putting up here on the Blog moving forward.
If you found this post helpful, you may want to view other posts in my Microsoft Open License Basics series.
Microsoft Home Use Program Government
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Thank you and have a wonderful day,
Eric Ligman – Follow me on TWITTERand RSS
Global Partner Experience Lead
Microsoft Worldwide Partner Group
This posting is provided 'AS IS' with no warranties, and confers no rights
Global Partner Experience Lead
Microsoft Worldwide Partner Group
This posting is provided 'AS IS' with no warranties, and confers no rights
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