Currently, you will get the whole suite of Office 2019 and you can use it while being offline as well. You need to purchase a one-time license (costs $249.99) for your PC or Mac and then you can install the desktop versions of Microsoft Office.
What I like more about the web version of MS Office is that it automatically saves all your changes so you will not have to worry about losing your progress.Ĭoming to the standalone desktop apps of Microsoft Office, well, unlike the web version that has a free tier, it does not have one. Also, you can save files on your local disk and not just on OneDrive. You can save a document in PDF format on the web without installing any add-in which is great. It sure becomes a hassle when you are dealing with large Office documents - be it Word, PowerPoint, or Excel.Īpart from that, the web version is primarily free to use, and you can get almost all the things done through a browser. Instead, you will have to first upload the document on OneDrive, and then only you can edit an Office file on the web.
Next, you can’t directly select and edit an Office document that is available on your local disk. It does not support offline editing or viewing. As it’s self-explanatory, the Web version is online only meaning you can access Microsoft Office on the web only when you are connected to the internet.
First and foremost, we are going to discuss the basic differences between the web version of Microsoft Office and the desktop apps.
