Office 365 is it necessary

I have a 2013 version of Office which still works well and am being tempted by Get Office 365 pop ups. I have found out how to stop them but am wondering is there any difference between Office 2106 and 2013 that would justify me buying in to Office 365?

Conversation 15 comments

  • 268

    Premium Member
    04 October, 2016 - 5:10 am

    <p>As far as the base tools in MS Office, no, there is nothing compelling – especially for the individual user. What I find to be the difference is the stoage and the multiple machine license. Up to five users for $99 and up to 5 TB storage. That is reduced somewhat if you have multiple machines per user (example, I have 2 machines and I want Office on both so that leaves me 3 other users / installs). But finding that much storage for that price is hard enough and adding multiple machines and also mobile devices pushes it over the top for me and makes it well worth the yearly $99.</p>

  • 5615

    04 October, 2016 - 5:49 am

    <p>Not sure if this will help you make a decision, but I’m still using Office 2010 and have had no need whatsover to upgrade to something newer. I even got an offer for a free year of Office 365 when I bought a Windows tablet last year (and another free year as a result of the OneDrive fiasco) and, although I redeemed the free offer 2 months ago, I’ve yet to actually install it — because I don’t really need it. I realize my use case may be unique, but even if I didn’t already have Office 2010 I can do probably 95% of what I need to do with Micorosft’s and Google’s free web-based office apps.</p>

    • 1377

      Premium Member
      08 October, 2016 - 7:27 pm

      <p><em><a href="#17553">In reply to offTheRecord:</a></em></p>
      <p style="padding-left: 30px;"><em>I can do probably 95% of what I need to do with Micorosft’s and Google’s free web-based office apps</em></p>
      <p>Probably true for everything EXCEPT EXCEL. Those of us who make intensive use of Excel NEED Excel. There are a few things LibreOffice Calc does better, e.g., regular expressions in SEARCH and related functions as well as relative worksheet addressing, but they don’t quite make up for the things LibreOffice Calc lacks. Google Sheets also supports regular expressions, more so than LibreOffice Calc, but it’s FILTER, SORT and UNIQUE functions make certain fairly common tasks (to judge by requests for help in various Excel user-to-user support sites) MUCH EASIER than in Excel.<br /><br />Thing is, those of us who’ve been using Excel for a long time have built up function and macro libraries which make more recent Excel versions less enticing, and cover many of the gaps between what Excel lacks and other spreadsheets provide. Credit to MSFT: VBA and Excel’s object model are absolutely outstanding for Windows, decidely first in class.</p>

      • 5615

        12 October, 2016 - 11:59 am

        <blockquote><em><a href="#19739">In reply to hrlngrv:</a></em></blockquote>
        <p>Yeah, Excel is probably one of the key applications keeping many folks tied to Office and keeping paid Office alive. We’re also fairly heavy users of Excel, but not nearly as heavy as we used to be. We’ve transitioned&nbsp;most of our analytical operations to things like R, Python and MongoDB, including&nbsp;a lot of the stuff we used to do in Excel.</p>

  • 5781

    04 October, 2016 - 8:24 am

    <p>To be honest I believe is worth it because excet of the newer version of Office, I also have 60 minutes of Skype (which I use them), 1 TB OneDrive which is very useful especially for my work and photos and ofCourse I have license for my main pc and my Surface device.</p>
    <p>So if you want to have extra services that are provided with this package I suggest this to you. If not then you can stay on 2013 version and you are totally fine</p>

    • 413

      Premium Member
      07 October, 2016 - 9:05 pm

      <blockquote><em><a href="#17582">In reply to albatronas:</a></em></blockquote>
      <p>I would combine this with the fact you get the mobile apps as well if you are an Office 365 subscription. &nbsp;</p>

  • 1043

    04 October, 2016 - 8:46 am

    <p>You can disable the notification in the notifications settings (Start &gt; Settings &gt; Notifications &amp; actions &gt; disable "Get Office".) You can also uninstall the Get Office365 app from the Start menu in the apps listing, just right-click it and select Uninstall. As for whether or not it is worth it, I would say only if you use Office heavily. I find it great at work since I can install the Office365 software directly from the online portal on all of the machines I use at work, OneDrive works great for syncing files between machines, and the software is activated using the same username/password I use to login to the computer, no more license keys to worry about! At home I have zero interest in Office365 since I rarely use any of the apps in my personal life and the free OneDrive personal account suits my needs fine.</p>

  • 5234

    04 October, 2016 - 8:47 am

    <p>If you need the cloud storage or multiple installs (in the case of Office 365 Home), it’s worth it. &nbsp;Otherwise, stick to your current install – there isn’t enough there to warrant an upgrade.</p>

  • 5519

    05 October, 2016 - 7:39 am

    <p>I don’t use Office at all — and have little need for it. &nbsp;For desktop, I use LibreOffice and it is a nice program!</p>
    <p>For mobile, I currently have an Android phone. &nbsp;Ms Office apps for mobile are FREE. &nbsp;Or one can use GoogleDocs and GoogleDocs is MUCH improved. &nbsp;Or one can download several Office compatible suites for free (and deal with advertisements) and or upgrade to premium to avoid apps.</p>
    <p>If you use IOS for mobile, MS Office apps for IOS are also free.</p>
    <p>I just can’t justify paying for Office. &nbsp;If I had a compelling reason, then I would. &nbsp;But currently I have none.</p>
    <p>But since you own a relatively recent version of MS Office (2013) you may as well keep using this versus LibreOffice on your desktop and make use of the free mobile.</p>
    <p>&nbsp;</p>
    <p>&nbsp;</p>

  • 248

    Premium Member
    05 October, 2016 - 7:48 am

    <p>Personally I use Excel and Outlook a lot and 2016 is a pretty big improvement. They added a bunch of new charts to Excel and brought some powerful tools which used to be extra down to the standard version. Outlook 2016 has some small nice things like an archive button that I use all the time.</p>

  • 1377

    Premium Member
    08 October, 2016 - 7:31 pm

    <p>IMO, the new CONCAT and TEXTJOIN functions are very useful, but MAXIFS, MINIFS and IFS (and AVERAGEIFS) are rather pointless. If only Excel had Google Sheets’ FILTER, SORT and UNIQUE functions. If Excel did, none of the *IF or *IFS functions would be needed. Unfortunately, Excel is getting encrusted with foolish extras faster than PL/I in the early 1970s. Fortunately for Excel, the LibreOffice Calc developers haven’t seen fit to implement these Google Sheets functions, and Google hasn’t bothered to implement 3D references to make it possible, e.g., to sum over the same range in multiple adjacent worksheets with a single reference.<br /><br />For me, TEXTJOIN and the improvements in Power Query justify using Excel 2016 over Excel 2010, but they’re not enough to justify paying to move from Excel 2013 to Excel 2016.<br /><br />I have no opinion about the other Office programs other than that those in Office 2010 (for that matter, Office 2003) are adequate for my needs, so nothing worth paying for to upgrade.</p>

  • 442

    10 October, 2016 - 1:50 pm

    This is so easy.  Right click the “Get Office 365” icon in your Start Menu and “Uninstall”.  Notifications gone.  If the apps not there, it can’t notify you. 😉

  • 1753

    Premium Member
    12 October, 2016 - 9:34 am

    <p>We use it as a family subscription. Each with 1TB storage and the latest version of Office for their PC/Mac. Plus an hour of Skype Out each month.</p>
    <p>If you just use Word or Excel etc. for simple documents, then there is probably no need to upgrade to 2016 or Office 365, at least not until support for 2013 stops.</p>
    <p>If the family all need copies, then it is a good deal and if you want to keep your copied to the cloud*, then it makes a very good deal.</p>
    <p>* It isn’t a backup, it is a mirror of the local data. If you get a virus which encrypts or damages your files, it will mirror that to the cloud, so you will still lose some or all of your files. I use Office 365 to keep my data available everywhere and I have one machine set-up with a complete sync of OneDrive and a copy of Carbonite to keep it backed up.</p>
    <p>Paranoid? Moi? Nah!</p>
    <p>I haven’t lost any data yet, but I’ve seen enough people lose data to not take chances.</p>

  • 3216

    12 October, 2016 - 10:07 am

    <p>I have found very few (significant) changes in capablity since Office 2010.&nbsp; I looked long and hard at upgrading from 2010 and could find no compelling reason.&nbsp;</p>
    <p>Your mileage may vary.&nbsp; Offer not available in all states.</p>
    <p>P.S. where is a spell checker when you need one…</p>

    • 1377

      Premium Member
      13 October, 2016 - 4:53 pm

      <p><em><a href="#20282">In reply to gsmith-plm:</a></em></p>
      <p>The one place Excel is different from the rest of office. Given the frequency of user-to-user support forums requests for help, the new CONCAT and TEXTJOIN functions are very, very long overdue. Plus changes in Power Query.</p>

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