Microsoft has made online versions of its well-known Office programs available for free. Coupled with a OneDrive account (Microsoft’s cloud storage) and 7 GB of free storage, Office Online will make working remotely and collaborating with co-workers much easier.
There are online versions of Excel 2013, OneNote 2013, PowerPoint 2013, and Word 2013 available at office.com. ZDNet reports, “Microsoft is adding commenting to the editing mode in Word Online, allowing users to make comments and changes simultaneously with other co-authors/editors.”
Office Online runs in your web browser. You sign in with a Microsoft account (whatever you used to activate Office on your computer.) You can make a new Microsoft account by going to the Microsoft Sign-Up page: http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/p/?LinkID=238657
Documents, spreadsheets, presentations, and notebooks you create in the Office Online programs are stored in your OneDrive account. You can share them with others, and they can make changes to the documents, too. That allows you to work and collaborate remotely, seeing the changes that are made in real time.
Office 365, a Microsoft subscription service that also saves your work to the cloud, can be as low as $6.99 a month, depending on the service you need. What distinguishes Office Online from most Microsoft products, though, is fact that it is free. People have used Google Docs in a similar way. However, use of Microsoft Office is so widespread, you can connect more people and businesses to your projects with Office Online. I recommend that you go to Office.com and check out Office Online to see if it meets your needs.
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