Which Microsoft Office?

[Champuru]

I just purchased a Macbook Air and need to install Microsoft Office due to my work. I've been using Office 2008 on my other laptop and it's been fine. Now there are so many versions of Offices, 2011, 265, etc..I'm a university student as well. Should I get the university student 4-year subscription? Any pros and cons with that besides the attractive price point? I read it somewhere that you must be online to use Office with the university student edition. Is this true? Also, can I still purchase 08 or 2011? Please help me decide which version to get. Thank you very much!

 

[MisterMe]

The answer to your question depends on your needs. There is a small subset of Office users who require Office 2008 because Entourage 2008 can handle pre-2007 versions of Exchange Server. Outlook 2011 cannot access pre-2007 Exchange Server [except via IMAP]. Outlook 2011 can access Exchange Server 2007 and later, which Entourage 2008 cannot do [except via IMAP]. If you are not a member of this small subset, then it is Office 2011. There is no such thing as Office 265. Office 365 is Office 2011 paid on a subscription basis.

 

[960design]

I cringe when I see this, yes I understand sometimes NEED == TRUE, but in my case I refuse to put any subscription Office crap on my Macs. I currently run Pages with no problems. I can open office documents and save them back as office documents to email off.

 

[AndyK]

I still use Office 2008. I only use it for Word / Excel & it's doing the job pretty well for my use. I haven't upgraded personally since I don't need anything that 2008 doesn't already do.

It's quite annoying to ask for advice on buying software having provided zero information on what you actually want to do with it. If 2008 has been "fine" as you've suggested, then why change it?

 

[artfun]

My university is migrating accounts to some MS cloud service, they say that office will free for students after that. If not that I would probably go with cheapest (2011 vs 2008) as I only use word and sometimes excel.

 

[saturnotaku]

If you get a personal subscription to Office 365, you not only get the software but also 1 TB of cloud storage. MS is rolling out the massive increase in storage space later this month. This is actually how I prefer to see the subscription model - paying for cloud storage but getting Office for "free."

 

[GoingDark]

Office 365 University is $79 for four years. It's an incredibly good deal. You can install Office on up to two different computers, and once it's installed, you do not need to be online to use it. It works exactly like any other version of Office at that point, and you get great bonuses like being able to use Office on an iPhone/iPad and getting 1TB of OneDrive storage.

I would highly recommend going with the Office 365 University subscription.