Office 365 Small Business, for up to 25 users, does not include the Office 2013 desktop apps (though you would be forgiven for assuming otherwise). However, if you already have licenses for Office 2013, 2010, or even 2007, or Office 2011 or 2008 for Mac, you can use those suites with Office 365. So Mac Office 365 subscribers have little reason to delay a download, and the interface parity of the Mac and Windows versions should make both 2016 suites appealing to business users, too.

For years, the world has been begging Microsoft to release its Office suite for the iPad. Finally, in February, Microsoft finally did so -- and Microsoft produced.

But there was a price: You must have an Office 365 subscription, and your files are essentially locked into Microsoft's own storage services (OneDrive and SharePoint). Still, for the first time, people who don't use Windows or don't use Windows exclusively could work as equal partners in an Office-dominated environment -- which is most companies.

Or could they? I set out to find out how Office 365 actually works in OS X, iOS, and Android. [ Special report:. The. The. Subscribe to InfoWorld's today.

] [ Stay up to date with. Get. ] Office on the iPad and OS X: A decent experience Microsoft has had Mac versions of its suite for decades -- Excel and PowerPoint got their start on the Mac, in fact.

It's been sad to see Microsoft continually make the Mac version of Office inferior to the Windows version. Its performance is always noticeably sluggish on the Mac, though that's not true of software from other cross-platform companies, from Adobe to AutoDesk. Mac users typically wait several years before a new Windows version is ported to OS X, creating a compatibility gap. Feature compatibility is usually compromised along the way.

For example, Excel for Mac supports only a subset of macros, so accounting departments must use Windows PCs. SharePoint access is limited to essentially a Web-based, read-only mode across Office for Mac, which ironically encourages users to set up informal Dropbox or Box accounts. Office 2011 for Mac can't use all the fonts on your Mac if you have a large library installed, such as the full Adobe Font Folio -- it simply stops loading fonts when it's 'full,' making them inaccessible to your documents.

Still, for most users, Office for Mac provides the capabilities they need -- even if you feel dissed in the process. Office for iPad is less capable than Office for Mac, but it's, which is perfectly adequate for most productivity work. Office for iPad lacks a key advantage of iWork: automatic syncing of documents across all your devices, so they're available offline. In Office, you expressly move a file to your iPad's local storage to work on it while, say, in flight. (If a document is open and you lose your connection, Office is smart enough to save a temporary local copy.) Microsoft has been aggressively marketing document fidelity as an advantage of Office for iPad, but you get it only for simple to moderately complex documents using the same fonts. If you use the same fonts in Office documents on your Mac, Windows PC, and iPad, you'll discover that files moved among the three versions of Office rarely reflow due to platform differences.

The same is true in moving files between iOS and OS X for iWork documents -- font fidelity typically provides layout fidelity. Office works best in an Office-only workflow, as iWork does in an iWork-only workflow.

Has launched the latest version of its productivity suite, Office 2019, for Windows and Mac users as a one-time purchase option. While the company has been encouraging users to its cloud-based subscription service, Office 365, in order for them to access Office apps and regular feature updates, it realises some people still simply want to buy Office like the used to: once - that's it - with no subscription fee. 'We recognize that some customers can't move to the cloud in the near term,' it explained. 'We want to support all our customers'.

So, the company is rolling out Office 2019 for Mac and Windows. You can purchase the suite once and use it as much as you want, but you won't get feature updates. Microsoft said Office 2019 includes a 'meaningful subset of features that are found in Office 365', and it's not part of Office 365. Although this Office 2019 software won't be continually updated, it will receive 'quality and security updates'. Here's what you need to know. • • • Microsoft What is Office 2019?

• Office 2019 is an upgrade to Office 2016 • Office 365 is different; it's an Office subscription service Office 2019 is the next 'on-premise' release of Microsoft's productivity suite. You download this program on your Windows PC or Mac machine, after paying for it once, and you get unrestricted access to all its included apps. The last major 'on-premise' version of Office, it has four core apps: Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Outlook. (OneNote is free and available outside of Office, regardless of platform). Custom page size microsoft word. Office 2019 has some features found in Office 365, a cloud-based subscription service that also provides access to Office apps. However, paid Office 365 subscribers will notice they have several unique perks over on-premise Office 2019 users, including an Editor in Word, Designer in PowerPoint, Ideas in Excel, real-time collaboration across all apps, shared computer licensing, continual feature updates, and more.