Five of the Best Ever Microsoft Office Apps for Windows

Microsoft Office has been released 11 times for Windows so far since 1990 – there seems to be no chance of the suite of productivity applications ever coming to a halt, and over the years, there have been some superb additions to the original core trio of Word, Excel and PowerPoint.

With each release, there are different versions of Microsoft Office available to different types of users and different budgets – for instance student editions, professional editions and enterprise editions for large organizations.

Of most importance to buyers of productivity software is the knowledge that they are purchasing the very best tools on the market – Microsoft have prided themselves on providing top quality office software, with the following 5 applications among the best...

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Originally released for Windows in 1989, Microsoft Office Word is the world’s number one word processing application.

Its importance cannot be understated. Whether on a Mac or a Windows PC, Word is the most commonly used method for writing and revising documents.

Journalists, authors, politicians, CEOs – everyone who requires a document uses Word and in doing so takes advantage of its superb layout options, spell-checking software, page and text formatting, reviewing and revision tools, various printing options and so much more.

Although initially greeted with consternation due to the alteration of some key functions, Microsoft Office Word 2007 is by far and away the most effective release in the word processor’s long history.

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Excel is an extremely powerful solution to so many different situations. It can be used as a simple calculation tool, as a database, as the back-end to a bespoke application or even a website.

Utilizing cell functions, standard mathematical formulae and macros, anyone can build an application with Excel from a basic conversion tool to a complex data management utility with hyperlinks and ODBC data connections with Microsoft Access.

Each version of Excel – which has been around since 1985 – has built on the success and functionality of the previous one, and remains backwards compatible with .xls files created in earlier versions.