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Microsoft Office Now Available On All Chromebooks (theverge.com)

Microsoft has reportedly finished testing out its Office apps on Chromebooks as a number of Chromebooks are now seeing the Office apps in the Google Play Store. Samsung's Chromebook Pro, Acer's Chromebook 15, and Acer's C771 have the Office apps available for download. The Verge reports: The apps are Android versions of Office which include the same features you'd find on an Android tablet running Office. Devices like Asus' Chromebook Flip (with a 10.1-inch display) will get free access to Office on Chrome OS, but larger devices will need a subscription. Microsoft has a rule across Windows, iOS, and Android hardware that means devices larger than 10.1 inches need an Office 365 subscription to unlock the ability to create, edit, or print documents.

4 of 113 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Why? by karmawarrior · · Score: 4, Informative

    I'm using Microsoft Word for my resume as most employers still need documents in .docx format, and I am seeing very real formatting issues when converting Google Docs documents to .docx.

    I was hoping to use Google Docs for the entire thing, I used a Google Docs off-the-shelf template to build my resume and after filling everything in found two major issues:

    1. It wouldn't print the bullets (WTF?).
    2. When I exported it to Word, there were major issues with the settings for the tables. Margins were screwy. Horizontal lines that were part of the template were now inconsistent. Rows all started on new pages.

    I really want to use Docs for this kind of thing, and if I ran my own multi-employee company I'd be seriously tempted to go full-on Google Apps for everything, but unfortunately I'm at the mercy of the standards everyone else has set. Hopefully long term other options will become more practical.

    --
    KMSMA (WWBD?)
  2. Re:Wow! by kurkosdr · · Score: 4, Informative

    Yes. If your job involves opening docx, pptx or xlsx files created with Microsoft Office, and you need 100% compatibility with those files, you need Microsoft Office. Period. Nobody is going to risk incompatibilities when their job depends on it or whine at people to resend as ODF, because their ability to pay rent and eat depends on that job. Then there are university students who need to open MS Office templates and presentations. In addition, Powerpoint doesn't mess up your slides when saving and restoring because something was an invisible half-pixel off (like Impress does), and Word doesn't redline words just because it chose to use a dictionary from another language (like Writer does).

  3. Re: IT'S A TRAP! by theweatherelectric · · Score: 3, Informative

    OSX 3.34%

    The 3.34% figure is for only one version of macOS. Adding all the macOS versions together comes to 6.25%, so over twice the marketshare of Linux.

  4. Misleading headline... by Schnapple · · Score: 4, Informative

    ...though not really Slashdot's fault as they're just passing the message along.

    Microsoft Office is available on all Chromebooks that support running the Google Play Store and whatever Android apps it has in it

    If you have a Chromebook not on the supported list and/or running the wrong kind of processor (though mostly just old Chromebooks) then you can't run the Google Play Store and therefore you can't run Office in the manner described here.

    What the article was really trying to say is that for some period of time only selected Chromebooks that ran the Google Play Store could run it, artificially limited due to testing purposes. That's done now. But if you're like me and you still have some ancient Acer Chromebook you're not getting it. I know, I tried last night thinking this was an "app" in the way that most ChromeOS "apps" are (i.e., just web pages pretending to be apps)