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

Posted by BeauHD on from the come-and-get-it dept.

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.

13 of 113 comments (clear)

  1. Why? by Gravis+Zero · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Serious question: why would you want to use MS Office Lite for a fee when Google Docs and LibreOffice ownCloud are free? Maybe it's just me but I think the people who are buying Chromebooks aren't looking to throw away money on software.

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    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.

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    2. Re:Why? by AmiMoJo · · Score: 4, Interesting

      I always send my CV in PDF form. As well as almost always displaying correctly on a variety of systems, it prevents information leakage. Last thing you want is for the prospective employer to hit ctrl-Z a few times and see what edits you made.

      The only people who have demanded Word documents have been recruiters. If they do, run. The only reasons they want the Word document are so that they can copy/paste the contents into a portfolio more easily, or so that they can edit it themselves.

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    3. Re:Why? by thegarbz · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Most employers don't care what format your resume comes in so long as their automated web application process approves the file type

      FTFY. You're assuming a certain level of human common sense when in fact what you're doing is arguing semantics with a machine, or worse still a HR person.

  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. Comment removed by account_deleted · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Comment removed based on user account deletion

  4. Re: IT'S A TRAP! by gravewax · · Score: 4, Interesting

    That is hardly proof of anything, they develop for platforms based on popularity. Desktop Linux is a fraction of the audience of any of the OS's they support and of those on Linux that use it as a desktop only a fraction of those would be willing to pay for an office product. support for a distro has to make sense and I doubt the support cost for Ubuntu or Mint would make financial sense.

  5. Re:With M$ IT'S always a trap by volodymyrbiryuk · · Score: 3, Interesting

    M$ is scared shitless of Google so they try to regain some ground in the office department, cause Chromebook users started using Google Docs more. They won't become a monopoly again because they are a de-facto monopoly for office applications but hopefully this will change in the future.

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  6. Re:Wow! by Bert64 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    If you need 100% compatibility you have to be running the exact same version, on the exact same hardware and configured to use the exact same printer... In practice, 100% compatibility is never achieved with the msoffice files and you can just get varying degrees of compatibility depending what you're doing... In some instances, libreoffice actually does a better job of opening files and in some it doesn't. The only real difference is that people are conditioned to accept the incompatibilities and bugs with msoffice so they overlook them.

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  7. 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.

  8. Re:With M$ IT'S always a trap by kurkosdr · · Score: 3, Interesting

    While Google Docs can't hold a candle to MS Office (it cannot do something as basic as auto page numbering in a table of contents), Microsoft wants to cover their bases, and particularly those people who need very basic Office formatting capabilites. Microsoft is afraid that Google Docs will become an acceptable "baseline". Would go as far as saying "scared shitless" though. MS Office's bread and butter, aka universities and businesses, are not threatened. The sheer number of templates available makes a big lock-in.

  9. Re: IT'S A TRAP! by thegarbz · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Not to mention macOS is effectively a monoculture regarding support. Linux on the other hand can best be described as a clusterfuck.

  10. 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)

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