Word excel powerpoint etc

Microsoft PowerPoint, Word, and Excel make it possible to do so much with regards to our jobs. The trio has something to offer for almost everyone. But, what exactly is the difference between PowerPoint, Word, and Excel, and what does each piece of software do? Let’s find out!

The main difference between PowerPoint, Word, and Excel is the purpose of each software. PowerPoint is used for making presentations. Excel is the most helpful for capturing, tracking, and analyzing data with the help of graphical charts. Word is used for creating documents such as reports and books.

But, there is a lot more to it and in this article, I’m going to talk about what each one does, the differences between the three, and finally, how can we leverage the power of the three applications by working with all of them together. So, keep reading!

A Quick Note Before We Begin – if you want to make jaw-dropping presentations, I would recommend using one of these Presentation Designs. The best part is – it is only $16.5 a month, but you get to download and use as many presentation designs as you like! I personally use it from time-to-time, and it makes my task of making beautiful presentations really quick and easy!

Although these three applications can be used in a way that all three work together, there are differences that set them apart. Each application is used for different tasks and in this section, that is what we are going to talk about. So, let’s get into it.

• PowerPoint is used to present data or talking points in a slide show format. Presentations are a great way to summarize information, a project report, learnings from a research study, and much more. Microsoft PowerPoint helps you to create presentations.

• Excel is used to manage and organize data. You can capture data, record information over time, and analyze the data by creating charts and graphs using that data.

• Microsoft Word is used to create detailed reports, brief summaries, proposals, and pretty much anything that requires a lot of text. This is because it is a word processor.

As you can see, each application has a different goal, and thus are designed to be different from each other. Obviously, if the goal or the objective of the software is different, there are bound to be several differences in the functionalities. That said, I shall not focus on the differences in the functionalities of the three applications as pretty much everything will be different.

What is Microsoft PowerPoint?

Microsoft PowerPoint is one of the most powerful tools that any company can use when it comes to meetings and presentations. PowerPoint uses a slide show method of giving presentations.

PowerPoint has a wealth of features that help professionals get their messages across to their colleagues or clients. We have a large library of articles that cover everything that you need to know about PowerPoint. So, after reading this article, why not go check some of them out.

How does PowerPoint work?

To use PowerPoint, you need to have Microsoft Office installed on your PC, laptop, or Mac. Most new machines come with Office pre-installed with no payment necessary. In some cases, you will only have a free trial and will need to buy a license key.

If you do not have Office at all, you can buy it from a retail store or online. Regardless of which method you choose, you will most likely need to download it. Here is a link to the Microsoft website where you will be able to download the MS Office Suite.

Once Office is installed, you will be able to open PowerPoint and start making presentations.

What is PowerPoint Used for?

PowerPoint is used for making slide show presentations. You may need a presentation for various reasons. For instance, you may want to create a presentation giving an overview of your organization, or a pitch presentation for your investors, or perhaps a summarized performance presentation for the annual report.

The purpose of creating a presentation can be endless. The type of presentations that you make depends on what your profession is. Below is a small indicative list of professions and what they use PowerPoint for.

• Salesperson: There is no better way for a salesperson to get a message across to their potential clients than a presentation.

• Entrepreneurs: They would use PowerPoint for the same reason as a salesperson would need presentations. If you have meetings to sell your service, product or to raise funding, a presentation can go a long way in helping.

• Managers: Managing a team of people is not easy. If you want to really make an impression on your team, why not use presentations? You could also use them when delivering reports to your peers or reporting managers.

• Public Speakers: This is the most common use of presentations. Using presentations is the best way to keep your audience engaged while you give an awe-inspiring speech.

Advantage of Using PowerPoint

The main advantage of using PowerPoint is that you can create intriguing and visually appealing presentations for your clients, boss, or a classroom of students. PowerPoint has a massive selection of features that allow you to create truly personalized representations of your data, product, or service.

Difference between PowerPoint and Word

For us to talk about the difference between PowerPoint and Word, the easiest way to do this would be to talk about what Word is and what it does first. Let’s get straight to it.

What is Microsoft Word?

MS Word is a word processor. It is part of the Microsoft Office suite. MS Word is the most commonly used application within all the offerings of MS Office. Here are some of the reasons why MS Word is so popular. This list should also help explain exactly what MS Word is used for –

• Microsoft Word used for creating large pieces of content, articles, or even blog posts.

• Microsoft Word is also used for creating detailed reports, writing summaries, capturing information about a research, etc.

• Word is also perfectly suited for filling out application for an award, circulating instructions for a questionnaire, and other business needs.

• Microsoft Word can also be used to write business proposals, business agreements and contracts, and other business related confidential documents, etc.

• It is also used within the educational domain to write anything from essays to speeches.

Key differences between PowerPoint and Word

The difference between Microsoft Word and PowerPoint is pretty big. While MS Word is used to create detailed documents, PowerPoint is used to present as much information with as little text as possible.

PowerPoint can be seen as a visual representation of data and MS Word is a text-based representation of data. Other than that, it is hard to mention other differences because they are completely different applications.

Difference between PowerPoint and Excel

We have already discussed, in some detail, what PowerPoint is. So, for this section, we will focus more on Excel and this should highlight what the differences are between the two. Let’s get straight to the point.

What is Microsoft Excel?

Excel is a program that is commonly used by accountants within a company. It can be used to manage any form of data that needs to be organized and managed. It can also be used to summarize data by creating graphs and charts.

Key differences between PowerPoint and Excel

There is one major difference between PowerPoint and Excel and that difference is the use of data.

Excel manages and organizes data and while you can turn the data into charts, Excel is not really the program that you want to use to present the data. PowerPoint is the better program for representing data.

You can use PowerPoint to present your Excel data. Let me share what I mean by that in our next section.

Using Microsoft PowerPoint, Word and Excel together

Now this is where everything gets interesting and to be honest, this is where the power of Microsoft Office really stands out. All the programs can be used together to create a smooth workplace that runs like clockwork. Here’s how  PowerPoint, Word, and Excel can be used together.

Using PowerPoint and Word Together

You can place your presentations inside of MS Word documents which can help to remove the tediousness of repeating the same points in your presentation in word. Here’s how to do it.

1. In PowerPoint go to the “Files” tab and select it. You should get a drop-down menu.

1. In the drop-down menu, select the “Export” option. You should get another drop-down menu.

1. Select “Create Handouts”. This will open a dialogue box.

1. Now, select what layout you want.

1. Paste the link directly into your Word document, and you are done!

Doing this will allow real-time changes within word if they are done in PowerPoint.

Using PowerPoint And Excel Together.

You can use PowerPoint to present your Excel data by creating a chart in PowerPoint and linking it to the Excel file. We have a full tutorial on this which you can read by clicking on the link below –

Final Thoughts

We have reached the end of this article. Hopefully, you have walked away with enough knowledge to impress your peers and understand the key differences between the three applications.

We discussed the differences between these three products and what they all do. Be sure to bookmark this page and keep up to date with all of our articles which are designed to make your work a lot easier.

The Office suite software industry has made a lot of improvement with a lot of new additions to the race but Microsoft Office still remains the king by a long distance. Most businesses and even individuals prefer Microsoft Office for their work.

This article discusses the ways we can use Office apps for free if you don’t have Microsoft Office installed on your system. A one-time purchase of Microsoft Office 2019 may cost around $249 or even more if you are going for the Pro Plus edition.

If you are not a heavy user of Office suite, you can save this amount by using free Office apps which are also available from Microsoft but not as feature-rich as the complete Office 2019 or Office 365 suites. The free apps can get most of the daily routine work done without the need for extra features.

Office Web Apps

Microsoft offers free online Office apps like Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote, etc. with OneDrive. If you have a Microsoft ID (Hotmail, live.com, outlook.com), you can get all these online apps for free. You just need a web browser and an Internet connection to get going. Microsoft also gives you some free space (5 GB) for storing your documents in the OneDrive cloud.

But this is limited to being online all the time. You can’t view or edit your documents once you are offline. If that’s not a limitation for you, then you can go this path without investing in the Desktop apps.

Open Word Online

Open Excel Online

Open PowerPoint Online

Open OneNote Online

All these links require sign-in to your Microsoft account.

The best alternative to Microsoft Office Online is Google Apps i.e., Google Docs for Word Online, Google Sheets for Excel Online and Google Slides for PowerPoint Online. Technically Google Keep is an alternative to OneNote but OneNote is more feature-rich.

Office Apps

If you want to be able to access your documents even when you are offline, Microsoft has a limited solution for you. You can install the OneDrive desktop sync app which will synchronize all the documents from the cloud to your local computer.

For viewing the documents, you can use Microsoft Office Mobile apps. Otherwise, you can also use mobile apps if you are using mobile Operating Systems like Android and iOS. Here are the links for each app for each platform.

Office Windows Apps

Word Mobile for Windows 10

Excel Mobile for Windows 10

PowerPoint Mobile for Windows 10

OneNote Mobile for Windows 10

The above links will open the Microsoft Store where you can download and install the Office apps for free. You can view and edit your documents in these apps but only if you are on a mobile device which is running Windows 10.

The apps will get installed on a PC with Windows 10 but can only be used for viewing documents. For editing, you will need to look for something else.

Keep reading for more solutions.

Office Android Apps

Microsoft Word for Android

Microsoft Excel for Android

Microsoft PowerPoint for Android

Microsoft OneNote for Android

Office iOS Apps

Microsoft Word for iOS

Microsoft Excel for iOS

Microsoft PowerPoint for iOS

Microsoft OneNote for iOS

How to really get Microsoft Office for free?

If you are a teacher or a student, you can get Microsoft Office 365 Education for free. Not all teachers or students are eligible. If your school or university has signed-up for Microsoft services, you can get a free account.

To see if your educational institution is eligible, please visit this page, enter your school email address and get the results. If your school is eligible, you will see the following page:

Not so free Microsoft Office

If nothing is working for you, you can install a trial version of Office 365 Pro Plus. Although it is for enterprise customers who want some advanced Office capabilities, you can use the trial for 30 to 60 days for free.

To download a trial version of Office 365, you can sign up here. You will be given a new email address upon signup which is like username@organizationName.onmicrosoft.com. You can log in to this account and download Office 365 trial for free.

You can also download the evaluation version from Microsoft Evaluation page.

Still, aren’t satisfied with the solutions so far? You can also search on Amazon and eBay for cheap licenses of Microsoft Office. They may not be free but they will be cheap and un-reliable for sure.

Alternatives

There are a lot of free alternatives but nothing is like MS Office. Here, we are going to list the alternative Office suites which can create, open and edit Microsoft Office files which includes DOC, DOCX, XLS, XLSX, PPT, PPTX, etc.

WPX Office

WPX Office suite is my favorite alternative to Microsoft Office. It has a very similar interface and can create, open and edit the documents very much like Microsoft Office.

If you create a WPX Office account, you will also be able to use their online apps similar to Microsoft web apps with 1 GB of free cloud space.

Its tab interface is the best way to organize the documents. That means it only opens one window for all your documents like any web browser.

Download WPX Office

LibreOffice

LibreOffice is just like Microsoft Office and a fierce competitor. It can successfully handle Microsoft document formats like Docx, Xlsx, and Pptx. Since LibreOffice is a suite of software, individual software corresponds as Microsoft Office app alternatives: Writer for Word, Calc for Excel, Impress for PowerPoint, etc.

There are other programs like Draw which is an alternative for Visio, Base as an alternative to Access, Math, and Charts which don’t have any Microsoft equivalents.

Download LibreOffice

Apache OpenOffice

Apache OpenOffice is probably the oldest competitor of Microsoft Office. OpenOffice comes with a slightly different interface but with most of the functionality which Microsoft Office provides.

Download OpenOffice

To Sum Up

Microsoft Office is not a free suite. But we can get the same work done using free apps whether online or offline. There are times when you are bound to buy a copy of Microsoft 2019 (one-time purchase) or Office 365 (monthly/yearly subscription). It’s better to browse through Amazon and eBay for discounts and cheaper options.

Is there any free of using Microsoft Office that we have missed in this article? Please let us know in the comments below and also tell us your preferred way to use Office apps.

Related posts:

Uses of Microsoft Office in daily life: Microsoft Office suite is a family living in almost every computer around the world. Family members are Microsoft Word to create and edit documents.

Excel to perform mathematical and logical calculations with analytical functions. PowerPoint for presentation. MS- Access for database management, and Microsoft Outlook for sending and receiving data by email, etc. And Microsoft Office or Microsoft 365 is a leader in this family.

In other words, Microsoft Office is an official application software package, developed by Microsoft Inc. headquarters in Redmond, Washington, United States. Microsoft Office suite is application software packaged with one bundle.

It means you can use Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint, MS Access, Publisher etc. to create professional-looking documents, charts, calculations, reports, and presentations with high speed and accuracy.

Today, Microsoft Office applications are used in according to me almost 90% of official works around the world in private and government offices. It is so much popular due to its flexible features, and easier methods to create and collaborate in official works.

The first is version was launched in the ’90s with the name Microsoft Office 3.0. Today, it is now Microsoft 365 or Microsoft Office 365,  2016 that you can install on your PC.

And Office 365 is a cloud-based subscription for Microsoft Office in which all the applications are included with many other exceptional and advanced features. It is cloud-based so you can access it anywhere. And you can also use Microsoft Office Online with free Office online apps.

You only need an internet browser from any of these such as Internet Explorer, Microsoft Edge, Google Chrome and Opera Mini, etc. And Microsoft Email account that you can create at Microsoft.com. After that, you can create, share and collaborate with anyone and from anywhere on online Microsoft office and Office365.

And if you have little Microsoft Office Knowledge then YouTube videos can also help you to become a master in Microsoft Office. But for mastering Official works, you have to do 100+ exercises. Only practical exercises will give you more knowledge that is needed in most jobs.

Microsoft Office knowledge is an essential requirement in offline and online jobs. You can find Microsoft Office Skills Training in the syllabus of all computer institutes and coaching centers. You can learn MS Office by doing an offline basic computer course. After that, you can learn advanced skills from online courses.

ideas for practical exercises: List of Microsoft Word Exercises for Students

When you buy Microsoft 365, Office 2016 or Office 365, you will get the following Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint, 1 TB of cloud storage, and many other features. (Also depends on your plan and purchased product) application with the package.

Let’s meet with the Microsoft Office Family Members including Word, Excel, and PowerPoint, etc. And find out, what the duties of each member are installed in the computer one by one.

1. Microsoft Word: –

You can use Microsoft Word to create and edit documents such as resumes, applications, and letters, school or college assignments professionally.

The following articles will increase your Microsoft word knowledge:-

18 Best Basic Microsoft Word practice exercises for beginners

Uses of Microsoft Word in our daily life

What is Microsoft Word?

How to Learn Microsoft Word

2. Microsoft Excel: –

Microsoft Excel is my favorite application in the Microsoft Office suite that anyone can use to perform daily life and business calculation by using logical and mathematical formulas in the spreadsheet. It’s a complete financial management application used by millions of people online and offline.

It is very well used in data and information analytics by using filters, conditional formatting, goal seek and pre-defined templates etc. It is also used to visualize data and information in charts, smart arts, pivot tables,s and much more.

You can read the following articles for more details:

1. Top 8 Most Productive Uses of Microsoft Excel in daily life
2. Microsoft Excel Basics
3. Importance of Microsoft Excel in Business

3. Microsoft PowerPoint: –

PowerPoint is another application of Microsoft packaged with the Microsoft Office suite to create presentations using slides to present data and information in meetings and seminars. It means you can use PowerPoint to create project presentations, business plan presentations, school assignments, and presentations for seminars etc.

You can learn more here: – Uses of Microsoft PowerPoint in our daily life.

4. Microsoft Access: –

You can use MS Access to create a database and program to track and manage data and information. It means you can create a database of students, a database of your employees, and customer records. You can also track and edit their progress with the profile name, address, and everything that is needed for you to collect.

5. Microsoft Outlook: –

You can use Microsoft Outlook on a computer and online as you use Gmail. It is used to send and receive official and personal mail. With this, you can manage your day-to-day task and save important contacts.

The best feature that we use each day is you can access existing emails without an Internet connection. And you can insert all formatting options while writing an email.

Etc.

The above is just a basic idea about what the Microsoft Office suite is all about and how it can be beneficial for students and midsized business owners.

Microsoft Office is really the most important application to install on computers. Microsoft Office provides tools that help business owners and remote workers to work together. It is a cloud-based application that helps to achieve higher productivity from anywhere by using any device (smartphone, tablet, computer, and laptop).

In the end, I will say that the Microsoft Office Suite is a great family and have great powerful members. Even I am writing this article by accessing one family member that is Microsoft Word.