What is Microsoft office?

 

What is Microsoft office?

Microsoft Office is an office software package developed by Microsoft Corp. (an American company founded in 1975 ). It is a set of applications that perform office tasks , that is, that allow you to automate and improve the usual activities of an office.

The oldest version of Microsoft Office was launched in 1989 with two basic packages: one consisting of Microsoft PowerPoint , Microsoft Excel and Microsoft Word , and another to which the Schedule Plus and Microsoft Access programs were added .

Word is one of the most popular programs that are part of Microsoft Office . It consists of a word processor that includes a spell checker, thesaurus and the possibility of working with different fonts (fonts).

Excel , for its part, is made up of spreadsheets or spreadsheets. Its main attraction is the possibility of performing arithmetic operations automatically, which facilitates the development of balance sheets and financial statements.

PowerPoint is the Office program used to create and display visual presentations. Its base is in the development of multimedia slides that can include images, text, sound and videos.

The management of personal data and emails can be managed from Outlook . Its main strength is the email client, although it also offers a calendar and a contact directory.

It should be noted that Microsoft Office is a licensed program. Therefore, those who wish to take advantage of its benefits must buy it and respect the conditions of the contract, such as the prohibition of making copies for profit. Some of its main competitors are OpenOffice (open source), StarOffice , Lotus Symphony and WordPerfect Office .

The popularity of Office has been declining in recent years. The first victim is likely to have been PowerPoint, when many users began to understand that Flash offered them the same possibilities and many more, with a level of customization impossible to achieve in the first one . Then, with the massification of mobile phones and the attractiveness of their applications , a kind of migration took place from the PC to these devices, transforming the software market and collaborating with the growth of the cloudand free tools. Most likely, this has not gone unnoticed by Microsoft, since for some time now it is possible to enjoy some of the features of Office for free and through an email account.

Piracy

Microsoft OfficeLike Windows and the various Adobe packages, where we find Photoshop and Illustrator, Office is one of the most common sources of piracy . One of the main reasons is that they are very useful tools for training, since they are usually among the requirements of most jobs that include computer work of some kind.

As of today, there are free alternatives to almost all of them, which in some cases are more powerful and efficient, but which tend to have a weak point in common: interfaces that are difficult to navigate and not visually attractive . This leads many users to dismiss them in a matter of seconds, reverting to convenient illegal downloads . However, given that piracy has proliferated around every obstacle that has been presented in its way, many wonder if the large software development companies really suffer from this situation.

It is common to hear that it is likely that it is themselves, Microsoft and Adobe, for example, who make sure that their programs reach as many homes as possible, be it through regular acquisitions or illegal copies. This theory is based on the fact that the real profit takes place when a company buys the necessary applications for its employees, and that thanks to allowing private users to know and enjoy its tools, their popularity grows to the point of turning them into benchmarks .