(Of course, if you already use nearly any Microsoft product - Skype, OneDrive, Xbox Live - you already have one.) All you need to use it is a free Microsoft account, which you get here. Around since 2010, the website has largely flown under the radar, overshadowed by the desktop versions of Office. provides completely free, but slightly limited, online-only versions of Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook and other tools.
To make the decision a bit easier, this guide will go over the three different ways to use Office and what you get with each pick. Microsoft doesn't exactly make it simple to tell the difference between your choices. Because of that, you get several different ways to buy Office 2016, and you'll be forgiven if you don't know which one to pick. Long gone are the days of grabbing a box of CDs at the store - today, subscriptions are the norm, but they're not the only way to buy. If you're eager to use the new apps, they are available now, but first, you have to figure out how you'll purchase them. This week, Office 2016 arrives for Windows and the software is a major upgrade to the previous versions of Microsoft's productivity suite.
