Do You Really Need Microsoft Office?

After years of buying and installing Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint and more, it might be time to stop. WSJ Personal Tech columnist Joanna Stern jumps into the competition. Photo/Video: Drew Evans for The Wall Street Journal.

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[TheElectricCherry]

I was gonna ask "Why is she using a DVD?" but then I realized this video was uploaded in 2014.

[shadhumydee]

Your whole video is based on "Do I actually use all the features offered by MS Word". In reference to your question, Yes, I do use most of the features. In fact, I even extend the ribbons to add "Developers" and use some of it's functions as well.
Considering the extent of my usage, I think "I REALLY DO NEED MICROSOFT OFFICE" and Apple's or Google's office services are not yet competent alternatives to it.

[wojciechtechtips]

A couple hundred dollars? Just get a pirated iso and get MS toolkit

[SantiagoMonroy]

Answer:no, Theres libreoffice and WPS office and they are free and do almost the same

[abdullahal-shimri]

Google docs is good for high-school and college work. For professional work I only use Office.

[designthinkingwithgian]

Microsoft is all about features but never about the experience. "Wow, the new Teams is amazing and so easy to use" said no one ever as far as I'm concerned. They simply don't take pride in the experience of their products. Only a matter of time before emerging competitors take over market share.

[mintoocool]

two words. handwriting recognition. i have a laptop with digitizer. there is absolutely no software as good as onenote to take my writing and covert them to typed a body with the click of a button.

and absolutely nothing comes close to the macros in excel.

so yeah, maybe office is not for the average user, but for guys like me, it's essential.

[screamingdean]

For word documents, what's the best, free Microsoft Office alternate? Keep in mind that Microsoft Office has grammar and spelling correction. I would need these corrections as well. I'm also still on a windows 7 computer.

[rock-n-party]

Well if you have a Mac no need. As you have Apple’s version of office and it’s free and you don’t have to pay anything to use the applications. But then you got Google Drive

[clearmist]

I thought you could buy Microsoft Word separately for $100, if you don't' want to do the subscription thing or want to use it exclusively offline.

[littlebit]

You need Office. Why? 1TB of OneDrive.

[realpizzard]

I was like why is she comparing word with Google docs? You can create an entire book ebook which has linked chapters without any 3rd party software. Microsoft Office also include these seamless multi device support and everything and ever better design suggesting system. Then I realized this video is from 2014 and she is using a word processor for notepad type works. Yes google docs is much better than notepad!

[luigiplayer]

Would’ve been nice if you explained the, I don’t know, FEATURES of all 3, and the extras office has.

[cybermonkeyusa]

While I agree that Office is familiar, Gsuite is being adopted more than Office. Office is not critical to productivity anymore.

[vktg]

and then there’s me who uses an unlicensed ms office since my first pc

[narenchris]

if google replace the old guy toolbar interface to the tabbed or ribbon interface and make google workspace available for offline usage with installable programs, i will probably try google workspace once again

[brianokello]

People still buy Office? I think you can just take it from anybody's PC

[bred]

have you looked at taskade? can you review it?

[Redhound]

This chick is biased against Microsoft, so really can't take her seriously...

[TikaPahadi]

If you yourself are confused, why are you making a video about it?