Productivity is king, and the reigning king of productiveness suites has been Microsoft Office for so long as most of us can bear in mind. But a quiet coup has been afoot for not less than the final decade, and savvy customers and companies have been steadily switching from Microsoft’s suite to Google Workspace apps.
For my half, I’ve been working primarily in Google apps since 2009, throughout half a dozen totally different corporations, and I’ve reached the purpose the place I simply roll my eyes when somebody emails me a .docx or .xlsx attachment. Is it time so that you can make the swap? Here are 5 causes it’s best to reduce MS Office free, and two massive causes it’s price holding onto Microsoft’s suite.
1. Google Workspace is generally free, and for companies it’s fairly low cost.
Google Workspace delivers all the vary of Google apps as an built-in suite.
Robert Strohmeyer / PCWorld
Microsoft has been charging a whole lot of {dollars} for its Office suite for so long as Office has been a factor. Today, Office 365 is available in quite a lot of barely totally different and apparently arbitrary variations consisting of various combos of its numerous functions at costs starting from $70 a 12 months for Personal to $264 a 12 months for Business Premium. Yes, enterprise charges are comparable, $72 and $264 yearly, with bigger enterprises getting lowered charges off the massive bundle. But for private use, Google apps are flat-out free. Not a penny. Just create an account and do your factor. Even my children figured this out on their very own, as did all their associates.
2. Google affords simpler collaboration.
From its inception, Google’s app suite was constructed for collaboration. Being internet-first, Google Docs, Sheets, Slides, and so on., had been conceived at a time when sharing and collaborating on paperwork had change into the norm for a brand new technology of staff, and Microsoft was years behind in that space. While Office 265 has stepped issues up, Microsoft’s collaboration expertise stays kludgy and complicated, counting on Sharepoint and OneDrive again ends. But Google apps make it simpler to see who’s doing what, discover and revert adjustments, and get all of it carried out in actual time with out ready for various customers to save lots of their adjustments.
It’s simple to share and collaborate in Google Workspace with out having to fret about compatibility points.
Jon Phillips/Foundry
3. Seamless entry from wherever
Both Office365 and Google Workspace reside on-line and are accessible from any machine, however Google’s system was designed for straightforward entry and sharability first, the place Microsoft Office has a business-grade safety bias that ends in lots of annoying hurdles to quick access and sharing. Whether you’re on a browser or utilizing Google’s native apps on a cellular machine, attending to Google Drive is at all times simpler than hassling with Microsoft OneDrive. Chances are that anybody you need to share one thing with has a Gmail account, and that’s all it takes to entry Google Drive.
Features like model monitoring and restoring previous variations is less complicated in Google apps than in Microsoft Office. Just choose the one you need and select “Restore this version.”
Robert Strohmeyer / PCWorld
3. Google apps are less complicated
Simplicity generally is a double-edged sword, however for the typical person, Google Docs and Sheets are simply simpler to work with than Microsoft Office. Because Google Drive is constructed into the suite, you don’t have to fret a lot about the place to place stuff. You can simply create a brand new doc and begin typing. The fundamental formatting instruments are proper there, and whereas it’s doable to entry superior options, most individuals don’t actually need to. Google has carried out a superb job of curating a simple interface and shifting the advanced stuff out of the person’s method.
4. Google regularly provides intensive integrations
When you purchase a given model of Office365 (the fundamental private version provides you six apps plus Defender and OneDrive), you get a hard and fast assortment of apps. By distinction, Google Workspace is at all times increasing. Pop open the Google Apps menu within the top-right nook of Google apps and also you get an inventory of greater than 20 apps, starting from Docs and Sheets to Keep, Forms, and Voice, and even Youtube. Google’s ecosystem of apps all work with Google Workspace in a method or one other, making it simple to share your paperwork and content material between them.
5. You in all probability have already got Google Apps
Unless you’re a type of individuals who by no means signed up for a Gmail account, you in all probability have already got Google Workspace and also you’re in all probability already utilizing it. For free. There’s nothing extra to do or purchase. Just embrace it.
Why you may need to maintain Microsoft Office
Google’s apps aren’t good, they usually’re not at all times probably the most strong choices. There are two massive areas the place Microsoft’s productiveness promise wins handily: Presentations and super-advanced spreadsheets.
Advanced information wranglers favor Excel
While Google Sheets is straightforward and simple to make use of and collaborate in, it doesn’t maintain a candle to the superior capabilities of Excel. The common person might by no means create a pivot desk or do the sort of refined evaluation that requires Excel, however in case you do want these issues, the comparability between these two instruments isn’t even shut.
Microsoft Excel does pivot tables higher than Google Sheets, and it’s simpler to seek out and begin with nice templates for them.
Robert Strohmeyer / PCWorld
Power presenters favor PowerLevel
I’ve carried out sufficient severe presentation-building in my profession to understand the sophistication of PowerLevel. It has an enormous gallery of visible types and results, and its method to creating layered, data-driven visuals is vastly superior to Google Slides. If you’ve change into an influence person of PowerLevel, you’ll instantly really feel hampered by Slides’ oversimplified objects.
On a number of events, I’ve constructed my presentation decks out in PowerLevel to get the appear and feel I actually wished, then exported the slides to Google Slides to make use of them or distribute them to workforce members. That’s a reasonably damning reality with regards to declaring which is the superior presentation software.
Bottom line
For most individuals, the free Google apps usually are not simply free, however simpler to make use of and collaborate with than Microsoft Office is. Since most of us have Gmail or Youtube accounts anyway, we have already got Google accounts and may simply work there with none extra subscriptions or selections. But for severe professionals with particular wants in visible presenting or information evaluation, Microsoft nonetheless reigns supreme by a large margin. And in case you do want these capabilities, your organization can buy your Office365 subscription for you. Don’t spend your personal hard-earned cash on it.