Office home and student or home and business

[Geffg]

Been asked by my 14yr old if we can get her Microsoft office for her MacBook to school work. Been looking but not that up on computers and software etc. I’ve looked online and seen different versions.
What is the difference between Microsoft office home and student compared to home and business? The student one is £119.99 and I’ve seen the home and business one on groupon for £79. Just thinking if the business one does the same and more and I can save £40 then it wou,d be a good buy. Also it says I will receive an activation code, is this normal? Anyone else gotten this software off groupon and been ok. Thanks.

Edited by Geffg on Thursday 23 April 19:31

[Brainpox]

Home and Business is listed as £250 on Microsoft's website so will most likely be someone selling volume license keys.

They will work but aren't 'proper' per se.

The difference is you don't get Outlook in the student version.

[Geffg]

Thanks for the reply. Also seen as she has pages etc on the MacBook is this actually needed? She reckons she needs it but I thought you could do everything without. Not sure if she actually needs it or just wants it because a couple of her friends have it.

[Brainpox]

The problem with Pages (or anything that isn't MS Office, really) is formatting when sending to people who will be using Office to view their work.

Even if they are saved in what, in theory, is a compatible file format, layouts tend to get broken at the worst time. Full fat versions of Word/Excel/etc are worth it for the peace of mind alone (in my opinion!)

[plasticpig]

Pages is a decent word processor. Numbers is fine for basic spreadsheets. Both aren't up to Office standards in terms of functionality though. Excel has twice the number of functions as Numbers for example. Whether a student needs those functions would depend on what she is doing. Office is still the standard when it comes to usage in the workplace.

[Jinx]

Brainpox said:

The problem with Pages (or anything that isn't MS Office, really) is formatting when sending to people who will be using Office to view their work.

Even if they are saved in what, in theory, is a compatible file format, layouts tend to get broken at the worst time. Full fat versions of Word/Excel/etc are worth it for the peace of mind alone (in my opinion!)

If you have a lot of office documents going back and forth requiring multiple inputs then yes it is definitely worthwhile having office installed (and even better if everyone that accesses the documents has the same version of office). This will stop a lot of wasted time fixing formatting and other issues. If instead you only need to read each others documents then office is a nice to have but possibly not worth the money in itself. I subscribe personally to Office 365 (Personal - there is a home version for up to 5 computers) as I also use the 1TB of onedrive storage that comes with the subscription for back-ups and large file sharing.

[bristolracer]

You can get office 365 on a yearly basis.
Mine is about to renew at 59.99. It will allow you you to put it across multiple devices as well. So she can have it on a laptop and a tablet or even her phone.

[Harpoon]

Have you checked with your daughter's school / college, some have a deal with MS to allow free use of Office 365 Education

https://www.microsoft.com/en-gb/education/students

[Geffg]

Harpoon said:

Have you checked with your daughter's school / college, some have a deal with MS to allow free use of Office 365 Education

https://www.microsoft.com/en-gb/education/students

Worth a check there. Thanks. Could do without spending out right now. Otherwise by the sound of it I may have to get it for her. Tbf she is doing a lot of work for school even with not being in and I can imagine she’ll be doing a lot more once back in as she goes into her option years.

[thebraketester]

I would go down the pages/numbers route until a functionality/compatibility wall is hit and then get office if it’s really needed.

At a guess, pages and numbers will be perfectly acceptable for what she needs.

[Corso Marche]

Or just use the online versions of the Office apps, which are free if you have a MS/Skype/Hotmail/Live/XBox etc account.
In appearance they're very close to the desktop versions of the apps. If your daughter comes across compatibility issues down the line or needs more powerful functions then you can easily move to a paid version and she can take her files with her.