Should i upgrade to office 2018

Also on board is a selection of different ways to view your documents, to help you focus on them when you're reading, including sepia and black page colours to help with eye strain as well as various text spacing and column width options. These options are grouped under the Learning Tools button in the View tab. If you happen to own a touch-enabled device, then you'll be pleased to hear that Word includes new tools in the Draw tab that let you write, draw or highlight text with a digital pen.

The Draw tab is automatically disabled on non-touch PCs. If you want translation tools, look no further than Google Docs. The free online word processor has a quick built-in tool for translate your documents - just click Tool, then 'Translate document'. Google's translation accuracy isn't perfect, but then neither is Microsoft's. If you're running Office or later, you could also install Microsoft's free Translator plug-in. Similarly, you can add a text-to-speech function to LibreOffice Writer by installing a free extension called Read Text.

Microsoft's Excel has long been the industry standard spreadsheet program and is included with all versions of Office The latest version of Excel shares some of Words improvements including the new Draw tab tools and Translator and offers some new features of its own, most notably the ability to publish to Power BI Microsoft's business analytics service.

The new Excel feature that got us excited is the ability to deselect cells. How many times have you selected multiple cells in a worksheet, only to realise that you've accidentally included one or more cells you don't want? In the past you'd have had to reselect it all again from scratch.

Now, however, you can hold down the Ctrl key and click to deselect any cells or ranges of cells within an existing selection. It sounds boring, but it's actually a big time saver. Also included are two new types of chart; map charts - for displaying different values across different territories, for example - and funnel charts, which display values at different stages of a process.

Map and funnel charts might be new to Excel, but they're a good example of Microsoft playing catch-up - Google Sheets has offered the ability to create charts like these for some time now, while both Sheets and LibreOffice's Calc let you deselect cells by Ctrl-clicking them.

Outlook is Office's email, calendar, and contacts application. Like Word and Excel, many of the new features, such as scheduling meetings across multiple time zones in your calendar, are business orientated. Outlook also gets Word's new Read Aloud feature, allowing you to listen to your emails as spoken text. And there are a handful of other useful changes, including the option to mark all emails as read on deleting them, to prevent your Deleted folder reporting dozens of unread messages.

Perhaps the most interesting improvement to Outlook is the Focused Inbox. Users of Outlook. Focussed Inbox splits your inbox into two views - one for emails that matter Focused and a second Other for less important messages, such as newsletters and mailouts. It's a great way to streamline your inbox. Annoyingly, however, Focused Inbox is only available for Microsoft email accounts, such as Outlook. Free office suites seem to steer clear of email clients - you won't find one among LibreOffice's tools, for example.

Office install. How to install Office. Redeem or activate. Office product keys. Activate Office. Install other apps. Set up mobile devices. Office updates. Upgrade to the latest version. Troubleshoot and uninstall. How do I buy the latest version? For PC We recommend only running one version of Office on a PC, but if you need to run Office side-by-side, see which versions are compatible in Install and use different versions of Office on the same PC.

For Mac You may need to remove older Office licenses after installing the latest version of Office on your Mac, even if you uninstalled the older version first. Microsoft for home subscription If you have an Microsoft Family or Microsoft Personal subscription, you already have the most current version of Office at no additional cost and should already receive the latest features to your Office apps.

Microsoft for business subscription If your Microsoft for business subscription is associated with your work or school email account these versions of Office are usually licensed to you through your work or school , you have the latest version of Office as long as you keep it up-to-date. Need more help? Join the discussion. Commenting privileges may be curtailed if inappropriate images are posted. In case you get such an error message, you may have to increase the size of your virtual memory or page file or paging file — although for most uses, leaving the Page File size at its default value should be good enough.

Hi Bruce -- thanks so much for your generosity in proposing some solutions to my problem. I already use bit programs for Word and everything else, and I already break up large files into smaller ones chapters , but these smaller ones are apparently still considered too "large" by Word anything over 25 pages or so , so they crash after a certain number of revisions and continue to do so unless I reboot the computer.

As I mentioned in my comment, I've reverted to Word , since Word seems to crash just as often as I'd hoped it would not be as frequent. I'm intrigued with your suggestion of changing the size of the Page File in my computer.

I once read about it for an early version of Word before. Can you tell me more about how to do that? I'd be so appreciative! Catherine, Re the issues you have with Word. You need to be running a 64 Bit Operating System to use all of it.

Some of these may help with your issue. Worst case is you may need to split the document into sections to work on it properly. Also see this link for more information, as others have the same issue.

You may want ] to revert to Office version, as it seems later ones have an issue. I thought the learning curve you mention as being too greater a step at my age 72 and for what? To my relief, the computer handled the upgrade without intervention from me other than to press a few keys as required. I've now been using for months now and it's the best thing I've done. My work is saved to the cloud, I can share the copy with clients'.

I can dictate and playback my work on speaker. I can also research at the touch of a button without leaving WORD. However, WORD is the best version ever. All software is updated regularly with enhanced or new features. Can't say much more, other than the leap of faith, well for me anyhow, was worth it. Thanks for this useful discussion of reasons to consider for whether or not to upgrade to a more recent version of Word.

What about the increased size of new versions of Word? I purchased an upgrade to Word from to because large documents in the prior version kept crashing if I made a lot of revisions and, as an editor, I make a lot of them! Microsoft now prevents Office users from accessing some of the features found in the Microsoft apps.

These limitations extend to the mobile apps. If you have a tablet with a screen larger than Smaller devices can edit files in Office apps, but are still missing some features. You need a Microsoft subscription to unlock them all. While you might not use these functions all the time, getting an inferior product for the price you pay is frustrating.

As we've discussed, the biggest advantage of buying Office is that you can use it as long as you want without additional cost. However, Microsoft has changed its support plan with Office to reduce this period. Office will enjoy five years of mainstream support ending on October 10, , but only two years of extended support after that ending on October 14, This is quite a drop from the five years of extended support that previous Office editions offered.

Microsoft is likely doing this to reduce the amount of old software it has to support. However, it means that your purchase has less value, as you'll need to upgrade sooner to avoid using an unsupported version of Office. If you have Office , Office isn't a must-have upgrade. Unless you're an Office expert, you won't use most of the new tools anyway. Whether you have Office or even another office suite as we'll discuss below , you can still do what you need to do: create and edit documents, spreadsheets, and presentations.

If that's all you need to do, why spend money for features you'll probably never use? You're better off learning more about Office with online tutorials. Office doesn't come with a free trial. This is strange, as earlier versions came with an evaluation period so you could see if you actually needed the new features or not. On the other hand, you can try Microsoft Family for a month at no charge. Microsoft's lack of a similar trial for potential customers of Office isn't a make-or-break issue, it's yet another indication of the lack of value in Office