The last option is to buy a single copy of Office 2016 outright, starting at $149.99 (£119.99, AU$169). For that price, you get just Office 2016 for PC or Mac, with whatever features are.

Messages appear instantly, search is quick and I experienced no lags or delays. Microsoft says that's because it's switched from its previous proprietary database to SQLite.

Make sure your current or any new system you buy meets the system requirements. If your barely meet the minimum requirements, you can still install the software, but performance and availability of some features may be affected. Here are the minimum system requirements for Microsoft Word 2016 for PC and Mac: PC: • 1 gigahertz (Ghz) processor or higher, 32-bit or 64-bit • 1 GB RAM (for 32-bit) or 2 GB RAM (for 64-bit) • 3 gig available space on hard drive • 1024×768 or higher resolution monitor or touch screen • Microsoft Windows 7 later Mac: • Mac with Intel processor • 4GB RAM recommended • 6GB available space on hard drive in HFS+ format • 1280×800 or higher resolution monitor • Mac OS X version 10.10 or later Which version of Microsoft Word should I buy? Once you are sure the software will run on your computer, how do you decide which version is right for you? The choice isn’t as confusing as it used to beMicrosoft eliminated stand-alone versions of their software in favor of a subscription-based licensing for the entire Microsoft Office suite. You can still buy copies of Microsoft Office you can install without a subscription.

Microsoft Office 2016 (image: Ewan Spence) It’s also helped by the use of the cloud. The default option, and the one that provides the most flexibility, is to save your documents to the cloud (Microsoft OneDrive). This keeps them accessible on all of your devices, and an Office 365 subscription comes with a terabyte of online storage, which should be enough in the current climate for all your needs (and if you go for the one-off purchase you are provided with just 15 GB of online storage, so you can see where the priorities lie). I would definitely recommend you use the cloud as much as possible.

One note before I begin. You don't have to read all of this if you don't want. It's just the account of the hassles I went through attempting to do what should have been a very simple process. The tl;dr of Microsoft is often the same: the hassles you go through in an attempt to do what should have been a very simple process. And with that, the hassles.

Limitations are compensated by features, useful even to users of desktop Office. Best of all is its (formerly known as Microsoft Office Web Apps). It’s stripped down and lacks a lot of the advanced features that make Office 2016 and Office 365 worthwhile, but it’s not bad by any means. There’s no offline version, so that could be frustrating depending on how often you find yourself without Internet, but it’s one of the Do you need Microsoft Office but don't like the price tag? Here are some ways you can use Microsoft Office for free!, so at least that’s something.

🙂 To get started with the download, you can log in to the after you’ve received your license key (either from Amazon, Microsoft.com, or from purchasing a license at the local retail store). It’ll look like this: If you look closely, you’ll see that mine shows “PC/Mac Installs Used: 0”. This is a big deal, actually, because for the first time I can remember, Microsoft is using the same license for either platform. With this license, I get five installs, whether I want to use them on Macs, Windows systems, iPads, or my Windows Phone is up to me. Very nice improvement over the Mac license as completely separate from a Windows license. To proceed, I’ll click “Install >”. Look at that list of “Other Devices”.

Sync icloud contacts with outlook. Outlook for Mac 2011 does not currently support CalDAV or CardDAV. This means that it’s not possible to sync your iCloud calendar or contacts with Outlook for Mac.

In other words, the license has no expiration date, and users may run the suite as long as they want. Pay for Office 2016 this year and use it for the next eight years? Run it until 2030? Nothing to stop you.