Microsoft Office 2019 Review 2022
Microsoft recently announced Office 2019, the latest version of the Windows and Mac Office suite, including helpful new features incorporated seamlessly into the existing interface. A non-distraction mode for Word and Excel, improved pivot tables to Excel, improved graphics, and the ability to use digital pencils on PowerPoint are only among the many changes and enhancements made to the old Office. While they’re not major improvements in the Office suite, they may be major productivity benefits for those using it correctly.
Office 365 users will point out that they’ve used several options for quite a long time. However, local software users will say that many of them don’t have a bill for Office at the very least since the year 2016 (when Office 2016 was released), and Office 365 users have to pay every month. Both versions are fantastic in their own right, but we’ll look at the advantages and disadvantages of both later in this review.
Pricing Versions, Compatibility, and Pricing
Like always, Microsoft offers more versions of Office than one could keep up with. For 2019, the Office version 2019 that most people are interested in includes Office Home & Student 2019 with a price of $149.99. It comprises Word, Excel, and PowerPoint and is licensed only for one Windows machine or Mac. Office Professional 2019 costs $439.99 for one Windows PC only, adds Outlook Publisher, Word as well as Access. Access database.
It requires Windows 10 (32-bit or 64-bit) for the PC version. Previous Windows versions aren’t compatible with Office 2019; although Office 365 will run on Windows 7 until January 2020, Microsoft will stop supporting Windows 7 altogether. (Windows 8 compatibility will cease at the beginning of January 2023.) Using the Mac, you can use the most up-to-date three macOS versions: Sierra, High Sierra, and Mojave.
Purchase or Subscribe?
One reason that you might not have heard of Office 2019 is that Microsoft prefers to promote the subscription-based Office suite Office Home 365 as well as its Business version rather than urging users to purchase Office 2019. Many colleges, companies, and government offices choose what Microsoft refers to as “perpetual” products, such as Office 2019 and its predecessor, Office 2016, rather than paying annual costs to Microsoft and binding themselves to Microsoft’s cloud-based services.
For most spreadsheet, word-processing, and presentation-related tasks, it is recommended to buy the one-time Office or the paid-for Office are virtually identical. However, the Office 365 subscription adds real-time collaboration features (including Microsoft Teams, which is a great tool for Microsoft Teams) and powerful mobile apps and access to cloud-based editing and research tools, as well as regular infusions of features every couple of months.
However, Office 2019 will stay the same, except for periodic security updates and bugs fixes until it is time to update to a later version a couple of years later. Unlike Office 365, Office 2019 does not require users to sign in with an account with a Microsoft account unless they choose to. People concerned about privacy should avoid completely clicking the sign-in option on the top bar in Office apps. However, Office 2019 doesn’t include access to Office’s mobile apps that are highly powered. I’ll go over additional reasons certain users prefer the purchase-once Office 2019 version to the newer Office 365 version later.
Microsoft has introduced its Ribbon interface with Office 2007 but hasn’t made similar drastic changes to the interface since then. Office 2019 will be similar to those who have utilized any version since Office 2007. In simple terms, Word 2019 is attractive, but it’s not an exciting upgrade. If you’re content with Office 2016, think twice before spending your hard-earned money on the latest version unless you want or require the latest version’s distinctive features. Word and Outlook are two examples. Word and Outlook receive a set of new features dubbed “Learning Tools”–that help users concentrate on the text. Spreadsheet application Excel has new features and charts, including funnel styles and 2D maps, and the ability to pivot and query with greater precision.
PowerPoint powerful PowerPoint comes with a Morph transition that displays separate objects moving in one presentation slide and then the next. This feature is similar to Apple’s Magic Move feature in Keynote. PowerPoint also includes the Zoom feature that allows you to jump into any slide section of your presentation and not follow the traditional linear sequence. It’s like Prezi’s fluid, a non-linear presentation pioneered through Prezi but with a more gritty appearance and feel.
Word, Excel, and PowerPoint can import images in the flexible SVG format widely used online but is not compatible with Keynote or the other Office apps from Apple. Office applications can also import — with just a few clicks — 3D models downloaded from the Microsoft-designed Remix 3D community website.
The New insert an Icon item pops up in the menu, containing around 500 attractive icons you can add to the document you want to insert them into. Word, Excel, or PowerPoint document. They’re all white and black by default; however, you can alter the color by clicking an open menu. Word’s powerful equation editor has been upgraded to support LaTeX syntax, which has several variants from the standard syntax. Microsoft has boosted the online help feature of Office with full information about equation syntax and many other things, mostly removing the frustrations that were present in previous versions where you clicked a Help button only receive a message that assistance was not accessible.
A hidden Speak feature that was hidden in Office 2016 has blossomed into the new Read Aloud tool available from the Review ribbon in Word. It’s also available in the brand new Learning Tools section of the View ribbon. This Learning Tools menu includes options to display text that is spaced widely for easier reading and text that has dots that show between the syllables. as you select the latter option, you can display just the current line or a couple of lines below and above it, making the remainder of the text appear almost invisibly. You can also alter the background color to improve readability or reverse it to show the color (white text against a dark background).
Microsoft Word has always outclassed all other word processors regarding its view choices, including draft, web, and non-distraction reading modes. Learning Tools build on this solid base. When using the Mac, Learning Tools aren’t available on a Mac. Learning Tools require an Office 365 subscription. They aren’t part of Office 2019 as a stand-alone Office 2019 product, as they are only available on Windows. The same restriction applies to the Freeform Zoom presentation option in PowerPoint.
Math-tastic
The Office has been using drawing tools since I can remember. However, the latest version of Office includes ink tools that transform drawings drawn by pencil or mouse into geometric shapes, such as triangles or circles, and convert handwritten formulas into mathematical typography. This feature works when I attempt to draw equations using the trackball. However, it’s designed to work using a pencil using a tablet computer, specifically the Microsoft Surface model.
Office 2019 adds support for digital pencils that includes pressure- and tilt-sensitivity as well as the capability of moving text using the pencil.
Cross-Platform Excellence
Office 2019 has the smoothest of the slickest and most powerful suite of office applications ever created, but this doesn’t mean that it’s the most suitable for how you work. However, Office 2019’s Office format is universal. If you have an Excel or Word document, it is possible to share them with anyone. Word documents and an Excel worksheet, anyone can use it with any current PC and on any mobile device using the no-cost Office mobile applications installed.
If you’re using a different office suite, such as the Apple iWork apps, open-source LibreOffice Or Corel WordPerfect Office, You’ll most likely have to convert your files to Office formats before sharing the files with any other person. Similar is true for online suites such as Google Docs. You can give access online to Google Docs documents by sharing a link with anyone. If you’d like to distribute the document in a format that is a file, it must be downloaded the document in Word or another standard format.
Office Strengths
Another benefit of Office is the features and capabilities that are unmatched by any other program. Excel can handle larger and more complicated spreadsheets than any other. PowerPoint can be the sole presentation software for Windows close to the Apple Keynote with its stunning animations and other effects. Word’s advanced features allow you to restrict the find-and-replace feature to only search for formatted texts using specific fonts or spacing. Word also has a powerful set of well-integrated drawing tools, which means that Windows users can benefit from advanced features in graphics, similar to those that Apple provides in Pages. The page’s word processor is available on macOS or iOS.
Office Drawbacks
For long-term users, Office has some negative aspects. For instance, if you prefer to determine how you organize the documents you create (such as headings and indentation) instead of having Word choose, you will need to turn off the dozens of options hidden within Word’s auto-correct feature. Microsoft Word stores many default settings within its Normal. dotm template. Advanced users can save this file to a backup and create various versions for various needs; Microsoft doesn’t help you locate where the document is located on your drive. (It’s in a hidden folder in your user folder named AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Templates.)
I’m not alone who’s frustrated with the Word’s Master Document feature, which allows you to embed subdocuments within a container document and let you edit subdocuments as separate documents. It has had a shaky record of putting the content of subdocuments within the master document rather than keeping them separate. Word 2019 appears more secure with master documents than previous versions. However, after having experienced burns previously, I’m not confident enough to use this feature when working on a book with multiple chapters.
One note about OneNote
One application you won’t find within Microsoft’s Windows Version of Office 2019 is a new version of OneNote 2016, the 2016 version. Instead of upgrading OneNote for desktop users, OneNote, Office 2019 now uses the current Microsoft Store version of OneNote preinstalled for Windows 10. OneNote is compatible with Windows 10 automatically opens OneNote 2016 notebooks stored in the cloud. However, you’ll need OneNote 2016 if you have notebooks on a local PC. OneNote 2016 continues to be available for download at no cost from Microsoft. All of this is available for Windows only. OneNote running on Mac isn’t changing, aside from its periodic minor update.
Another important new feature that will be of interest to IT departments: Office 2019 installs itself via the powerful click-to-run system that is familiar with Office 365 rather than the full-scale. MSI installer is utilized by much commercial software, such as the older versions of Office.
Office 2019 and. Office 365
If, like the majority of Windows users, you’ve invested most of your life into Office, Should you purchase or rent Office 2019 or sign up for Office 365? Government and corporate offices which do not like sharing information on Microsoft’s servers are likely to purchase. Students and teachers can get Office 2019 free or at a lower cost (typically $14.99) via site licenses negotiated by colleges and schools. However, subscribing to Office 365 is the obvious option for offices that utilize Microsoft’s ecosystem of sharing and collaboration and for anyone who would prefer to save files stored in the cloud. Office 365 has an optional automatic continuous save feature for documents stored in the cloud. This feature isn’t accessible within Office 2019 even when you save your documents to Microsoft OneDrive. Also, Microsoft 365 lets you edit and collaborate on cloud-based documents using a desktop mobile device, a desktop computer, or an internet browser.
If, as I do, you modify your Office applications by creating macros that perform complicated tedious tasks, you might come across issues similar to those which shattered the Office 365 version of Word just a few months ago. I prefer using the keyboard-friendly spell check dialog with earlier versions of Word rather than the more complicated proofing panel available in current versions. According to numerous internet posts on this topic, Microsoft made it possible to open the old spell-checker dialog by creating a macro connecting it to the same key that opens the new pane for proofing.
In the last few months of the year, however, a poorly created Office 365 update broke that macro, making it difficult for many users to use the old-fashioned dialog. Nobody outside of Microsoft was able to figure out the reason that some users were not affected. In the following months, Microsoft finally seems to have fixed the issue with Office 365. But, users who use Office 2016 never encountered the issue since Office 2016 (like Office 2019) does not get the kind of updates that regularly disable the existing features.
The issue prompted me to upgrade towards “perpetual” Office 2016 and later Office 2019 to the Windows devices I utilize for critical work. On the Mac, I’m still using Office 365 because Office 2019 for the Mac does not have the features that are built into the subscription-based software. Still, I can’t think of a good justification for the differing options available for Mac and Windows Office 2019.
Office Alternatives
In the end, if you decide to utilize Office even once when Google Docs is free for users on all platforms, LibreOffice is free for everyone who uses a desktop, as well as Apple’s beautiful iWorks applications (Pages, Numbers Keynote, along with Keynote), are available for free for both Mac along with iOS? With all its minor flaws, Office still towers over any other alternative.
Google Docs, Sheets, and Slides and the best option for those who want simple sharing and no-cost software for casual users who don’t wish to store their documents on a desktop computer.
LibreOffice is packed with features that are free, open-source, and cost-free and can open legacy documents in more formats than else. But after decades of advancement, the program is awkward and vulnerable to crashes to give confidence.
Apple’s iWork applications (which aren’t sold as a complete suite) are stunning and feature distinct features, such as Numbers tables that can be moved around on a blank canvas, in contrast to the traditional worksheet, which uses only one grid. However, iWork offers desktop applications exclusively for Macs and requires you to export your documents when you wish to share them with anyone outside the Apple ecosystem.
Corel WordPerfect, accessible only for Windows, provides unbeatable precision control over formatting documents. It is much more user-friendly than Office for specific tasks like cleaning documents made by OCR software. However, WordPerfect will remain an individual product.
Still the Champion
You can complain about one aspect of that corner of Microsoft Office. However, it’s still the most familiar, comfortable, and powerful collection of productivity applications anywhere on the planet. If you’re content working with Office 365, you don’t require Office 2019. If you’re satisfied using Office 2016, you only require Office 2019 if you want the latest features. It’s a fact that in one way or the other, you would likely as Office installed on your PC even if it’s not the essential update, but that’s because the previous version held up very well. Whatever the case, Office 2019 is the most efficient office suite you can buy and is an Editors choice.