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Compare versions of Microsoft Office. Choosing a version of Microsoft Office and how to activate it Benefits of using Microsoft Office

Documents once created for a software product Microsoft Office, such as text files Word, excel tables , Power Point presentations and others, slightly less popular, are perhaps the most common in the segment of business and consumer information exchange. And who, if not the developer of the data format, would release the best software for viewing and editing files of this very format?

Today's article is a reflection, we will talk about which version of Microsoft Office to downloadfor your own needs with support for all modern formats and what are the ways to activate this product.

How to choose an office suite for your computer

In search of the most convenient option for using various software, ordinary users, most often, are guided by several basic criteria, which, when grouped, can be presented in the form of a generalized list.

Software characteristics affecting consumer choice:

The presence of the entire range of functions necessary for the user in the product
Product price and ease of license activation.
Convenience and ease of use, in other words - usability.
Nice interface.

The choice of an office suite for a computer is also subject to these rules. Moreover, the question of price, in this case, for many comes to the fore. And since the cost of products from Melkomyagkiye (Microsoft) cannot be called attractive for many residents of the post-Soviet countries, we have to look for alternatives in the form of a free office from other developers. The project managed to gain the greatest popularity Openoffice and its independent offshoot - LibreOffice, which, thanks to its friendly and pleasant interface, is increasingly taking the leading position in many ratings.

But what if the urge to use Microsoft software outweighs the hassle of a free product? What to do if, due to certain technical requirements, the transition to alternative freeware (freely distributed) applications is simply impossible?

To answer this question, let's first compare five latest versions microsoft product Office.

Microsoft Office version history and differences

The 2003 product can be considered legendary. Often this version of the office package is compared with operating system Windows XP, highlighting the longevity and prevalence of the 2003 office.

This contributed and released patch to support * .docx, * .xlsx and * .pptx formats in Microsoft Office 2003 and XP, archive Microsoft Office Compatibility Pack with which you can download from the file attached to the article: FileFormatConverters... These formats were introduced a little later, so we'll talk about them below.

Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Access didn't get many new features, but the introduction of tablet and stylus support was the right decision in an emerging market touch screens... Although, of course, at that time it did not bring the greatest results, but it was a competent step in strategic development.

Outlook 2003 has been improved in a quality manner. Improvement of the spam filter, refinement of search and support for encodings had a beneficial effect on increasing the comfort when working with an email client.
In addition, the office kit adds new program - OneNote, which later becomes free and available for download from the company's official website.

Bill Gates and the company are still trying to make the office interface more attractive, but the need for radical changes is felt more and more urgently.

Microsoft Office 2007

There were three important updates in the 2007 package, let's highlight them:

It was in the release of Office 2007 that ribbon interface Ribbon... Microsoft was far from the first to use this method of placing functional controls, but this is where we saw a full-fledged transition to this kind of interface with its full-scale integration. Further, Microsoft Fluent Interface found its development in each subsequent version microsoft package Office and operating room windows systems (as a vivid example - Windows Explorer, which was already discussed in the article Open Windows 10 Explorer from This PC).
Continuing its turf battle, Microsoft rolls out a series of storage formats electronic documents - Office Open XML... Extensions of new data types became * .docx, * .xlsx and * .pptx... Responding to the criticism of experts about the lack of compatibility of new formats for old applications, the IT giant releases the Microsoft Office Compatibility Pack patch, which adds OOXML support to software products in the early years of release, the link to which we gave above.
And finally, after leaving Microsoft Office 2007 SP2 (second service pack) Melkomyagkies now have built-in format support OpenDocument, that is, files with extensions * .odt (text documents), * .ods (tables), * .odp (presentations), * .odg (graphic documents) and their derivatives. This means that now the users of the Microsoft Office suite can work with files created in OpenOffice, LibreOffice and other alternative products without prior conversion.

The company begins intensive work on user interface your software.
New trends in it-fashion are forcing designers and programmers to spend more and more energy on giving the appearance of applications a modern style.

In addition to design improvements, an important update was new opportunityallowing the program to receive remote access to materials and organize the simultaneous editing of documents by several authors through online service Office Web Apps... This step was taken, first of all, to keep the corporate client market, smoothly drifting into the hands of free software developers.

Also in the 2010 office, some new features of the Excel component were announced: Slicer and more interesting Spreadlines, which allow you to add miniature graphs directly inside table cells.

Work continues on the application interface, appearance programs are drawn in accordance with the general Microsoft policy reflected in the interface Metro UI Windows 8 and Windows 10 systems.

Close integration with the OneDrive cloud storage service has been carried out (we have already touched on the concept of cloud storage in the post Increasing space in the cloud storage Yandex Disk + 32 GB), previously called SkyDrive, where all documents created in the application are saved, and the messaging and calling program via the Internet - Skype, the full rights to which Microsoft acquired on May 10, 2011 for $ 8.5 billion. These functions, I must say, did not receive great popularity among users, but contributed to the continuation of the interweaving of the company's products among themselves.

Of the more obvious advantages of the new version of the package, we can note the appearance in the 2013 office of the ability to view and edit (!) Files PDF, as well as some improvements to Word and Excel applications. For example, the function of placing online video in a sheet has been added, and on the Design tab in Word it has become possible to set styles for the entire document at once.

But we highlight the following two points as serious disadvantages:

Lack of microsoft support Office 2013 operating system Windows XP. This seriously undermined the attractiveness of the product for a large number of users.
Inability in Outlook 2013 to download only message headers via IMAP without their full content. Especially strange is the full download of messages from the Spam tab, and the autoloading of attachments (files from the message) of all incoming messages.

The main product changes in 2015 from the company of the same name concerned the drawing of the interface and the continuation of integration with the Internet oneDrive services and Skype.

Minor improvements and improvements were received by the applications Word, Excel and PowerPoint.

And although Microsoft did not hesitate to state that " 2016 office was written practically from scratch", call Microsoft Office 2016 new version after a close acquaintance with it, I absolutely do not want a product. It is rather improved office 13th year.

Microsoft Office activation methods

Needless to say, after choosing a suitable version of the office and installing it in the most in a reliable way activation will be purchase license key... However, two unpleasant surprises await us here:

Often, the version of a particular product we are interested in is simply impossible to purchase due to its withdrawal from sale by the developer.
The prices for software by the standards of some countries are very high, if we take into account the value of the average earnings in the state.

In this regard, many PC users go to the use of unlicensed copies of the software.

Below we briefly review the main ways to activate Microsoft Office:

Exploits for activation

Let's start, of course, by using exploits.

Exploit is a piece of code or a separate program that exploits a vulnerability in an application in order to perform actions unauthorized by the developer, for example, obtaining privileged rights, activating a product, disrupting the functioning of an attacked object

One of the most popular exploits for Microsoft's office suite is a library change MSO.dlllocated in the directory

C: \\ Program Files \\ Common Files \\ Microsoft Shared \\ Office10 \\

The essence of the method is to change the file with a hex editor in the line

8B 81 78 01 00 00 C3

Here you need to replace the value 78 on the value 84 to make it work

8B 81 84 01 00 00 C3

Have this method there are two main drawbacks.

Firstly, if you download a ready-made file for replacement, there is a chance that you can run into a malicious file, simply a virus.
Secondly, the use of exploits quite often leads to unexpected errors and limitations in the operation of software, for example, after editing a file MSO.dll, it is quite possible that the office suite will no longer be able to install updates.
Thirdly, the vulnerability of the MSO library has been fixed in new versions of the office and it will not be possible to activate the program in this way.

Multiple Activation Keys

Everything is much simpler here: we go to the search engine or directly to the site where the keys are distributed, copy the key from the browser page and paste it into the Office activation field.
Then it all depends on the type of product and the state of the found by us serial numberif the key is suitable for online activation, just click the Next button and use the activated product (this, of course, does not mean that the copy has become licensed, it is still considered pirated). If the key runs out of attempts online activationthen we can try to hold activation by phone.

If the product provides for offline registration without activation on Microsoft servers, then the key can be entered even without an Internet connection.

The main disadvantages of this method include the fact that to find working key it is often very difficult, and besides, if suddenly the key is blocked even after successful activation, you may well be left with a non-working program that will need to be reactivated, it also happens.

KMS server for activation

Activation of Microsoft products (and not only) using kms servers is gaining popularity.

KMS (Key Management Service) - a key management service that allows the licensee (holder of the purchased license) to activate and control software on working machines in the network without connecting to the licensor's servers (license sellers)

In most cases, for private use, the kms server is installed locally on the user's computer, and all that is required to activate is to press a couple of buttons in the program window.

The method is quite reliable, but it also has its drawbacks.

First, KMS activation is required repeat at regular intervals... It is also possible to add a kms server to Windows startup using one of the methods described in the article Startup. Adding Applications to Windows Startup, but 100% guarantees that activation will be successful in the background cannot be given.
Secondly, the success of the activation process via kms may depend on various factors: administrator rights at account the user, the presence on the computer of the libraries necessary for the activator to work, the availability of network ports through which the server works, and so on.

Microsoft Office 2007 Blue Edition and Pink Edition

Based on the foregoing, I would like to have an ideal product with the following characteristics:

In search of such a program, many of us stumble upon distributions that have a name, or Microsoft Office 2007 Pink Edition.

According to those who post such software on the network, this version office has all the capabilities of the 2007 office, is not burdened with add-ons from OneDrive and Skype and, at the same time, does not need to be hacked.
Simply, again, if you trust what they write on the Internet, mythical Microsoft Office 2007 Blue Edition is a special version of the office suite designed for corporate clients, which does not require entering a key, activating and other actions to remove restrictions on the functionality of the application.

For greater persuasiveness, information is provided that the product Blue Edition not sold in retail chains. At the same time, the program works quite fast, and its installation is possible on all modern OS versions from the software giant Microsoft: Windows XP, Windows Vista, Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows 8.1, Windows 10.

In fact, there are no primary sources confirming the existence of corporate editions that do not require activation. There is no facts or evidence of the release of such distributions from any major company in the world. So where did the disk images with such software come from then?

In his article Office Customization Tool (or Blue Edition myth)user under nickname Krokoz described in sufficient detail the method of creating such assemblies microsoft programs Office using the Office Customization Tool.

So, the Blue Edition is the usual assembly with sewn-in key (activator) and hidden settings from the user to initiate a silent installation.

In this article, we examined the main changes and differences between the versions of the Microsoft Office suite, touched on the methods of activating the program. A main choice: what to use and what to pay or not to pay money for - each of us does it independently.
After all, what difference does it make to who released the program if it fully meets our needs?

Over the past couple of years, the largest software developers have somehow been more engaged in optimizing existing products than developing something fundamentally new. This is a common occurrence, since this is the most "fundamentally new", as a rule, it always needs refinement.

Here are some illustrative examples. Mac OS X 10.6 was released by Apple under the auspices of improving stability and reliability, and at the same time a total transition to 64-bit computing (which, in general, earlier Mac OS X was capable of). And before that, Mac OS X 10.5 was presented, containing several hundred innovations. IN Adobe Photoshop CS5 added several new features, but at the same time Adobe was fine-tuning the 64-bit version of the program (and Premier Pro CS5 and After Effects CS5 was generally released only in 64-bit), improved support for accelerating work through a video card, and also improved work with 3D. All of this was first introduced in CS4, but was "polished" in CS5. In our Windows 7 review, we wrote that this OS is Windows Vista as it should be.

It remains to look directly at the hero of this material - the set microsoft applications Office.

Remember Office 2007? More precisely, how did it appear, and many eyes were on their foreheads because of the new ribbon (Ribbon in the original naming of Microsoft) interface? On the Web, half-joking stories even began to appear about how Office 2007 acted as a "torture device" - after it, any secretary perceived the "unusual" OpenOffice as manna from heaven. How much noise was there about the new OpenXML format?

Microsoft released not only fundamentally new windowsbut also a brand new Office. After that, a refined and debugged Windows 7 was presented, and now we are dealing with a refined "office" - Office 2010. Of course, the ribbon interface has not been done anywhere. But in three years everybody got used to it - this time, and the programmers of the software giant allowed it to be configured much more flexibly - that's two. But we will talk about this later, but for now let's figure out which versions of MS Office 2010 are available on the market.

Versions

Microsoft loves to omit version numbers and confuse this issue. So, after Word 3.0, Word 6.0 was immediately released, Windows 7 is based on the version 6.1 kernel, and Office 13 never existed, although Office 2010 is also known as Office 14. Microsoft just skipped the number 13, while Office 2007 was "twelfth." This pass is explained by a banal fear of the number 13 - the largest software company in the world turned out to be superstitious.

In total, we counted seven delivery options for Microsoft Office 2010: Starter, Home and Student, Home and Business, Standard, Professional, Professional Academic, Professional Plus. They differ from each other by the programs included in the kit.

The simplest option is Starter. It does not officially go to retail, and will only be installed on computers (laptops) by OEM manufacturers. At the same time, no trial period for 30 days, it is not provided, however, the two programs included in the set (Word and Excel) are severely limited in their functionality (for example, the ribbon interface cannot be flexibly configured, SmartArt effects are not supported, there is no Microsoft Equation formula editor, there is no mode reviews, etc.), and ads will appear in their lower right corner. Generally Office 2010 Starter is made to completely replace Microsoft Works, which has already been discontinued.

In other versions, such "special features" are not provided. Home and Student, besides Word and Excel, also contains PowerPoint and OneNote. Home and Business adds Outlook to this list. Standard has one more program - Publisher. Professional and Professional Academic are bundled with Access 2010 in addition to the six applications listed. Professional Academic is a special education option and will not be available for retail.

Well, the most "professional" office remains - Professional Plus. It contains all the Professional programs, plus Communicator, InfoPath, and SharePoint Workspace (formerly known as Groove). All three of these programs are focused on joint work with documents and will be useful primarily in enterprises.

As for the cost, it varies from 2500 to 3000 rubles for Office 2010 Home and Student and up to 15 thousand rubles for Professional Plus. Also, all applications from the Microsoft Office suite can be purchased separately. It should be added that Microsoft Visio and Project are sold separately.

It only remains to mention 64-bit office versions 2010. Microsoft introduced this version of its package for the first time. At the same time, the company strongly recommends using 32-bit applications. Why then were 64-bit ones released? For testing. These are some of the first steps in this direction. We are not promised unstable work, but some of the functions will be available only in 32-bit implementation. Besides, not all external plugins are capable of working with 64-bit programs. The advantage of more "bit" options is the ability to address more than 2 GB random access memory every application. Only Excel and Access users will really benefit from this, where really bulky files can open. Nowhere is it written about using 64-bit processor registers to speed up computations. Apparently, this optimization is to be expected in future versions of Office.

Despite Microsoft's policy of reducing the popularity of Windows XP, Office 2010 can still work in it. True, only in the 32-bit version and with the installed Service Pack 3. 64-bit Windows Server 2003 and Windows XP were left behind, but Windows Server 2003 R2 was not. However, there are very few people working in these operating systems. Also supported are Windows Vista (with Service Pack 1 or 2), Windows 7, Windows Server 2008 (R2).

What's new

Now we turn directly to the innovations in Office 2010. We will look at those that are most noticeable in all applications, and also briefly go through some of the changes in the most popular programs.

Microsoft Office Backstage

Perhaps the most notable innovation is the Microsoft Office Backstage menu. Remember every 2007 Office program that got the Ribbon had that big round button with the Microsoft Office logo in the upper left corner? By clicking on it, a menu with some operations was shown, as well as a list of recently open files... Now that button has been replaced with ... no, not a button, but rather a tab named "File". It is made, as it were, part of the ribbon toolbar, but at the same time it is separated from it by a different color.

It is not surprising that this "File" tab was separated from the rest - it does not open new panel, but completely overlaps the entire window. What appears on the screen is called the Office Backstage. Here you can indeed perform various operations with files, and their list is much wider than the one that was available in the "classic" menu "File" office programs 2003 and earlier.

The Backstage menu is divided into three columns. The left one shows the available operations and menu sections, the center one shows the possible options for the selected item on the left, and the right column is usually used for preview.

The most famous and multifunctional Microsoft Office suite is rightfully recognized, which offers whole line all kinds of functions in one application. The most common today are the 2007 and 2010 versions. And today we will consider how these two versions differ, what innovations and improvements are present in the later version and what features of work in the Microsoft Office package in the Windows 7 64 operating system.

Features of the Microsoft Office suite

Before considering the main differences between two versions of the same program, you need to understand what this program is and what features of work exist in its environment. We will look at the example of working in a 64-bit OS Windows 7. What is included in Office 2007 and 2010?

MS Word. The office contains a powerful text editor, with which you can create documents of varying complexity. It takes unconditional primacy among all other editors. MS Word 2007 and 2010 work with files that have the .docx extension (in earlier versions - .doc).

MS Excel is a spreadsheet processor containing a variety of functions for creating spreadsheets. This component in the "Office" system occupies a leading position in the modern market. Works with files with .xlsx permission, in earlier versions of the program - .xls.

MS Outlook, which is a personal communicator that includes an e-mail manager, address book, calendar, task scheduler and some other functions and add-ons.

MS Power Point is one of the important components of the “Office” system, which allows you to create presentations of any complexity.

MS Access is an application that allows you to create and manage databases.

MS InfoPath is a special application that allows you to collect various data and simplifies their management.

MS Publisher is one of the standard program components for creating and preparing publications.

MS Picture Manager is an application that allows you to work with many extensions of graphic files.

There are a number of other components that different versions programs may vary and their number directly depends on how much full version the program was purchased by the user.

Differences between MS Office 2010 and 2007

Below we present an incomplete list of differences and capabilities of the Office 2007 and 2010 packages that are available for work in 64-bit Windows 7. We are considering only professional packages that contain the largest number of all kinds of innovations and extensions.

Editing MS Office documents in a supported web browser. This function was available in early version programs, later it became possible to work through the Office Web Apps document editor.
The 2010 version introduced the broadcast slide show feature. This allows you to deliver PowerPoint presentations straight from your browser.
The work with meetings and the schedule was synchronized, the effective collaboration was optimized in all available components.
Power Point now has the ability to edit video directly in the program, Excel spreadsheets allow you to work with data that comes from millions of sources and is located on millions of lines. IN text editor Word has new adjustment options, new tools for managing colors.
The latest versions are optimized for the 64-bit version of Windows 7.

And these are not all the differences - as the developers themselves note on the official website, there are more than thirty differences between the two versions of the program.

Microsoft Office is a package office programs for home and corporate users, developed by the American IT giant Microsoft. The Microsoft Office software market is represented in different versions and editions that differ in functionality and cost.

The first package was released by Microsoft in 1990. It was called Office 1.0. Since then, about two dozen products of this line have appeared on the market. Currently, the following versions remain popular: Office 2003, Office 2007, Office 2010, Office 2013, as well as Office 2016 - a completely new office suite of applications, released on July 29, 2015 along with the Windows 10 operating system.

All versions and editions of Microsoft Office necessarily include a set of the most necessary office applications: a word processor for working with documents of varying complexity, an Excel spreadsheet processor for working with spreadsheets, complex calculations and data visualization, an application for preparation powerPoint presentations and OneNote for taking and managing notes. Also, the Microsoft Office software package can include a personal organizer or Outlook communicator to work with by email and calendars, access app for database management, Visio for working with complex graphics, diagrams and diagrams, Publisher for creating marketing materials without the help of a designer, and InfoPath for collecting data and working with forms, and others. The composition of the Microsoft Office package has practically not changed over the years, only the functionality of the applications changes. Below is a table comparing versions of Microsoft Office 2003, 2007, 2010, 2013.

Comparison microsoft versions Office:

Benefits of using Microsoft Office:

Any tool at hand.

The Microsoft Office suite includes a wide range of office programs for solving a wide variety of user tasks - from simple editions text documents before creating your database and managing huge amounts of data.

Collaboration.

Programs included in Microsoft Office enable multiple users to collaborate on the same documents and files, and at the same time. You can edit documents in Word or create PowerPoint presentations and to-do lists in Onenote with your colleagues, friends and family and stay connected.

Constant access to your documents and files from various devices.

Office Web Apps allows you to edit and save your files wherever the Internet is. Moreover, with with Microsoft Office Mobile You can work with your files and through the phone.

Work faster, easier and more convenient.

Microsoft Office is the best solution to give you high productivity and productivity.

Here are some illustrative examples. Mac OS X 10.6 was released by Apple under the auspices of improving stability and reliability, and at the same time a total transition to 64-bit computing (which, in general, earlier Mac OS X was capable of). And before that, Mac OS X 10.5 was presented, containing several hundred innovations. Several new features were added to Adobe Photoshop CS5, but at the same time, Adobe brought to mind the 64-bit version of the program (and Premier Pro CS5 and After Effects CS5 were generally released only in the 64-bit version), improved support for accelerating work through a video card, and also improved work with 3D. All of this was first introduced in CS4, but was "polished" in CS5. In our Windows 7 review, we wrote that this OS is Windows Vista as it should be.

It remains to look directly at the hero of this material - a set of Microsoft Office applications.

Microsoft has released not only a fundamentally new Windows, but also a fundamentally new Office. After that, a refined and debugged Windows 7 was presented, and now we are dealing with a refined "office" - Office 2010. Of course, the ribbon interface has not been done anywhere. But in three years everybody got used to it - this time, and the programmers of the software giant allowed it to be configured much more flexibly - that's two. But we will talk about this later, but for now let's figure out which versions of MS Office 2010 are available on the market.

Versions

The simplest option is Starter. It does not officially go to retail, and will only be installed on computers (laptops) by OEM manufacturers. At the same time, it does not provide any trial period for 30 days, however, the two programs included in the kit (Word and Excel) are severely limited in their functionality (for example, the ribbon interface cannot be flexibly configured there, SmartArt effects are not supported, there is no formula editor Microsoft Equation, no peer review mode, etc.) and their bottom right corner will show ads. In general, Office 2010 Starter is made to completely supplant Microsoft Works, which has already been discontinued.

Well, the most "professional" office remains - Professional Plus. It contains all the Professional programs, plus Communicator, InfoPath, and SharePoint Workspace (formerly known as Groove). All three of these programs are focused on collaborative work with documents and will be useful primarily in enterprises.

It remains only to mention the 64-bit version of Office 2010. Microsoft has presented such a version of its package for the first time. At the same time, the company strongly recommends using 32-bit applications. Why then were 64-bit ones released? For testing. These are some of the first steps in this direction. We are not promised unstable work, but some of the functions will be available only in 32-bit implementation. Besides, not all external plugins are capable of working with 64-bit programs. The advantage of more "bit" options is the ability to address more than 2 GB of RAM by each application. Only Excel and Access users will really benefit from this, where really bulky files can open. Nowhere is it written about using 64-bit processor registers to speed up computations. Apparently, this optimization is to be expected in future versions of Office.

What's new

Microsoft Office Backstage

Perhaps the most notable innovation is the Microsoft Office Backstage menu. Remember every 2007 Office program that got the Ribbon had that big round button with the Microsoft Office logo in the upper left corner? By clicking on it, a menu with some operations was shown, as well as a list of recently opened files. Now that button has been replaced with ... no, not a button, but rather a tab named "File". It is made, as it were, part of the ribbon toolbar, but at the same time it is separated from it by a different color.

It is not surprising that this "File" tab was separated from the rest - it does not open a new panel, but completely overlaps the entire window. What appears on the screen is called the Office Backstage. Here you can indeed perform various operations with files, and their list is much wider than that which was available in the "classic" File menu in Office 2003 and earlier programs.

Type