
Microsoft Office Online - crystaln
https://www.office.com/start/default.aspx
======
footpath
According to Wikipedia
<[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Office_Online>](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Office_Online>),
Office Online (in its previous incarnation as Office Web Apps) has been free
to public since 2010.

~~~
ritchiea
Maybe the OP is a talented marketer at Microsoft

~~~
erichurkman
I'm sure its no coincidence the Office Online team has an I Am A… scheduled
for this Friday on
[http://www.reddit.com/r/iama](http://www.reddit.com/r/iama)

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maguay
The Office Web Apps, as they were called before, have been free ever since
they were released in 2009
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Office_Web_Apps](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Office_Web_Apps)).
They've just always been somewhat hidden inside Skydrive (which has also now
been rebranded as Onedrive).

This is nothing new, per se, just a launcher page that lets you directly
access each of the web apps instead of having to launch the apps from inside
Skydrive's file explorer.

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fpgeek
Is this a (belated) reaction to Google Docs being "good enough" for many use
cases?

We also just heard about Chrome OS pushing Microsoft to cut the price of
Windows licenses for low-end laptops. Plus we have Nokia (soon to be
Microsoft's smartphone division) releasing low-end handsets based on Android.

These may all be reasonable strategic choices (I tend to think they're at
least heading in the right direction), but put the picture together and it
looks like Microsoft has been pushed into playing Google's game according to
Google's rules. That usually doesn't end well.

~~~
Cless
Introducing Bing 2.0: Bingle.

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cyanbane
In proper MS marketing form I think there is a difference in two very similar
products (and their names don't help the consumer at all). Office online is a
web-based version of these popular apps (1:1 parity of OS software? I am not
sure). There is also a $99 subscription model that allows you to install these
apps for 5 computers (local OS software installs) + the benefits of these web
apps + X gigs of One/Sky Drive + some Skype stuff.

I have been a happy subscriber to the $99 version (with OS apps) and I have
been very happy with the price point. Have pretty much moved over to OneNote
from EverNote over the past year and also love the ability to have a local
install of Excel, but be able to edit inline on the web when needed.

~~~
roryokane
The online apps don’t have 1:1 parity with the desktop software. For example,
Word Online doesn’t allow creation of custom Styles, and Excel Online doesn’t
support Pivot Tables.

The subscription model you are thinking of is called Microsoft Office 365
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Office_365](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Office_365)).

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stephengillie
I can _almost_ use this on my phone...but since I can _not paste_ my highly
randomized password, from my password database, into their website. Why not? I
don't know, I think paste is disabled by Javascript. Who the hell would think
that is a good idea?

~~~
nathantotten
Which phone were you using? I don't think this is actually on purpose, but I
just tried it on my iPhone and did find that it was inconsistent and difficult
to paste a password. I am going to send some emails and see if we can figure
out the issue. Let me know what kind of phone you are on.

~~~
stephengillie
Nexus 5, fully updated on chrome. The site looks great, and I'm excited to
have free mobile spreadsheets.

------
Zikes
But, according to Microsoft if Microsoft Office is not _explicitly installed
on the machine_ then it's "just a brick"! [1]

And when you use it, Microsoft will be able to track what you do, just like
Google does! And we all know that those big bad corporations just can't be
trusted. Except for Microsoft, of course.

[1] [http://news.cnet.com/8301-17852_3-57613803-71/microsofts-
lat...](http://news.cnet.com/8301-17852_3-57613803-71/microsofts-latest-
scroogled-ad-chromebooks-a-brick/)

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quasse
Was it not already? I've been using the online version of Office built into
skydrive for more than a year now without a purchased copy of office. I think
this is more of a renaming than a new offering.

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fournm
OneNote is included!

Wow you have no idea how happy that makes me as a OneNote user since 2006 or
so. It's my favorite part of Office.

~~~
MichaelGG
OneNote is awesome. I'd use it more, but I can't figure out a way to encrypt
it while still getting sync. If they offered some built-in password
protection, so that the contents were safely encrypted on-device and the
hosting aspect just sync'd blobs, hey, awesome.

They could even implement a differential update mechanism, just encrypt the
deltas before uploading. (After careful review, since that might introduce
some sort of crypto weakness.) I'd even be satisfied if some of the metadata
wasn't encrypted.

Otherwise, I don't feel comfortable in having a detailed, personal, life
journal. I want something I could access from various devices and record
internal thoughts, while minimizing the possibility of anyone including close
friends, getting access.

OneNotes default appears to be "hey, we'll drop this, unencrypted, in your
Live sign-in default storage".

~~~
marshray
What if you put your notebook file on a Bitlocker'd drive?

~~~
MichaelGG
It is Bitlocker'd, plus EFS'd (just in case my TPM gives up the keys - it's
unclear if the password is mixed in to derive key material or not). And I'm
getting a new SSD with "Encrypted Drive" support, so the keys are never in-
memory (although again, I don't know if the key is just sitting in an easily-
accessible chip on the disk, or if my password combines for key material).

And then EFS on top of that, and each VM has its own encryption as well. So
even a full compromise won't hurt the VMs I'm not using at the time.

But it doesn't help since OneNote's online slick-access-from-anywhere, doesn't
do crypto AFAIK. So all my transparent crypto protect my local device, but
OneLook uploads the notebooks unencrypted to SkyDrive.

~~~
bottompair
Daaaaaaamn you must have some awesome secret files!

~~~
MichaelGG
Not particularly. Anything really secret I probably wouldn't put on that
computer. I just don't see why other people should be allowed to access my
data.

The biggest win, I _think_ is the internal "e drive" encryption, so that a RAM
dump doesn't spill keys. That even somewhat mitigates Lightning DMA attacks.
(Although the attacker could just hijack the OS at that point.)

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jCanvas
Does anyone know how they have implemented it? Looking at the page source
there is lots of javascript involved, as you would expect. Are they using the
DOM or a Canvas that fills the screen?

~~~
georgewfraser
If you look at the network traffic it's very odd -- not only are the formulas
being evaluated on the server, the server is shipping back DOM strings, not
values. So it appears they are doing rendering on the server as well as
calculation.

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yeukhon
They should make Office free. These days, more and more non-techie friends are
starting to use OpenOffice on their own. While OO quality is no where near
Microsoft Office's, OO writer and Powerpoint are good enough for simple usage.
And people, don't make fancy PP anymore. They just need something that can
read ppt and something they can play.

~~~
greggman
I'm going to admit up front I'm probably hopelessly out of touch.

I used to buy office from like Word 2.0 up through Office 2007 or so but for
the life of me I can't figure out why most people would need Office today.
Like I said I'm out of touch but...

If I write docs for publication it's HTML.

If I write for correspondence it's email

If I write for product design it's probably a wiki. Something the entire team
can edit.

I am in no way suggesting that people don't have legit uses for Office or
OpenOffice. I am saying that __I __have not had a legit use for Office in 6+
years.

Those few times I need to make a sign for party or a few page letter Google
docs works fine. Even presentations I've done in Google docs just fine.
Spreadsheets work fine as well. They can even be scripted if you want to do
crazy stuff.

Why would I want to install Open Office when I can access Google Docs from ANY
machine, not just machines have have Open Office installed?

Especially the Hacker News crowd. Do you find you need Office or Open Office
still?

~~~
Silhouette
_Why would I want to install Open Office when I can access Google Docs from
ANY machine, not just machines have have Open Office installed?_

Much larger feature set.

Privacy.

Robustness and future-proofing.

Shall we go on?

 _Do you find you need Office or Open Office still?_

Sure. I've never used word processors much for professional work, as I find
different tools of one kind or another are usually a better choice for
preparing any given documentation. But there is more to office suites than
word processors. Spreadsheets, in particular, are still the most convenient
tool for many administrative tasks.

~~~
bnolsen
I always find gnumeric to be plenty powerful for doing any spreadsheet stuffs
I need to do. No I don't get fancy, just mess with columns and formulae and
statistical analysis.

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bruceb
Office starter has been free and available for download for a while:
[http://www.downloadcrew.com/article/26083-microsoft_office_s...](http://www.downloadcrew.com/article/26083-microsoft_office_starter)

~~~
chemmail
Unfortunately it's been axed for Windows 8+

~~~
bruceb
No it works on windows 8. Try it again or Google how to make it work. It is
easy as I am running it on a machine right now.

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bite
This is great news for GNU+Linux users, I'm always so hesitant when installing
libreoffice to my computer and use google drive when veiwing ppt files. In my
opinion Microsoft office online loads ppt files a lot faster, which is nice.
You also don't have to go full screen to view all the animations. Cool.

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codereflection
More details here. Note this does not give you iOS or Android versions.
[http://techland.time.com/2014/02/20/microsoft-stops-
hiding-o...](http://techland.time.com/2014/02/20/microsoft-stops-hiding-
offices-free-online-edition/)

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monkey26
Is there a catch? In theory I like it, but are the users now becoming the
product?

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girvo
I just wish the Tasks/To-do portion of Outlook.com/Live Calendar would sync to
_anything_ on a Windows 8 desktop.

My girlfriend has a WP8 phone and a Windows 8 laptop, and uses Live for all
her PIM stuff -- but there isn't any way to get Live Calendar tasks/to-dos on
her desktop. It works on her phone though, so go figure, and it also works in
the web app.

This is what frustrates me with Microsoft. They have cool features and neat
applications, and the new integration across devices is awesome... but they
miss these little details, and that ruins the experience quite a bit :(

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RRRA
Free as in beer, not as in free speech and still complete format lock in?

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philliphaydon
This is awesome, no longer need to be subjected to Google Spreadsheets. Those
things are terrible compared to EXCEL.

~~~
patricelamond
Are you under the impression that Excel is some kind of abbreviation for
something? Why else would you write it in all capitals?

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nevi-me
Will it save my documents in a compatible format to Office 2013? I've had
Excel documents go corrupt or unreadable on Excel desktop app. As much as I
use Excel at work and home, I'm staying away from their online thing with most
of my work. Been burnt enough

~~~
ConceptJunkie
You can save an Excel document in Excel and immediately re-open it and have
Excel complain the document is corrupted. It's happened to me dozens of times
(back when I was required to do Excel development a couple years ago... it was
like a flashback to 1990).

Anyhow, every time it happened, there was no apparent damage to the document.
I think this stems from Microsoft having to be insanely aggressive in
defending against their own bugs.

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camus2
Loving it, the stuff(Word/Excel) is ultra-fast, and aside from AMD, doesnt
seem to be using any bloated js framework. Looks more like it's optimized to
the max, with raw DOM manipulations.

A big change from clunky Angularjs apps...

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glenntnorton
I use Sky/One drive primarily for work. The Excel app is pretty decent but the
Word app blows. If you don't have Word installed, your feature choices can be
pretty limited.

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mrtimuk
Someone just skyped me and the office.com tab is now flashing with their name
in my browser. I'm not sure how to acknowledge the notification or read the
message - any ideas?

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owenwil
It was also free when they announced it earlier last week...

~~~
numo16
And free when it came out in 2009

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sargun
Whoa. This is cool.

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9248
A smart way of promoting their One/Sky Drive?

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fakename
I tried to edit my resume, since I don't have Word on my personal laptop:
formatting is inconsistent with standalone Word.

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crystaln
Why was this "now free" removed from this subject of this submission???

That was the interesting part of this submission! :-/

~~~
transitionality
It was pointed out that it's been free since 2009, through SkyDrive, now
OneDrive. This is just a new cover page/interface to the apps.

~~~
crystaln
Ok.. thanks.

Perhaps changing it to "Microsoft Office Online free no longer hidden" would
have been more appropriate.

Linking to just "Microsoft Office Online" gives no sense of the purpose of the
post.

Not that it matters at this point. Just seems rather pedantic to change the
title in such a way.

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pcurve
Excel is very polished. Serious kudos to the development team.

But where's my pivot table? j/k

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dpweb
and from Chrome bar [https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/office-
apps/jdbcdb...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/office-
apps/jdbcdbdkiaadpbkggggekjcpmgjekkke?hl=en)

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alien3d
i'm waiting for vbscript or excel macro to enable first. then can suggest
customer back.

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rajeemcariazo
Again, someone from HN hates Microsoft for removing this on top of hacker news
after getting a hundred votes per hour

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neltnerb
Holy cow, this works on Ubuntu.

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hayksaakian
does this mean they finally see google docs as a real threat?

~~~
rubiquity
The constant replies of " Did X do Y because X views Z as a threat?" is
approaching meme level.

~~~
hayksaakian
Well i'd be hard pressed to believe Microsoft did it out of the goodness of
their proverbial heart

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miralabs
looks like a decision from Mr Satya?

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jhprks
Yes!!! this is definitely ground breaking! with all the office applications
being used in the companies world wide, Microsoft's move on making the online
version free is definitely a game changer~!

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electic
NSA will have a lot more documents now in their collection to analyze.

~~~
kevincrane
It's like we're not even trying to avoid cliche comments any more.

~~~
electic
It's Tuesday night, it's late in SF. Still at the office. I felt MS Office
Online should have been free from the start. So having a bit of fun, no need
to be serious and write 5 paragraph comments analyzing the news, how you feel
about the news, and how it impacts the industry. Sometimes being cliché is
exactly what is in order.

~~~
corysama
Jokes on HN are strongly discouraged. As much as people like them, their
presence creates a feedback loop that drives the noise-to-signal ratio through
the roof. Jokes can be made, understood and voted up very quickly. In a
democratic situation like HN, this leads to a large volume of replies and up
votes that quickly drowns out all relevant conversation. The more threads that
feature jokes, the harder it becomes to discourage them in the future. It
seems the fate of all vote-based forums to eventually devolve into a sea of
memes (HN -> Reddit -> Digg). HN's anti-humor downvote brigade gets a lot of
pushback, but they are so harsh because they are doing their best to hold back
that tide.

~~~
kevincrane
No, I like jokes, don't get me wrong. I'm just kind of sick of the NSA being
dragged into subjects that don't warrant it.

