From the course: PowerPoint Tips and Tricks

Office 2021 vs. Microsoft 365

From the course: PowerPoint Tips and Tricks

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Office 2021 vs. Microsoft 365

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- [Instructor] What's the difference between Office 2021 and Microsoft 365? This is a question I get so often that I just started including this topic in all of my basic Office courses now. In Short, Office 2021 is a one-time purchase. If you've been around a long time, like I have, this was the old way of buying software. You pay once to get all of the apps licensed for one computer, one time, and that's it. If you want any new features or upgrades, you would have to wait until the next major release of the software to come out and purchase the new release of the software at full price all over again. And some people just prefer to do it that way. Microsoft 365, on the other hand, is the subscription plan, which comes with a lot of applications. You can either pay monthly or yearly, and with that subscription fee, you will get upgrades and new features to the software as they come out. And there are quite a few different subscription options, depending on what applications and features you need. In addition to those other two options, there's also the Microsoft 365 free web apps, which are different from the subscription version and free with your Microsoft account. So even if you don't purchase Office or subscribe to Microsoft 365, you can still access the Office web versions of the apps online for free to create and edit PowerPoint presentations. These apps aren't as feature rich or up to date as the desktop versions, but they will do basic things, like create and edit PowerPoint presentations. And if you think that is confusing, I haven't even mentioned the mobile versions of Office and Microsoft 365 apps yet. So why is all of this important to know? Well, let me tell you why, because, in this course, I'm going to be talking about features that are version-specific, features like Copilot, Designer, Morph, Cameo, and other features as well. So it's important that one, you know the difference between the many, many versions of PowerPoint that are out there. And two, you know how to figure out which version of PowerPoint you are using on any computer, at any given time, work, school, or personal. So if something goes wrong, if there's a feature that is missing, if you have a question, you can get the best support possible. So stay tuned, join me in the next movie where I'll talk about how to one, figure out which version you're using, and two, how to update your version of PowerPoint that you are using. See you in the next movie.

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