Free Online Versions of Microsoft Office Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Access

When I started writing articles for Associated Content two years ago, I would write my articles on several different computers. Sometimes I would start an article on my home PC and then finish it on my laptop at Starbucks (which is where I am now... Coffee and free Internet access. Gotta love it!). Anyway, I would put my articles on a USB memory stick so I could work on them anywhere. This solution worked for me for a while until I lost the memory stick. Now, there was nothing confidential on the stick, but I didn't like that I lost all of the original versions of things I had written for Associated Content (but some lucky person out there who found my USB stick now has about 50 articles on various Walt Disney World topics, lucky devil!).

Anyway, I decided to start using "cloud" computing to store my documents. After all it made sense because I could access my documents from anywhere, any computer, and I would never lose them again. When I started to look at what free online storage service to use, only one really seemed to make sense. I decided to use Google Docs (docs.google.com). Google Docs, after all, offered free storage and a free online word processor (in addition to a spreadsheet program, presentation software, and a database application). Because I could access the word processor program online, and for free, that meant that no matter what computer I was using or where that computer was, I would have access to the same word processing program and to my documents. It was great! The only problem I had was when I downloaded a document to my computer in Microsoft Word format (.doc) it wouldn't always be formatted correctly. It was a minor problem in what was otherwise a great service.

Then, just last week, I heard about Microsoft's new online "cloud" Office site. Microsoft is now offering free online versions of their popular Office suite of programs. At office.live.com users can access free, albeit stripped down versions, of Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Access. Now, like Google Docs, Office Live (as the service is called) does not require you to download anything and thy both offer free online storage of your documents. And they both offer similar features where you can share and collaborate on your documents with others. However, having grown-up using Microsoft Office, and because it's the word processing application I have installed on my personal computer, I'm just more comfortable using Office.

Yesterday I created my first article on Office Live (5 Reasons to Visit Walt Disney World this Year which you can read here). Within 5 minutes of signing up (you just need to sign up for a Live.com account if you don't already have one, and it's free) I was up and running using the Word interface that I'm familiar with. All of the functions that I use, tables, spell check, formatting, etc. were there. Office Live is intuitive and easy to us (as is Google Docs) but being more comfortable with Microsoft Word and the other MS Office suite of applications, I plan on using Office Live. Give it a try and decide for yourself.

Microsoft Office Live is free and at office.live.com. The service offers stripped down versions of Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Access for free in addition to free online document storage. The versions of the programs offered, and the amount of storage space available for free, are sufficient for everyday users.