Microsoft Office is a family of client software, server software, and services developed by Microsoft.
Microsoft Office, MS Office, or simply Office, is an office suite and family of client software, server software, and services developed by Microsoft. The first version of the Office suite, announced by Bill Gates on August 1, 1988 at COMDEX, contained Microsoft Word, Microsoft Excel, and Microsoft PowerPoint — all three of which remain core products in Office — and over time Office applications have grown substantially closer with shared features such as a common spell checker, Object Linking and Embedding data integration and Visual Basic for Applications scripting language. Microsoft also positions Office as a development platform for line-of-business software under the Office Business Applications brand.
The suite currently includes a word processor (Word), a spreadsheet program (Excel), a presentation program (PowerPoint), a notetaking program (OneNote), an email client (Outlook) and a file-hosting service client (OneDrive). The Windows version includes a database management system (Access). Office is produced in several versions targeted towards different end-users and computing environments. The original, and most widely used version, is the desktop version, available for PCs running the Windows and macOS operating systems, and sold at retail or under volume licensing. Microsoft also maintains mobile apps for Android and iOS, as well as Office on the web, a version of the software that runs within a web browser, which are offered freely.
Since Office 2013, Microsoft has promoted Office 365 as the primary means of obtaining Microsoft Office: it allows the use of the software and other services on a subscription business model, and users receive feature updates to the software for the lifetime of the subscription, including new features and cloud computing integration that are not necessarily included in the "on-premises" releases of Office sold under conventional license terms. In 2017, revenue from Office 365 overtook conventional license sales. Microsoft also rebranded most of their standard Office 365 editions as "Microsoft 365" to reflect their inclusion of features and services beyond the core Microsoft Office suite. Although Microsoft announced that it was to phase out the Microsoft Office brand in favor of Microsoft 365 by 2023, with the name continuing only for legacy product offerings, later that year it reversed this decision and announced Office 2024, which they released in September 2024.