Word Web App
Word Web
App was switched on quietly by Microsoft on June 7th 2010.
Users can access Word Web App from Office.live.com. It is now
available to users in the U.S., UK, Canada and Ireland. Those outside the initial launch countries can download the
final version by going to this web site also. Microsoft launched the paid SharePoint version
of Office Web Apps for business customers in May.
Word Web App is Microsoft's answer to Google's popular Docs. It is the key component of Office Web Apps, the
free web-based versions of Microsoft Office. Word Web App allows the user to view, edit, and
share Microsoft Word documents directly in the web browser.
Users can share files and collaborate with others online.
Supported web browsers include Internet Explorer (7 and later) Firefox (3.5
and later) and Safari (4 and later).
Home
and school users are able to access the Word Web App through Windows Live SkyDrive.
For businesses and corporations wanting to host Office Web Apps privately, Microsoft offers paid SharePoint versions
| Word web online, the key component in Office Web
Apps is clearly
designed to work in tight conjunction with Office. For example, only light editing is possible - in contrast to the fully
featured editing capabilities of Google Docs. Online, the fidelity of layout edits somewhat compromised; however, when
converted back to Word the documents look fine. The principal benefit of Microsoft Word Web App is that it doesn't break Office formatting. The changes made to a file online are reflected with good fidelity when the file is brought back to the desktop. Given the formatting issues that often arise with Word documents in other web apps, this is a great advantage. |
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| Excel Web App | PowerPoint Web App |
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Word Web App File Format restriction Microsoft's Word Web App only allows you to create documents in the DOCX format introduced in Microsoft Office 2007.  This
is quite a serious limitation, asmany users are still relatively unfamiliar with this new format and have stuck the older DOC file
format. With Word Web App, however, it's DOCX or nothing.
Contrast that with Google Docs, which uses its own HTML-based format within Google Docs, but allows you to download word
processing files as rich text (RTF), plain text, PDF, HTML, OpenOffice format or as a DOC Word document. | |
International Support:
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