Microsoft Word

I've been using Word for over twenty years now. It's come a long way in that's available in the cloud and is very stable but has retained it's core look and feel with the same functionality. It's a very extensible software as you can import word files into thousands and thousands of other software. It's certainly the authority and most common text file type and editor in the world. Even Google hasn't bothered to create their own proprietary text file type in order to compete. Google Docs software has Microsoft Word natively integrated. So when you create a new file this Google program it exports a Microsoft file type which is awesome. This makes the Google tools which are free very valuable. Though I do subscribe to Office 365 and use Word extensively on its own usually to create anything that needs a greater level of formatting than a simple text editor, while not needing extensive HTML editing tool. I've written several business plans and marketing plans using Microsoft Word. It's great for creative writing as well, and I'm currently using a combination of Word and OneNote to write a novel which will take me years, but it's okay because these tools keep me organized and moving forward when I have time to be creative for this purpose. There's a ton of templates available for Word which is great and you can use them to help build your resume, or you can use them for any number of different reasons. They speed up the process of creating a task list, a check list, a trip planner, an event flyer or a cover letter for example because there already formatted and prefilled with content which you can customize and make your own. This has saved me countless hours over the years. I like that you can save Word file straight to your Microsoft OneDrive which is their online cloud file storage service which comes with fifteen gigabytes of free storage. With my Office 365 subscription which is less than ten dollars per month, I'm upgraded to one thousand gigabytes. You can design business cards too, using Word which is cool. And then export it to PDF file and bring it, or email this to a printer and they take care of the rest. There are free business card templates available from Microsoft as well as lots of other resources available from third parties. Just have a quick Google search for free Microsoft word templates.

The fact there is a price tag for using their official version of Word is great for their business but alienates a lot of people from using it directly. For years before the cloud version was available, I chose to use OpenOffice because it was a viable free option which has the ability to import or export .doc files. It is possible to export .doc files from so many other programs it's usually not an issue when needing to communicate your content to others. Unfortunately, I found the formatting in OpenOffice not to be consistent when importing word documents, which was right around the time when the cloud version of Office became available. Which I'm happy to pay for monthly for it provides me a reliable, core set of authoritative tools which I use every day for personal and business reasons.

The fact that I can have Microsoft Office 365 including Word and Photoshop both available through inexpensive monthly subscriptions makes me very happy. There was a time when it wasn't practical to consider it because it simply wasn't viable. This was definitely a pivotal shift by these companies in particular which occurred across many industries in just the last three or five years. This has allowed small businesses and artists such as myself the opportunity to leverage the latest, legit version of great authority software's both of which I use every single day to make my life more efficient, productive, and creative.