Microsoft Office

Microsoft Office is an office suite of applications, servers, and services developed by Microsoft. It was first announced by Bill Gates on 1 August 1988, at COMDEX in Las Vegas. Initially a marketing term for a bundled set of applications, the first version of Office contained Microsoft Word, Microsoft Excel, and Microsoft PowerPoint. Over the years, Office applications have grown substantially closer with shared features such as a common spell checker, OLE 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.

On 10 July 2012, Softpedia reported that Office is used by over a billion people worldwide.^[5]

The desktop version of Office is available for Windows and OS X. A touch-optimized version of Microsoft Office 2013 is available pre-installed on Windows RT tablets. A mobile version of Office, Office Mobile, is available for free on Windows Phone, Windows 10 Mobile, iOS and Android.^[6] Microsoft has stated that it plans to create a version of Office for "other popular platforms" as well.^[7] A free-to-use web-based version of Office, Office Online, is also available.

The current desktop version is Office 2016 for Windows and OS X, released on 22 September 2015^[8] and 9 July 2015,^[9]respectively.