NOTE: The following lists were last updated on. This can be useful to readers because with each new version of the product, Microsoft replaces old content with the new version without any redirection of pages. The primary source of information for this article is Office for the web Service Description and is provided here for future reference. In other words, this is a list of features that are NOT AVAILABLE in Office Online. If you don’t see a feature that’s available in an Office Desktop app listed here, chances are that it would work in the Office on the web app. Use the following information to find out which features are missing from the Office on the web apps in Office 365. The Office on the web apps may work for an individual at home, but it’s hard to find a business that is exclusively using Office Online apps because it’s just not practical. The Office desktop version is the recommended choice. The Office on the web apps in Office 365 can definitely come handy, but as you will discover after reading this article, there are just too many limitations in Office on the web apps that prevent a vast majority of organizations from using them as a replacement for desktop apps, which are full-featured applications with all the bells and whistles.īest Practice: Don’t work on the same document in both Office desktop app and Office on the web app to avoid data corruption and other support issues. The Office on the web versions are not offered as a replacement for the full-featured desktop Office applications, they are only offered so users can quickly read an Office document online, or make some minor changes to the application because most of the features in the desktop versions are not supported in the Office on the web version. Therefore, that’s the terminology I will use in this article. In July 2019, Microsoft dropped the name “Online” and switched to the name “ Office web apps“, as reported by Engadget on July 24, 2019. When I wrote the aforementioned article on September 8, 2017, Microsoft used the name “ Office Online apps” to refer to the browser-based versions of Office apps (e.g. However, there are many differences between the two versions and this article documents some of the major differences. Microsoft Office 365 supports both the desktop versions of Microsoft Office applications, which are installed on a workstation, and the online versions of Office applications that can be opened, viewed, and edited in a web browser.