When Microsoft announced the standalone versions of Office last year, known as Office 2019, Microsoft’s attitude seemed decidedly lukewarm. We were wrong: Now it’s downright hostile.
Microsoft released three videos Wednesday to try and demonstrate that the AI-powered, always-updated version of Office 365 trounces the standalone Office 2019 in tasks ranging from automatically filling in geographic data in an Excel spreadsheet to automatically adding relevant skills to a Word resume that can be then sent to a recruiter. In each of the “showdowns,” Office 2019 forces the user to perform the tasks manually, while Office 365 either automatically performs the task or connects to the Internet to simplify it.