So after a bunch of time trying to get an answer from ANYONE about whether Office365 online would work on a Linux machine (Ubuntu 14.04) using Chrome, I finally got an answer.
I searched the web and I got a bunch or outdated information. I called Microsoft support (sales and technical), and they couldn’t tell me.
So I took matters into my own hands and just got a trial subscription and tested it. The short story is that Office365 online version does work with Linux running Chrome version 35.
But the story doesn’t end there. If you are just a standard user and you just want to write documents then you don’t need an Office 365 subscription, you can use it for free on with office online (https://office.com/start/default.aspx) IT IS EXACTLY THE SAME THING
I thought that paying the $100+ per year actually got you additional features that aren’t available with the free office online version; but no, it is exactly the same crippled, feature lacking version.
Office online (in particular Word online), you cant add a contents page, you can references, in fact there is a HEAP of things that you can not do in Office 365 online. read here (http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/word-online-service-description.aspx) about what it can and cant do.
So save your dollars and just use the free version, the only caveat is that you will need a Microsoft account. but you can sign up for a free account at outlook.com
Well, I must say you are tottaly wrong about the free version being exactly the same as the paid one; I have a Office 365 University subscription, and just in Word alone, there are tons of resources (like creating author database for quick referencing in Academic Papers) Office Free doesn’t offer.
Atop of that, I have Outlook, Access and Publisher, plus the traditional Word, Excel, PowerPoint and One Note, all of them with many more resources than their free versions.
It is worthy? I think it is, but that is my case, because I use it a lot, specially to writing papers and specailly, Excel with macros. Maybe, to other people, it isn’t worth paying, specially if you will use only the baisc.
I even tried Libre Office but, seriously, it is a billion years behind MS Office yet, and this is the reason why I keep a Windos VM in my computer just to run MS office 365 full in my Linux machines.
Thanks for your comment. But at the time of writing (roughly a year ago) this was exactly the case. Now the thing to point out here is that I’m only focusing on the online version of office. I was not interested in running a VM and I don’t give a crap about installing the office suite on Windows. And as far as I’m aware, there is not native support for the Office Suite on Linux at this time (correct me if I’m wrong)
So the key things here are.
1. Using Office 365 Online only
2. The comparison of the paid version vs the Free version of the Online version
When I wrote this post, there was nothing different between the free online version and the Paid online version. I have not gone back to check if there are any differences as I just use the Free version and it is OK for 95% of things I need to do. Please let me know if there are differences between the two online versions as this would be beneficial to let others know. Cheers 🙂