Microsoft Office is a popular bundle of workplace productivity software, renowned for simplifying daily office tasks. Because it consists of a wide variety of programs — with the word processor Microsoft Word, spreadsheet editor Microsoft Excel, and presentation program Microsoft PowerPoint at its core — you'll likely find it installed on the computers in any given company, school, organization, and even private home. Its accessibility on any major operating system, both desktop and mobile, also contributes to its popularity. As it relates to features, you can view, create, edit, and share different types of documents with Microsoft Office. Spreadsheets, text documents, and slideshows are just a few of the file types you can produce using Microsoft's software bundle.

Microsoft Office is best known for its three core programs, PowerPoint, Word, and Excel. PowerPoint is a presentation program, meaning you can create slideshows with images, text, or other graphics. As its name suggests, Word is a word processor that many use to create, edit, and format text. Excel is a spreadsheet editor that allows you to tabulate data, create graphs, and create easy-to-read tables. The complete Microsoft Office bundle includes Microsoft One Note, which you can use to take notes, email client Microsoft Outlook, the file-hosting service Microsoft One Drive, and virtual meeting software Skype and Microsoft Teams. There is also a handful of Microsoft Office software that is only available for Windows devices. Those programs are Microsoft Publisher, Microsoft Access, Microsoft Project, and Microsoft Visio. Respectively, these exclusive apps cater to desktop publishing, database management, project management, and diagram and flowchart creation.

Microsoft Office skills are helpful in any job that involves entering data, creating documents, or holding presentations. Companies using alternative programs even find these skills useful, as the tools used across all the different brands of software bundles are very similar. Some positions make good use of the entire Microsoft Office suite. Administrative assistants, for example, might use Word to write and share memos, One Note to jot down quick notes, Excel to track spending, Outlook to schedule meetings, and Skype to attend those meetings. Other roles rely on a single app for most of their work. Managers, advertisers, and educators use PowerPoint to create slideshows to explain concepts to their audience visually. Publisher caters to desktop publishers, while Excel helps auditors, analysts, accountants, and researchers manage all of their organization's data. Word is great for secretaries, typists, and transcribers who frequently create written documents.