Desktop Applications in the Office Family

Thirteen desktop Microsoft applications are labeled with the Office moniker. All but three are available as part of at least one Office suite edition: Project, SharePoint Designer, and Visio can only be purchased separately.

One Office desktop application, Communicator 2007, requires an associated server product in order to function. The other Office desktop applications can be enhanced with, but do not require, related server products or hosted services. For example, SharePoint Server adds several content management capabilities, such as document retention and auditing functions, for Excel, PowerPoint, Word, and other Office application users. However, these server products and hosted services must be licensed separately. Note that SharePoint Online, Exchange Online, Communications Online, and Groove Enterprise Services are Microsoft-hosted subscription services, as opposed to on-premise server solutions.

Subsets of certain Office application functions are available without licensing the Office application itself. Microsoft offers free viewers for Excel, PowerPoint, Visio, and Word files, allowing users without the corresponding full application to view and print existing documents (but not to edit and save existing documents or to create new ones). Furthermore, several Office server products, such as Exchange Server, include Web applications that make many of the same features provided by the corresponding Office desktop application accessible to users via a browser.