KI 0704 Desktop- vs. cloud-based working

Office applications can be used through various approaches. Local use on your own computer is well known to most people, but the applications in the Office suite can also be used (with somewhat limited functionality) in a web browser through the Office portal.

This solution is called Office Online, and is especially useful if you do not have access to your own machine with the programs installed.

Office Online is completely cloud-based, and the work here is automatically saved to OneDrive. It may also be useful to use Office Online if you open a document from Teams or OneDrive. Three dots should be visible to the right of the file name. If you click on these and hover your mouse pointer over Open in, you may select how you want to open the file:

Teams - The document opens in the browser version of Word, but inside the Teams window.
Word desktop app - The document is opened in the desktop version of Word (local Office suite).
Browser - The document opens in the browser version of Word.

In this menu, you will also be able to change the default setting to any of the above. If you do not make a selection, the document will open using the option marked with (default), which is usually Teams.

While the example above uses Word, the steps also work for Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote documents.

The advantage of using the Teams/Browser options is that it is quick to open the document to either look at it or make minor adjustments. The downside is that the Online versions of Word, Excel and PowerPoint are not as powerful, and their features often differ from the desktop applications.