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Topic : Re: MS Word -- free or low cost options? Comments/Track changes? My Office365 subscription expired recently, and I don't have the money now to renew. But I may have a writing/editing gig coming - selfpublishingguru.com

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I have played around with the free online version of MS Word, and the best I can tell is that it imports otf files easily (not a surprise), has collaboration functionality as well as MS Word's grammar checking. It doesn't appear to be limited in functionality, and there is a fairly generous amount of storage space. You can share view capability with people without a MS account, but being able to edit another person's doc requires a MS account.

Update: I have been editing a 100 page document shared by someone else in the online free version of MS Word. I noticed that you don't have access to Track Changes feature unless you download and pay for the desktop version. See support.office.com/en-us/article/Can-I-use-Track-Changes-in-Word-Online-9016b7f8-b864-458f-ba45-183049f90bd8 According to that article, track changes are working when you edit online; you just can't see it on the online version.

I have also noticed that adding comments tends to make editing extremely sluggish. I would recommend making comments on a separate file instead of on the online version of MS Word.

Update 2. Unfortunately, I've noticed other deficiencies. In the online version, you can't custom edit styles like Headings, lists, etc. All you can do is to individually format elements on a page using format controls. You can apply the styles; you just can't edit the styles themselves.

As a workaround, I tried creating a template in LibreOffice, saving it as MS Word 2013 file and uploading it to the free online version of MS Word. Be sure NOT to upload the .odt file. You must save the .odt file as a .docx before uploading to the MS Office website.


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