Is there a big difference between Microsoft Office and Microsoft Suite?

The Microsoft Office Suite is all of the Office programs as a whole.

So… it’s the same thing.

The Suite (I have ProPlus 2013) includes Word, Excel, Outlook, Access, OneNote, Lync, Publisher, and PowerPoint.

Most of the time, if you’re looking for a job and they want “Microsoft Office Proficiency”, they’re usually talking about Excel, Word, and Outlook, and occasionally Access.

Right. Access is the only program that I don’t know inside and out, but that’s because I’ve never had to use it.

What is OneNote and Publisher.

Publisher is kind of like a watered-down version of Adobe PageMaker – it’s for brochure layouts and stuff like that.

One Note I haven’t really messed with yet, but it’s supposed to be good for organizing notes, including a way to take a picture of handwritten notes and mine the text out of them.

Cool. I’ll look into that.

I use Publisher all the time. I make flyers for my auction on it.

I used to be great at PowerPoint, and it’s a lot of fun.

I hate Excel. Too boxy, mathy…too ‘color in the lines’.

I love Excel! It can do magic!

Magic, smagic. It’s too rigid for me. I enjoyed learning all the others – I’m largely self taught with a pointer here and there. I don’t find that to be an option on Excel.

I am self taught in all the programs, too. Power Point is fun but I prefer Excel for almost everything else. It can do everything Word can do, and more. And better!

I try to avoid anything including numbers, but I’m obsessed with lists. I use Excel to manage my book collection. In a moment, I can tell you how many Stephen King books I have, which ones I still need to get in hardcover, which ones Hubby has lent out to which friends and what we took as collateral (he lends books, I don’t), and in another list, which ones we need to look for next time we’re at the used book store.

Also, I just spent a couple of hours yesterday making a very pretty Excel spreadsheet to keep track of my son’s homeschool assignments and reading log.

I can hardly credit that anyone is self taught in Excel. It’s like a foreign language to me.

Most of the things I learn, I learn from making mistakes! :)