Microsoft 365 plans include premium versions of these applications plus other services that are enabled over the Internet, including online storage with OneDrive and Skype minutes for home use.1 With Microsoft 365 you get the full, installed Office experience on PCs, Macs, tablets (including iPad® and Android™ tablet) and phones.2 Microsoft 365 plans are available as a monthly or annual subscriptar, with the company also boasting 512,100 customers with more than 10 employees, up from around 504,900 in its last quarter.
You don’t need to be connected to the Internet to use Office applications, such as Word, Excel, and PowerPoint, because the applications are fully installed on your computer.
However, internet access is required to install and activate all the latest releases of Office suites and all Microsoft 365 subscription plans. For Microsoft 365 plans, internet access is also needed to manage your subscription account, for example to install Office on other PCs or to change billing options. Internet access is also required to access documents stored on OneDrive, unless you install the OneDrive desktop app.
You should also connect to the internet regularly to keep your version of Office up to date and benefit from automatic upgrades. If you don’t connect to the internet at least every 31 days, your applications will go into reduced functionality mode, which means that you can view or print your documents but cannot edit the documents or create new ones. To reactivate your Office applications, reconnect to the internet.
Microsoft Support
“The cloud” is a friendly way of describing web-based computing services that are hosted outside of your home or organization. When you use cloud-based services, your IT infrastructure resides off your property (off-premises), and is maintained by a third party (hosted), instead of residing on a server at your home or business (on-premises) that you maintain. With Microsoft 365, for example, information storage, computation, and software are located and managed remotely on servers owned by Microsoft. Many services you use every day are a part of the cloud—everything from web-based email to mobile banking and online photo storage. Because this infrastructure is located online or “in the cloud,” you can access it virtually anywhere, from a PC, tablet, smartphone, or other device with an Internet connection.