Difference Between Office Student and Business

Have you ever wondered which version of Microsoft Office is right for you: Office Student or Office Business? Choosing the correct software can make all the difference in productivity, collaboration, and cost-effectiveness.

In this article, we’ll break down the key differences between Office Student and Business, helping you decide which aligns best with your needs. Whether you're a student managing coursework or a professional running a business, understanding these distinctions is crucial for making an informed decision. Read on to uncover the features, pricing, and benefits that set these two versions apart!

The main difference between the Student suite and the Business suite is the applications that they come with. For example, Office Student doesn’t have the Outlook, Access, and Publisher applications you would otherwise find in the Office Business.

So, here's a comparison of Office Home and Student and Office Home and Business.

What is Microsoft Office?

Microsoft Office is a comprehensive suite of productivity applications designed to streamline tasks such as document creation, data analysis, communication, and collaboration. Developed by Microsoft, it includes essential tools for word processing, spreadsheets, presentations, email management, and more.

Key applications of Microsoft Office include:

• Word: Create and edit professional documents with ease.
• Excel: Analyze data with powerful spreadsheet tools and formulas.
• PowerPoint: Design impactful presentations with customizable templates.
• Outlook: Manage emails, calendars, and contacts efficiently.
• OneDrive: Access and share files securely through cloud storage.

These applications are available in various editions tailored to specific user needs—most notably Office Student and Office Business, which cater to different audiences and purposes.

Understanding the differences between Office Student and Office Business is essential to choosing the right version for your needs. While both provide access to these core tools, they differ in features, licensing terms, and additional services designed specifically for students or business professionals. Let’s dive deeper into what sets these two editions apart!

Office Student vs. Business Applications

When comparing Office Student and Office Business, the key difference lies in the applications included in each package. While both versions provide access to essential tools like Word, Excel, and PowerPoint, Office Business offers additional applications and features tailored for professional use.

Apps Available in both Office Student and Office Business

Word

Microsoft Word is a word processor software developed and published by Microsoft. It provides customers with top-quality publishing capabilities and is one of the most widely used programs for word processing.

Word’s primary function is word processing, and it was designed to deliver on that premise ever since the very beginning, and the capabilities have only gotten bigger and better. The countless tools in Word help you professionally write your documents:

• Use AutoCorrect to get rid of grammatical errors quickly or misspells.

• Work with powerful formatting tools to make your documents visually appealing while also spicing up the document with images, vectors, icons, 3D models and much more.

• Share your documents through various means, with support for various file formats that ensure cross-platform compatibility.

• The integrated translator feature lets you easily understand documents written in a foreign language without leaving Word. Just highlight the text you want to translate and select the tool to choose which language to translate.

• Learning Tools provide ease of access features that make reading documents easier on the eyes. You can adjust the line length with Column Width and increase the spacing between words, characters and lines with Text Spacing. Change the color of your pages to ensure text causes less eye strain with Page Colour.

• The Syllables tool shows breaks between syllables to improve word recognition and pronunciation. Finally, the Read Aloud feature uses text-to-speech technology to read your document, highlighting each word as it goes for you to follow along.

Both suites offer the same core functionality of Microsoft Word, including advanced formatting options, support for rich text editing, and compatibility with various file formats like .docx and .pdf. However, the primary distinction lies in the use context: Office Student focuses on personal or academic tasks, while Office Business emphasizes professional document creation for workplace needs.

Excel

Microsoft Excel is a program used to create spreadsheets and features other capabilities such as performing all kinds of calculations, let it be something simple and quick or one that requires more complex equations and brain work. It also provides customers with the ability to create different kinds of graphics and pivot tables and use a macro programming language called Visual Basic for Applications.

Due to its huge roster of extremely useful, easy-to-use, and professional capabilities, Excel is now one of the leading and most used applications across many platforms. It has become an industry standard for spreadsheet creation over the years.

• In the new versions of Excel, each worksheet is capable of holding a million rows and more than 16000 columns; numbers label the horizontal rows, while the vertical columns can be identified by letters of the alphabet. Columns beyond 26 are identified by two or more letters.

• Excel's cells can hold numbers, text, dates and times, Boolean values, and formulas inside of them as data.

• Microsoft has expanded the native functions of Excel with 6 new functions to help you during your work.

• Some of these functions are improved versions of what already existed within Excel previously. Still, some new tools are accessible for customers to speed up productivity and simplify using Excel.

• The Map chart is quite self-explanatory. You can create a chart that shows categories and volumes across geographical regions such as countries, states, counties, or even postal codes.

• The Funner charts show values across multiple process stages. As the values decrease or increase over time, your data bars start to resemble a funnel, hence the name.

• You can easily insert icons and Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) files into your projects. When choosing to insert these icons, you can pick and choose from Microsoft's provided library of professionally made icons in over 25 categories.

• You can select multiple icons to insert at the same time. Once your icons are in your worksheet you can edit them in various ways by resizing, rotating, changing colors, and applying various other visual effects.

While both suites offer the same core functionality, Office Business users often leverage Excel in more complex scenarios tied to organizational goals. In contrast, Office Student focuses on educational or personal data management.

PowerPoint

Microsoft PowerPoint is a presentation program, used to visualize and screen information in the form of a slide show.

Its three major functions include an advanced editor for text formatting, methods, and tools that enable users to insert and even modify, edit or manipulate graphic images, insert other mediums such as videos, 3D models, graphs, animations, and visual effects, and a slide-show system with various options to make the display of your presentation slides stand out, yet stay professional and true to your intent.

PowerPoint is a profoundly imaginative and flexible program that can guarantee you fruitful correspondence whether you're showing your work before potential investors, during a lecture, or just presenting your ideas to your colleagues. PowerPoint includes a dozen of tools you ought to utilize:

• PowerPoint will enhance your slideshow abilities and enable you to convey your message effectively. Deliver your thoughts and ideas with aesthetic visual design, animations, pictorial movement, cinematic transitions, 3D models, symbols, and more.

• Give canny innovation a chance to enable you to breathe life into your presentations with a couple of clicks to ensure you’re presenting with nothing but confidence.

• One of PowerPoint’s most used features is transitions to provide an incredibly smooth flow between your content and slides, helping with both visual impact and for you to deliver your thoughts without any unnecessary pauses.

• These transitions are easy to apply, ensuring that even entry-level customers can take full advantage of PowerPoint. The application comes with quite a large amount of basic transitions, which all display a different kind of effect. Still, the option to install custom transitions (and other assets) is available for everyone as well.

• Digital inking capabilities allow you to choose and customize a personal set of pens suitable for your needs. You can pick between a set of pens, highlighters, and pencils and change their options to create tools suitable for your needs. There are five pen thickness settings, color options, and various ink effects to choose from as well.

Students commonly use PowerPoint to create class presentations, group project slides, or visual aids for academic speeches. Professionals might use it for sales pitches, training materials, company updates, or client proposals. Both suites include the same core features of PowerPoint.

OneNote

Microsoft OneNote is a virtual notebook that allows you to stay organized and keep your notes in a secure space. With the ability to create notebooks, you can divide your notes into sections and pages to write and keep track of your world through typing, highlighting, and even ink annotations.

The easy-to-understand visuals, navigation, and fast search features enable you to easily find anything and everything. You can use OneNote across all of your devices to reach your notes anytime from anywhere and share or collaborate in real-time with whomever you invite, even without Microsoft 365.

OneNote is a favorite among students for taking lecture notes, organizing research materials, and collaborating on group projects (offline). Its notebook structure allows users to categorize notes by subject or topic easily. Students can also embed images or equations to enhance their notes. It’s also a productivity tool for professionals to capture meeting notes, brainstorm ideas during planning sessions, or store reference materials.

The functionality of OneNote remains consistent across both suites; however, its use cases differ based on whether it’s applied in an academic setting or a business environment.

Apps Only available in Office Business

Outlook

Microsoft Outlook is an email management and scheduling application included only in the Office Business suite. It combines email functionality with calendar integration, contact management, and task tracking to streamline communication and organization.

Outlook is indispensable for managing professional emails across multiple accounts, scheduling meetings with built-in calendar tools, and maintaining organized contact lists. Businesses rely on its ability to handle high volumes of email efficiently while integrating with other Office applications like Word or Excel for seamless workflows.

The free version of Outlook is primarily a web-based email client available through Outlook.com and provides basic email management, calendar functions, and contact storage. Free users can access 15 GB of mailbox storage and 5 GB of OneDrive cloud storage for file attachments. The Outlook included with Office Business is a professional-grade app offering advanced email management, shared calendars, and task tracking designed for business environments.

Office Student vs. Business System Requirements

Microsoft Office has evolved significantly over the years, adapting to advancements in hardware and operating systems. Over time, as features became more advanced and applications more robust, system requirements increased to support enhanced functionality and performance.

Today, Office Student and Office Business share similar system requirements for their latest perpetual versions (e.g., Office 2024), ensuring compatibility with modern devices. However, businesses often need higher-end systems to handle larger datasets or integrate with other enterprise tools.

Latest System Requirements for Office Student and Business

We recommend that you look at the system requirements page provided by Microsoft to see the full list of requirements for every Office suite, as some releases have different requirements.

Office Student is designed for home users, students and educators. This suite typically runs well on standard laptops or desktops used in academic settings. It does not require high-end hardware since it focuses on core applications like Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and OneNote.

While the base requirements for Office Business are similar to Office Student, businesses may need more powerful systems to handle complex Excel spreadsheets, Outlook email management with large inboxes, or integration with enterprise software like Microsoft Exchange.

Requirements for Office Business

Certain Microsoft Office for Business features may have additional requirements specific dependencies, or prerequisites. While the essential requirements are outlined below, consulting Microsoft's official documentation will provide the most accurate and comprehensive information.

Some features in Office Business may require you to install:

• Windows Desktop Search 3.0
• Media Player 9.0
• Microsoft ActiveSync 4.1

Other requirements may include:

• An audio input and output device, such as a microphone, speaker, or earphone.
• A TWAIN-compatible scanner or digital camera could be required for some features.
• Access to a Microsoft Exchange or SharePoint server is needed for some document-sharing capabilities.

Office Student vs. Business Licensing

Licensing is an extremely important part of Microsoft Office and software in general. To make sure a copy is authentic and is used under proper circumstances, it is required to have a license.

To make the retail price of the Student edition lower and more affordable, Microsoft's license only covers non-commercial use and activity by households. Please note that not even academic institutions or organizations are allowed to buy and install the Student edition, even if it is for student use.

On the other hand, the Business edition can be used for any purpose, commercial or not, and can be installed on any device. Once again, looking into the licensing further is recommended if you have any questions or doubts about what a Business license covers and what is off-limits.

Pricing and Costs

Microsoft Office offers two primary purchasing models: perpetual licenses and subscription-based plans. Each model caters to different user needs, whether you prefer a one-time purchase or ongoing access to the latest features through a subscription.

The perpetual versions, such as Office 2024, 2021, and 2019, require a single upfront payment and provide lifetime access to the purchased version. In contrast, subscription-based plans like Microsoft 365 (formerly Office 365) charge monthly or annual fees and include regular updates, cloud storage, and additional services.

Perpetual versions are ideal for users who prefer a one-time purchase without ongoing costs. However, these versions do not receive feature updates—only security patches—and must be repurchased at full price for future upgrades.

Office 2024

• Office Home 2024: $149.99 (includes Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and OneNote; non-commercial use).
• Office Home & Business 2024: $249.99 (adds Outlook; licensed for commercial use).

Office 2021

• Office Home & Student 2021: $149.99 (similar to Office Home 2024).
• Office Home & Business 2021: $249.99 (similar to the 2024 version but lacks newer features).

Office 2019

• Pricing was similar to Office 2021 but is now largely discontinued as newer versions have replaced it.

Do You Want to Get Office for Cheap?

Looking for a way to get Microsoft Office at an affordable price without sacrificing quality or reliability? Look no further! At SoftwareKeep, we pride ourselves on being the go-to destination for cheap, genuine Microsoft Office products you can trust.

Whether you need Office Student for schoolwork or Office Business for professional use, we offer unbeatable prices on all the latest versions, including Office 2024, Office 2021, and even subscription options like Microsoft 365. Our licenses are 100% legitimate, secure, and easy to install, giving you access to the tools you need at a fraction of the cost.

Don’t overpay for Microsoft Office when you can get it for less with us! Whether you're a student, a professional, or a business owner, SoftwareKeep has the perfect solution for your needs.

Final Thoughts

Selecting the right Microsoft Office suite depends largely on your needs, usage patterns, and budget. We’ve explored the key differences between these two editions, from the applications included to the system requirements and pricing structures. When making your decision, consider the following:

• Applications: Do you require Outlook?
• Requirements: Does your hardware meet the minimum specifications?
• Pricing: Is the cost worth it for your needs?
• Usage: Are you using Office for academic or professional tasks?

Ultimately, the best choice aligns with your individual or organizational requirements. You can now make an informed decision that enhances productivity, streamlines workflows, and maximizes value for your investment. Whether you opt for Office Student or Office Business, Microsoft Office remains a powerful tool for achieving your goals.

One More Thing

Thank you for taking the time to read our guide! We hope it helped you better understand the differences between Office Student and Office Business and how to choose the right version for your needs. At SoftwareKeep, we’re here to make your decision easier by offering affordable, reliable, and genuine Microsoft Office products.

Ready to get started? Don’t miss out on the chance to save big on your next Office purchase. Browse our selection today and unlock the tools you need to succeed—whether in school, at work, or both!

Shop now at SoftwareKeep and take the first step toward smarter productivity!