Microsoft gets personal with single-user Office 365 option

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Microsoft has unveiled Office 365 Personal, a new option for accessing the company's cloud-based productivity service.

As the name implies, Office 365 Personal is designed for a single user. Detailing it in a blog post, Microsoft describes it as a more affordable option than its existing multi-user Home Premium offering, which grants access to the suite for five people.

The subscription includes the usual Office 365 suite of products, like Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Access, Outlook and OneNote. It comes with additional benefits in the form of 60 minutes of Skype call time per month and 20GB of extra OneDrive storage.

Home run

Microsoft will also be changing the name of Office 365 Home Premium to just Office 365 Home. This name change will come into effect with the launch of Office 365 Personal.

Office 365 already has 3.5 million subscribers, and this latest move is sure to bump that number up considerably as people look for cheaper ways to write and edit documents. Google recently upped competition by bulking up its free Docs and Sheets products with free Add-Ons that people can download to snag extra functionality.

The service is set to launch in the next few months and will cost US$69.99 (about AU$77) per year or US$6.99 (about AU$8) per month. Note that the Aussie conversions don't factor in tax, so they're likely to cost slightly more.

As such, you'll save a small wad of cash compared to shelling out for Office 365 Home Premium, which is priced at AU$119 per year or $12 per month.

• How to move to Office 365

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