Origen: The 22 Best Microsoft Office Add-ins
How We Selected the Featured Microsoft Office Add-ins
There are over 2,000 add-ins for Microsoft Office 365—and more that only work on specific versions of Office for Windows and Mac. To simplify things, we looked through over 100 of the highest-rated apps for each product (Outlook, Word, Excel, and PowerPoint), installed and tested 47 add-ins that stood out for their different features, and narrowed the results down using the following criteria:
- Free: There are a lot of promising paid apps available for Office products, but we wanted to focus on the best free add-ins. Some of the add-ins have paid upgrades, but the basic features described for each add-in are free to use.
- Broad Audience: Many available apps and add-ins are for specific programs like Salesforce, HubSpot, or Trello—they require the use of a third-party program. We wanted to highlight apps that anyone can use, so we excluded those that are specific to third-party tools.
- Broad Use Cases: There’s a lot you can do with apps and add-ons without leaving Microsoft’s interface—find restaurants on Yelp, search Wikipedia, and buy flowers—but we wanted to focus on the types of apps you could realistically use daily.
- All 365 Applications: We only included apps that work for all Office 365 subscription types (Home, Student, and Business).