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Microsoft 365 and Office | Word | For home | iOS
A family of Microsoft word processing software products for creating web, email, and print documents.
They are related, but not the same thing.
- Microsoft 365 is the subscription/service.
- Word is one of the apps included in that ecosystem.
On an iPad, the free Office apps let basic tasks like viewing, creating, and editing files. A Microsoft 365 subscription is needed in these cases:
- The mobile device is larger than 10.1".
- Files are being created, edited, or saved to business storage services such as OneDrive for Business, Dropbox for Business, Google Drive, or Box.
- The goal is to unlock the full Office experience and extra features.
For Word specifically, a subscription unlocks features such as:
- inserting page and section breaks
- enabling columns in page layout
- customizing headers and footers for different pages
- changing page orientation
- tracking and reviewing changes
- highlighting table cells with color shading
If the account shows a Free badge at Microsoft365.com, only the free web versions of Word, Excel, and PowerPoint are available. If it shows Subscribed, the account already has a Microsoft 365 subscription and can use subscription benefits.
So if usage is basically only Word on iPad:
- Word is the app being used.
- Microsoft 365 is what pays for the broader subscription benefits and any premium Word features on that device.