On the plus side, Office Online does include Add-ons, which is quite exciting because many of the missing functions can be added as third-party plugins. That said, none of the Online apps support a Sidebar for layout and navigation. The Tell Me dialogue is also missing in Word, although PowerPoint and Excel (opens in new tab) both have this handy feature. Office Online supports Styles, but they cannot be edited or even updated to selected text. Mailing, which supports mail merge and designing envelopes, probably won’t be missed, but not having the Design tab severely limits one’s ability to make widespread document changes. The Design and Mailing tab are both absent from Word Online. You also can’t create diagrams or visual aids in the app itself, only add them from elsewhere. Shapes, Smart Art, and Charts are also missing, which limits Word Online to simple text editing. It is present in PowerPoint and OneNote (opens in new tab), where it’s arguably more useful, but it would be nice to have it across the board.

First, there’s no Drawing support for Word Online, which is disappointing.

Free office online vs office 365