Office applications: What are they, what are they for and what types are there?

One of the main functions of digital tools is based on making the daily life of its users be much simpler. Therefore, from them, there is the possibility of performing various tasks thanks to its wide variety of resources and applications for it.

In this sense, at present, you have at hand many possibilities and countless programs to manage the accounting of your home or business, write work letters to your friends, polish your photographs to present them in a project and many other things. Taking into account that these applications already have widespread use both personally, as well as academically, professionally and commercially.

Thus, when we refer to these tools, we are basically talking about the famous office applications that, in some steps, may be available individually and in others, in the form of a package. Learn more about this below.

What is an office application and what is it for?

To begin with, it should be noted that the term “office automation” refers to the acronym for “office” and “computing”. From there, office automation can be defined as the set of computer techniques, applications and tools used in office functions with the aim of improving, optimizing and automating all related procedures or tasks. This is also known as “office automation” either “desktop automation”.

In this sense, office applications are a group of programs that provide various functionalities and are considered to be widely used in the professional field and also on a personal and academic level. which are capable of conceive, create, direct, transmit and save the information needed in these environments.

Therefore, office-type applications serve to help streamline and motorize any activity that can be done manually in an office, for example. Be it with regard to typing, file and document management, dictation, faxing, archiving, microfilming, etc.

In addition to this, these useful applications provide great ease when sharing files and also allow modify documents in real time and even with multiple users.

What are the most used and important office applications today?

Now you might wonder what are the types of office apps that exist and well, the most used and important today; therefore, in this section of the post we will introduce you to the main applications of this class that are also They can be identified as the components of an office package:

processors

Also known as “word processing”, these office applications are the most used. Since, it is a class of software with multiple features for writing with various sizes and fonts of letters and characters, as well as various types of paragraphs, colors, artistic effects and more options.

In this way, they are programs clearly intended to create any type of text in a simple and fast way with the aim of producing written documents without any restrictions, unlike text editors that only handle plain text. In this sense, word processors support the creation, modification, editing and processing of any writing with various formats.

Spreadsheets

These apps are intended for store, slice data and perform calculationyes, just like analysis of them. In other words, they are based on a type of document that facilitates the manipulation of data, numbers and alphanumerics that are arranged in the form of tables, generally made up of cells. These are usually organized in a two-dimensional matrix of columns and rows.

It should be noted that the data entered in these programs can be texts, numbers, dates or any other. Since, from them, you can order, organize and calculate new data. Additionally, it offers users to obtain graphs based on the data added in the tables. Thanks to this, they are tools used by multitude of professionalstoday.

Databases

They are generally known as “database managers” and also as “database management system (SGBD)”being these applications those that are destined to the creation, modification, update, realization and storage of written reports on information that is contained in a database.

In this sense, users can access the information using specific reporting and query tools. Added to this, these types of systems provide methods for maintain data security and privacyalso to manage user access to them and even to be able to recover information in case the system becomes corrupted.

It should be noted that there are three types of databases and they are:

• Hierarchical databases.
• Network databases.
• Relational databases.

Image editors

They are office applications that take care of and facilitate the treatment and manipulation of images, photos, videos and all this type of elements. In such a way that they allow their users to edit images and videos in the simplest way by being able to reduce, crop, enlarge and retouch them. But also, they admit the most complex way to do it, since it has the capacity to make montages, animate videos and figures in order to optimize your presentations.

In addition to this and among other details, image editors offer you the possibility of creating correction adjustments, work through layersmodify the resolution to your liking, etc.

It is appropriate to note that There are several types and among the most important we place the following:

• Of design: These are usually tools that make it easy to create graphics and retouch high-quality images.
• of photography: Occasionally, these are responsible for retouching and manipulating images and photos from various tools they contain.
• drawing and painting: They are those that allow graphic editing, photographs, bitmaps, can create and view GIF animations, apply filters and transformations, adjust colors in photographic elements, use video frames and capture frames from video cameras.
• of animations: Provide the necessary options to convert video sequences into animations in GIF, PNG, JPEG, TIF and BPM formats.
• from CAD: Basically, they work for creating 2D and 3D designs.
• DE 3D: They allow you to design and create graphics, clearly, in three dimensions.

Presentation Editors

On several occasions, you must make presentations to expose some work at your university or work, so the need arises to resort to this type of program or application. Which, make it easy to create attractive presentations with great speed and simplicity.

Among its most relevant features, it should be noted that these presentation editors allow you to include text, as well as images, animations and colors so that you can make them to your liking and make them really interesting. In addition to this, presentations can also be made with templates and even insert sounds and animations into your slidesalso having the possibility of publishing them on the Internet directly from the office application.

project editors

Basically, these computer and office applications are those that allow you to manage your projects. Which means that they simplify the organization of all the data contained, as well as scheduling tasks and managing the necessary resources in order to achieve a certain goal. Of course, keeping in mind the budget and the specific time frames.

For its part, with respect to its most significant functions, we limit that they refer to the programming of duties, optimal communication between the members of the project team, the allocation of time to tasks. Besides the resource management regarding materials and costsmonitoring of all actions and presentation of the final project.

Website editors

This type of office applications are also known as “HTML editors” and they can be defined as those applications that allow you to create web pages easily, since it is not necessary to know that programming language to achieve it, that is, HTML.

Generally, most of the office suites and, above all, the word processors that include; They have options to make web pages and also to convert the content of the documents into versions that can be exported to websites.

Secondly, There are several types of web page editors and the most recognized are the following:

• visual editors: These offer you the possibility to work as if you were editing the web page directly. Which means that the codes are not seen, but the elements (just as they are displayed in a browser).
• Those who operate with codes: They are editors in text mode that have a series of menus and toolbars that allow you to choose html tags. But, to make use of these applications, users must know the programming language.
• The mixed editors: These are editors that have characteristics of the two previous types. In other words, you can choose between one way of working and the other and also add or change certain parameters in either of the two systems.

layout artists

They refer to all kinds of applications that simplify professional-level text editing. Since, they contain a set of tools that have been specially designed for complex models with the aim of edit books, magazines, brochures and all these types of posts. With this, they enable the creation of professional-quality texts for printing or commercial distribution.

Among other functions, we detail that the layout designers have all the necessary tools to complete, successfully, editing a publication. In this way, they allow you to select the dimensions of the paper, the type of numbering of the pages, the paragraphs, the style of the fonts, the spelling correction, etc. Like, various design tools.

authoring tools

They are also known as “visual languages” either “author environments” and are based on computer applications that facilitate the development of multimedia systems. In this way and in general, they are used to present specialized and multimedia content, such as videos, audios, images or text; from which they provide an aspect similar to that of a web.

For their part, the authoring tools provide a work environment full of objects, icons and option menus from which it is possible to display images (photos, videos, animations or graphics), play sounds, create interactive buttons, activate other programs and control time or devices. Currently, office applications of this type They are very useful in the development of educational programs..

List of the most used office automation software and tools today

Knowing the importance of each and every one of the office applications, it is logical to assume that they have many users around the world, thanks to the fact that they simplify so many activities on a personal level, as well as on a professional level. But, although there are many such tools and software, only some of them are the most used today.

Next, we detail the most relevant:

Word

This Microsoft Office tool, without a doubt, is the most widely used word processor worldwide when it comes to creating digital documents. Which, emerged since 1981 and to this day, it is multi-device. Basically, Word allows you to write texts, articles, descriptions and diagrams in an organized way.

For its part, offers you various options to change the font format, its size and its design, depending on the needs of the user. Also, you can configure the size of the sheet to your liking, choose whether you prefer to see it horizontally or vertically. Apart from that, it has the ability to check your spelling thanks to its added dictionary, it has functions like inserting watermarks, find and replace, inserting your header, etc.

Excel

This software also belongs to the Microsoft Office suite and it is the most commonly used spreadsheet office application in the world. Given that its functions as a spreadsheet provide a large number of facilities to keep track of any financial activity, organize the alphanumeric information you want to present it in balances, reports, charts and graphs; basically.

Among its most interesting features, we find that it has easily identifiable cells with letter and number of column and row that corresponds to it, offers worksheets that are identified in the lower left part from labels that can be renamed by the same user. Apart from that, contains a ribbon from where you can modify various parametersoffers you the possibility to enter formulas, contains many functions, provides graphs, etc.

PowerPoint

Yet another Microsoft Office tool that is based on a presentation editor which offers various features and benefits to its users to create professional looking slides from the combination of various media formats. Such as: text, photographs, audios, etc. In other words, it provides you with all the necessary tools to communicate the information you want. in a visual way and at the same time, completely attractive.

Now, specifying its most interesting functions and particularities, it is worth noting that PowerPoint admits the use of certain templates and custom, at the same time. In addition to this, it offers the insertion of interesting images, the possibility of adding text to them, you can also create texts with different formats and colors, make use of audio and music in an intuitive way. Like use animations in your presentations with images, objects and text.

photoshop

Developed by Adobe Systems Incorporated, this image editor or graphic editor is another of the most widely used office applications today. In the first place, because it has powerful functionalities to manipulate images with great quality and professional results, even. In addition to this, it is estimated as the world leader in the market for image editing applications and dominates this sector notably.

Despite the fact that, in its beginnings, it was only used for retouching photos and graphics, later became a great reference for image editing in general. For its part, detailing its most relevant features, we highlight that Adobe Photoshop has generator technology that allows quickly create dynamic images in real timeoffers cloud saving, provides optimized 3D tools, etc.

Microsoft Project

Today, it is estimated as one of the most widely used project management software in the world, since it allows its users to choose from dozens of options and alternatives. Taking into account that, although it is one of the first project editing solutions, it has evolved remarkably and from its updates, it has added many more tools of interest.

Of course, it’s about a program sold by Microsoft company to simplify the administration of projects of any kind. Thus, among its main functions, we note that it offers you the possibility of communicating and presenting any information about the project, you can control their schedules and financesas well as organizing the work and people to complete such a project on time.