Microsoft Office and Open Office: Office Suite Applications - Video & Lesson Transcript

An office suite is a collection of software applications developed by a single company. These bundles typically include programs for word processing, spreadsheets, presentations, and databases. This lesson explores the benefits of using an office suite and the types of office suites available. Updated: 08/26/2021

Typical Software Use

Consider yourself working in the marketing department of a large organization. You are the manager of one of the units in the department, and your unit is responsible for updating sales reports. Let's look at how you spend a typical day.

Throughout the day you use your e-mail. In the morning, you receive an e-mail from one of your staff members - she is working on a quarterly report and needs your feedback. You open up the report in your word processor software, add some comments and then send the report back to her. A little bit later, you get a phone call alerting you that the new sales figures have been updated. You open up your database software to check the latest numbers. You take last week's data and export it to spreadsheet software to make a graph of the trend in sales of selected products.

You have a meeting later in the day, and so you copy and paste the new graph into your presentation software to prepare a slideshow so you can share your sales analysis. Back in your office after the meeting, you type up your meeting notes in your word processing software, include the graph from the spreadsheet software and send this all around to the staff. It was another fine day at the office.

The various types of software that you have used each have their own specific functionality. However, they are often used in combination and it makes sense to bundle them in an office suite or productivity suite. An office software suite is a collection of software applications that are distributed together and are designed to interact with each other. Applications typically included in a software suite are word processing, spreadsheet, presentation, and database software.

Many other software applications can be bundled into an office suite - for example illustration software, photo editing software, software to create diagrams, collaborative software tools, and several others. However, these are less common and whether they are included or not depends on the type of office suite.