Microsoft 365 Apps

Microsoft 365 Apps is the brand for the installable Office desktop applications — Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, OneNote, OneDrive, Teams, Access (Windows), plus Publisher and Project where licensed. Delivered as Microsoft 365 Apps for Business (with Microsoft 365 Business plans), Microsoft 365 Apps for Enterprise (with Microsoft 365 Enterprise plans), or standalone subscriptions. Updates flow through one of several update channels — Current Channel, Monthly Enterprise Channel, Semi-Annual Enterprise Channel — managed via Intune or the Office Deployment Tool. Different from older perpetual-licence Office LTSC which doesn't receive new features. The brand replaced Office 365 ProPlus in 2020.

Worked example

An IT admin rolling out new laptops configures the Office Deployment Tool with an XML file that specifies Current Channel, English and one additional language pack, and excludes Access and Publisher the organisation doesn't use — then pushes that configuration through Intune so every new device gets the same, minimal, consistently-updated install with no manual clicking through a setup wizard. A finance team on Monthly Enterprise Channel gets new features roughly once a month; a regulated back-office team on Semi-Annual Enterprise Channel gets the same features, just twice a year and pre-validated against their own change process.

Common pitfalls

Assuming "Office" and "Microsoft 365 Apps" are interchangeable is common but imprecise — Office LTSC is a real, still-sold, perpetual-licence alternative that deliberately doesn't receive new features, and mixing it up with the subscription-based Microsoft 365 Apps causes confusion about why one machine gets Copilot and another doesn't. Leaving every device on Current Channel by default, rather than choosing a channel deliberately, means feature changes reach end users with no organisational testing window — Monthly or Semi-Annual Enterprise Channel exist specifically to give IT that buffer. And installing Microsoft 365 Apps by hand on each device instead of through Intune or the Office Deployment Tool makes update-channel enforcement and future troubleshooting far harder than it needs to be at any scale beyond a handful of machines.