For years, one of the most common complaints about Chromebooks was that they couldn't run the Office suite of applications. Microsoft has offered Android apps for Word, Excel, and PowerPoint for a few years now, but they weren't made available to all Chromebooks for some reason.

Now it seems Microsoft has quietly opened up the Office apps to all Chromebooks. There has been no formal announcement from the company, but Robby Payne from Chrome Unboxed tried them on a handful of models (Samsung Chromebook Pro, Pixelbook, Acer Chromebook 15, etc), and they worked on all of them. There are several reports on Reddit of success as well.

I'm sure many people buying a Chromebook already use Google Docs, but for the group of people looking to buy one without switching ecosystems, this is a massive selling point. While the Android apps don't match all the functionality of the desktop versions, they have all the basics and support syncing through Office 365. Chromebooks have also been massively popular in schools, where many districts continue to use Office products.

If you have a 10.1" Chromebook (or smaller, if those exist), you can create and edit documents for free after logging in with a Microsoft account. For anything larger, you'll need an Office 365 subscription to edit documents. More details about what features the subscription unlocks can be found here.

Source: Chrome Unboxed