What is microsoft office certification?

Microsoft Office Certifications

Microsoft offers some of the most popular tech products in the world. While many users might not be familiar with Azure, Microsoft Server, or SQL Server, they certainly know about Windows and the apps in the Microsoft Office suite. Applications like Word, Excel, and PowerPoint are so typical that they are taken for granted.

Every Microsoft product has a corresponding microsoft office certifications. The office is no different; it has three. Microsoft Office certifications are somewhat controversial because Office is a baseline technical competency for most office jobs. And for something so familiar, why get certified?

That’s a question we’ll explore. We’ll look at what these certs cover, who should earn them, and who should not.

Microsoft Office Certifications and Exams

There are three Microsoft Office certifications: Microsoft Office Specialist (MOS), MOS Expert, and MOS Master. They are intended to demonstrate increasing levels of proficiency in using one or more of the five main Office apps: Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Access, and Outlook.

The keyword here is “using”. These certs are all about using Office apps, not installing or administering them.

We used the term “increasing levels of proficiency”, but maybe we should say “increasing breadth of proficiency”. That’s because, apart from Expert level exams for Word and Excel, specialist level exams are used at each level. You just have to pass more of them as you move up the ladder. The current certification exams are for the 2016 versions of Office apps, which are also available via the cloud in Office 365.