Re: Office 365
"I would rather use a traditional desktop version"
So...O365 then. The primary difference between them is licensing. O365 allows you to install on multiple systems including mobile devices. The 2019 boxed product does not. The other difference is that O365 gets new features as they arrive while 2019 won't get most of them. There's also a web version of O365, but that's not as good as installing locally.