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www.office.com/setup Blogs: Productivity? Sweet www.office.com/setup Blogs: Office 2016 for Mac was a long time coming, but it brings plenty of new features and better feature parity with the Windows version than ever. Microsoft has done a lot to streamline the experience, with a customizable, collapsible Ribbon as well as cross-platform keyboard shortcuts, but with any major Office update, there's bound to be a learning curve. These tips for Word, PowerPoint, Excel, Outlook, and OneNote should come in handy, and if you're stumped about anything specific, let us know in the comments. Office 2016 is available for Office365 subscribers, with a wider release coming in September. Don't forget to save! This is probably our most important tip: Don't forget to save! When Apple introduced Auto Save and Versions into OS X, many Mac users started losing our ingrained habit of hitting Command-S often. Unfortunately, Office 2016 (except for OneNote-more on that in a bit) doesn't take advantage of Auto Save. So don't forget to save often. Versioning is also missing, but on the plus side, fans of Save As will find the command in its rightful place in the File menu. Store your files in OneDrive or SharePoint If you need access to your files from anywhere, Office 2016's built-in OneDrive & SharePoint integration makes cloud storage simple. To save to your OneDrive or SharePoint account, click the Online Locations button in the lower-left corner of a Save dialog box. Choose your existing account from the list, or click the Plus button to add another location. What's the difference? Glad you asked. OneDrive is a consumer product for cloud storage, like iCloud Drive. Aimed more at businesses, SharePoint acts like an intranet, letting teams share and collaborate on files. Office 2016 for Mac: Ribbon - www.office.com/setup See larger image Maximize your workspace The redesigned Ribbon in Office 2016 unifies the look and functionality across all platforms. It also ta

Productivity? Sweet www.office.com/setup Blogs: Office 2016 for Mac was a long time coming, but it brings plenty of new features and better feature parity with the Windows version than ever. Microsoft has done a lot to streamline the experience, with a customizable, collapsible Ribbon as well as cross-platform keyboard shortcuts, but with any major Office update, there's bound to be a learning curve. These tips for Word, PowerPoint, Excel, Outlook, and OneNote should come in handy, and if you're stumped about anything specific, let us know in the comments. Office 2016 is available for Office365 subscribers, with a wider release coming in September. Don't forget to save! This is probably our most important tip: Don't forget to save! When Apple introduced Auto Save and Versions into OS X, many Mac users started losing our ingrained habit of hitting Command-S often. Unfortunately, Office 2016 (except for OneNote-more on that in a bit) doesn't take advantage of Auto Save. So don't forget to save often. Versioning is also missing, but on the plus side, fans of Save As will find the command in its rightful place in the File menu. Store your files in OneDrive or SharePoint If you need access to your files from anywhere, Office 2016's built-in OneDrive & SharePoint integration makes cloud storage simple. To save to your OneDrive or SharePoint account, click the Online Locations button in the lower-left corner of a Save dialog box. Choose your existing account from the list, or click the Plus button to add another location. What's the difference? Glad you asked. OneDrive is a consumer product for cloud storage, like iCloud Drive. Aimed more at businesses, SharePoint acts like an intranet, letting teams share and collaborate on files. Office 2016 for Mac: Ribbon - www.office.com/setup See larger image Maximize your workspace The redesigned Ribbon in Office 2016 unifies the look and functionality across all platforms. It also takes up a lot of space, and c

WWW.OFFICE.COM/SETUP BLOGS: WHICH VERSION OF MICROSOFT OFFICE IS BEST FOR ME? www.office.com/setup Blogs: Office 365 and Office 2016 share a lot of similarities, yet deciding between the two involves a lot of factors. Office 365 is a subscription-based service that currently uses Office 2016 apps, but when the next version of Office is released, users will get that as part of their subscription. Office 2016 is a buy-once app suite that brings you the Office 2016 apps as they are, without any available updates in the future. If you want to upgrade to the latest version of Office without paying for a subscription, you'll have to pay full price for the new version - there's no discounted upgrade option. These are only a couple differences between the two products. Looking to invest in Office? We break down the differences between the two products to help you decide which is better for personal and home use. See at Microsoft Store Quick-reference table Apps and pricing Multiple devices Connectivity Support Storage Conclusion QUICK-REFERENCE TABLE Category Office 365 Home Office 365 Personal Office Home & Student 2016 Office Home & Business 2016 Office Professional 2016 Price $99.99 /year $9.99 /month $69.99 /year $6.99 /month $149.99 $229.99 $399.99 Users Up to 5 1 1 1 1 Apps Word Excel PowerPoint OneNote Outlook Publisher Access Word Excel PowerPoint OneNote Outlook Publisher Access Word Excel PowerPoint OneNote Word Excel PowerPoint OneNote Outlook Word Excel PowerPoint OneNote Outlook Publisher Access Devices 5 PCs or Macs 5 tablets 5 phones 1 PC or Mac 1 tablet 1 phone 1 PC 1 PC 1 PC Skype minutes 60 per month for each user 60 None None None OneDrive storage 1TB each for five users 1TB None None None APPS AND PRICING Office apps on the go. - www.office.com/setup Office 365 is a subscription-based service. If you choose to pay on a yearly basis, you essentially get a discount that works out to two free months per year. If you choose to pay on a monthly b

www.office.com/setup Blogs: Andy Wolber shows you how to edit Word, Excel, and PowerPoint documents stored on Google Drive from your desktop or mobile device. Office and Drive - www.office.com/setup Many organizations that rely on Google Apps also use Microsoft Office applications. Mass conversion of highly formatted documents, complex spreadsheets, or animated presentations may not always be practical. As a result, people still open and edit Word, Excel, and PowerPoint documents after a move to Google Apps. Microsoft Office files, however, no longer need to be stored on your local computer, server, or even on MIcrosoft's OneDrive. Google Drive stores Microsoft Word, Excel, and PowerPoint files much like any file server. And Google encrypts the files when you upload them to Drive, and it stores the files in an encrypted state, too. Google also offers several ways to edit Microsoft Office files stored on Google Drive. Edit capabilities vary by operating system. Here's a look at the options as of August 2015. EDIT WITH MICROSOFT OFFICE The most full-featured way to edit a Word, Excel, or PowerPoint file stored on Google Drive is with Microsoft Office, of course. People who use Office on Windows may open Office files from Google Drive with a plug-in. Simply install the Google Drive plug-in for Microsoft Office, and Google Drive will display as a file storage location in Word, Excel, and PowerPoint (Figure A). From within your Office app, open a file on Google Drive, make your changes, then save the file back to Google Drive. Figure A Figure A - www.office.com/setup OPEN MICROSOFT OFFICE FILES STORED ON GOOGLE DRIVE WITH A GOOGLE-CREATED PLUG-IN. You can also open an Office file stored on Google Drive from your Chrome browser-on either Windows or a Mac. First, install the Google Drive app for your system. Next, start Chrome and browse to your file on Google Drive (http://drive.google.com). Right-click (or, [Ctrl]+click) on a Word, Excel, or PowerPoint documen

WWW.OFFICE.COM/SETUP BLOGS: INTRODUCTION www.office.com/setup Blogs: After creating a form, you might want to modify its appearance. Formatting your forms can help make your database look consistent and professional. Some formatting changes can even make your forms easier to use. With the formatting tools in Access, you can customize your forms to look exactly the way you want. In this lesson, you will learn how to add command buttons, modify form layouts, add logos and other images, and change form colors and fonts. Throughout this tutorial, we will be using a sample database. If you would like to follow along, you'll need to download our Access 2016 sample database. You will need to have Access 2016 installed on your computer in order to open the example. Watch the video below to learn more about formatting forms in Access. FORMATTING FORMS Access offers several options that let you make your forms look exactly the way you want. While some of these options-like command buttons-are unique to forms, others may be familiar to you. COMMAND BUTTONS If you want to create a way for users of your form to quickly perform specific actions and tasks, consider adding command buttons. When you create a command button, you specify an action for it to carry out when clicked. By including commands for common tasks right in your form, you're making the form easier to use. Access offers many different types of command buttons, but they can be divided into a few main categories: Record Navigation command buttons, which allow users to move among the records in your database Record Operation command buttons, which let users do things like save and print a record Form Operation command buttons, which allow users to quickly open or close a form, print the current form, and perform other actions Report Operation command buttons, which offer users a quick way to do things like preview or mail a report from the current record TO ADD A COMMAND BUTTON TO A FORM: In Form Layou

www.office.com/setup Blogs: I've been installing Office 2013 on a lot of computers lately and I've ran into quite a few problems along the way. From annoying messages like "Sorry we ran into a problem" and "Something went wrong" to slow downloads, hanging at certain percentages during the install, it's been typical Microsoft problems all along the way. If you've been trying to install Office 2013 on Windows 8 or Windows 7 and you're running into issues, I'm going to try and give you as many possible solutions as I could find. If you run into a different issue not mentioned here, feel free to post a comment and let us know. It's also worth noting that you can't install Office 2013 on Windows Vista or Windows XP, it's just not possible. You'll get an error message like: This is not a valid Win32 application or We are sorry, you couldn't install your Office product because you don't have a modern Windows operating system. You need Microsoft windows 7 (or newer) to install this product or The procedure entry point K32GetProcessImageFileNameW could not be located in the dynamic link library KERNERL32.dll Now let's talk about some of the problems that can occur when installing Office 2013 on Windows 7 and Windows 8. FIX "SOMETHING WENT WRONG" OFFICE 2013 You might get this error if a first installation stalled and you ended up starting a second installation over the first one. You might also get this error if the computer restarted for some reason before the installation was finished. In this case, you should go to the Control Panel, click on Microsoft Office 2013 or Microsoft Office 365 and click on Change. Office 2013 change - www.office.com/setup Blogs Depending on your version of Office installed, you should either see an option called Repair or Online Repair. If you have Office 365, you'll see Online Repair and then the Repair option. Office 2013 repair - www.office.com/setup Blogs If, for some reason, this fails or

The new Excel offers a rich set of charting capabilities that make creating and customizing charts simpler and more intuitive. One part of the fluid new experience is the Formatting Task pane. - www.office.com/setup Until now, precise adjustments to chart elements were made in the Format dialog box. The box sometimes obscured a portion of the chart, changes entered in the box were not visible until you closed it, and you had to select the exact element on the chart in order to see the options that were the best fit for the job. In the new Excel, the Format dialog box is replaced by the Formatting Task pane. The pane aligns neatly with the right or left side of the screen, so it's less likely to obscure the chart, and changes happen in real time, so you can immediately see how your choices affect the chart. The Formatting Task pane also offers an element selector so you can jump quickly between different elements without having to select one to modify. The new Formatting Task pane is the single source for formatting-all of the different styling options are consolidated in one place. With this single task pane, you can modify not only charts, but also shapes and text in Excel. USING THE FORMATTING TASK PANE The fastest way to open the Formatting Task pane is to double-click a chart element. You can also use the keyboard shortcut CTRL+1 while a chart element is selected. There are two other ways to open the task pane: The first way: On a chart, select an element. On the Ribbon, select the Chart Tools Format tab, then click Format Selection. - www.office.com/setup The second way: On a chart, select an element. Right-click, then select Format where is the axis, series, legend, title, or area that was selected. - www.office.com/setup Once open, the Formatting Task pane remains available until you close it. Since it always stays on the right or left side of the screen, the pane remains unobtrusive as you concentrate on other tasks. The

www.office.com/setup Blogs: Evernote and OneNote are two of our favorite tools, but both have changed substantially since we last compared these two apps-in some ways, not for the best. Here's where these two stand today. www.office.com/setup LIFEHACKER FACEOFF: ONENOTE VS. EVERNOTE Now that Microsoft OneNote is free for Mac and Windows, the price and cross-platform barriers to…Read more WHAT'S NEW IN EVERNOTE In the last year, Evernote introduced a new pricing plan, redesigned its webapp, and added new features for its Android and iOS apps. THE FREE PLAN LOSES A FEATURE, BUT NOW THERE'S A MORE AFFORDABLE PAID PLAN Let's talk price first with Evernote, since it's the biggest change in the last year. The free plan no longer lets you email notes to Evernote, something most users enjoyed and used often prior to that change. Although you can get around this limitation with an IFTTT recipe, you won't get the full flexibility of Evernote's email-to-notes feature, such as specifying your destination notebook in the email subject line. So that's a bummer. On the positive side, however, Evernote introduced a new, more affordable paid plan called Evernote Plus. For $25 a year, you get offline notebooks for Evernote's mobile apps and the ability to lock the app on your phone with a PIN. Both of these used to require Evernote's Premium plan, which used to cost $45 a year. Finally, Evernote's Premium plan now costs $50 a year. But in return for those five extra bucks, you get larger upload limits: 10GB a month, instead of the previous 4GB data cap. With Evernote Premium, you can search attachments, scan business cards, view previous note versions, annotate PDFs, and use the new note presentation mode. EVERNOTE'S USER INTERFACE KEEPS EVOLVING www.office.com/setup Last year, Evernote took its redesigned, minimalist web client out of beta. Though slicker and easier on the eyes, the makeover also made the webapp less functional. You can't order

www.office.com/setup Blogs: While you can always enter data directly into database tables, you might find it easier to use forms. Forms ensure you're entering the right data in the right location and format. This can help keep your database accurate and consistent. This lesson will address the benefits of using forms in a database. You will review examples of different forms and form components. Finally, you will learn how to use forms to enter new records and view and edit existing ones. Throughout this tutorial, we will be using a sample database. If you would like to follow along, you'll need to download our Access 2016 sample database. You will need to have Access 2016 installed on your computer in order to open the example. Watch the video below to learn more about working with forms in Access. WHY USE FORMS? Many of us fill out forms so often that we hardly notice when we're asked to use them. Forms are so popular because they're useful to the person asking for the information and to the person providing it. They are a way of requiring information in a specific format, which means the person filling out the form knows exactly which information to include and where to put it. Illustration of a paper form - www.office.com/setup This is just as true of forms in Access. When you enter information into a form in Access, the data goes exactly where it's supposed to go: into one or more related tables. While entering data into simple tables is fairly straightforward, data entry becomes more complicated as you start populating tables with records from elsewhere in the database. For instance, the orders table in a bakery's database might link to information on customers, products, and prices drawn from related tables. For example, in the Orders Table below the Customer ID field is linked to the Customers table. The Customer ID field links to the Customers table - www.office.com/setup In fact, in order to see the entire order you would also have to look at the

WWW.OFFICE.COM/SETUP BLOGS: INTRODUCTION www.office.com/setup Blogs: While you can always enter data directly into database tables, you might find it easier to use forms. Forms ensure you're entering the right data in the right location and format. This can help keep your database accurate and consistent. This lesson will address the benefits of using forms in a database. You will review examples of different forms and form components. Finally, you will learn how to use forms to enter new records and view and edit existing ones. Throughout this tutorial, we will be using a sample database. If you would like to follow along, you'll need to download our Access 2016 sample database. You will need to have Access 2016 installed on your computer in order to open the example. Watch the video below to learn more about working with forms in Access. WHY USE FORMS? Many of us fill out forms so often that we hardly notice when we're asked to use them. Forms are so popular because they're useful to the person asking for the information and to the person providing it. They are a way of requiring information in a specific format, which means the person filling out the form knows exactly which information to include and where to put it. Illustration of a paper form - www.office.com/setup This is just as true of forms in Access. When you enter information into a form in Access, the data goes exactly where it's supposed to go: into one or more related tables. While entering data into simple tables is fairly straightforward, data entry becomes more complicated as you start populating tables with records from elsewhere in the database. For instance, the orders table in a bakery's database might link to information on customers, products, and prices drawn from related tables. For example, in the Orders Table below the Customer ID field is linked to the Customers table. The Customer ID field links to the Customers table - www.office.com/setup In fact, in order to see the entire

www.office.com/setup Blogs: Last week, Outlook for Mac released two highly requested features designed to help you get more done, quickly. First, we added support for the Touch Bar for MacBook Pro users. Through the Touch Bar, we intelligently put the most common inbox, formatting and view commands at your fingertips-all based on what you're doing in Outlook. Additionally, we're bringing your favorite apps to your inbox with add-ins for Outlook for Mac. Whether it's translating emails on the fly or updating your notes or project board, you will now be able to accomplish all this and more right from your inbox. These add-ins are also available across Outlook for Windows, iOS and the web, so your favorite apps are always there to help you accomplish tasks quickly. Here's a look at what's new! INTUITIVE COMMANDS AT YOUR FINGERTIPS WITH TOUCH BAR SUPPORT IN OUTLOOK FOR MAC The Touch Bar in Outlook intelligently provides quick access to the most commonly used commands as you work on email and manage your calendar. When composing a new mail or meeting request, the Touch Bar displays the common formatting options. When viewing your calendar, you can switch between different views. And when viewing the reminders window, you can join an online meeting with one tap on the Touch Bar. www.office.com/setup Support for Touch Bar in Outlook for Mac is available to all Office 365 subscribers, as well as all Office 2016 for Mac customers. ACCOMPLISH TASKS QUICKLY WITH NEW ADD-INS Add-ins bring your favorite apps right inside Outlook, so you can accomplish tasks quickly without needing to switch back and forth between email and other apps. Last year, we announced the rollout of add-ins to Outlook 2016 for Mac in Office Insider. We are now making add-ins available to all Outlook 2016 for Mac customers who have Exchange 2013 Service Pack 1 or higher, or Office 365 or Outlook.com mailboxes. Use these add-ins to translate emails on the fly, edit a record in your CRM s

www.office.com/setup Blogs: Last week, Outlook for Mac released two highly requested features designed to help you get more done, quickly. First, we added support for the Touch Bar for MacBook Pro users. Through the Touch Bar, we intelligently put the most common inbox, formatting and view commands at your fingertips-all based on what you're doing in Outlook. Additionally, we're bringing your favorite apps to your inbox with add-ins for Outlook for Mac. Whether it's translating emails on the fly or updating your notes or project board, you will now be able to accomplish all this and more right from your inbox. These add-ins are also available across Outlook for Windows, iOS and the web, so your favorite apps are always there to help you accomplish tasks quickly. Here's a look at what's new! INTUITIVE COMMANDS AT YOUR FINGERTIPS WITH TOUCH BAR SUPPORT IN OUTLOOK FOR MAC The Touch Bar in Outlook intelligently provides quick access to the most commonly used commands as you work on email and manage your calendar. When composing a new mail or meeting request, the Touch Bar displays the common formatting options. When viewing your calendar, you can switch between different views. And when viewing the reminders window, you can join an online meeting with one tap on the Touch Bar. www.office.com/setup Support for Touch Bar in Outlook for Mac is available to all Office 365 subscribers, as well as all Office 2016 for Mac customers. ACCOMPLISH TASKS QUICKLY WITH NEW ADD-INS Add-ins bring your favorite apps right inside Outlook, so you can accomplish tasks quickly without needing to switch back and forth between email and other apps. Last year, we announced the rollout of add-ins to Outlook 2016 for Mac in Office Insider. We are now making add-ins available to all Outlook 2016 for Mac customers who have Exchange 2013 Service Pack 1 or higher, or Office 365 or Outlook.com mailboxes. Use these add-ins to translate emails on the fly, edit a record in your CRM s

WWW.OFFICE.COM/SETUP BLOGS: INTRODUCTION www.office.com/setup Blogs: Every PowerPoint presentation is composed of a series of slides. To begin creating a slide show, you'll need to know the basics of working with slides. You'll need to feel comfortable with tasks such as inserting a new slide, changing the layout of a slide, arranging existing slides, changing the slide view, and adding notes to a slide. Optional: Download our practice presentation. Watch the video below to learn more about slide basics in PowerPoint. UNDERSTANDING SLIDES AND SLIDE LAYOUTS When you insert a new slide, it will usually have placeholders to show you where content will be placed. Slides have different layouts for placeholders, depending on the type of information you want to include. Whenever you create a new slide, you'll need to choose a slide layout that fits your content. Different slide layouts - www.office.com/setup Placeholders can contain different types of content, including text, images, and videos. Many placeholders have thumbnail icons you can click to add specific types of content. In the example below, the slide has placeholders for the title and content. A slide with empty placeholders - www.office.com/setup TO INSERT A NEW SLIDE: Whenever you start a new presentation, it will contain one slide with the Title Slide layout. You can insert as many slides as you need from a variety of layouts. From the Home tab, click the bottom half of the New Slide command. Clicking the bottom half of the New Slide command - www.office.com/setup Choose the desired slide layout from the menu that appears. Choosing a slide layout - www.office.com/setup The new slide will appear. Click any placeholder and begin typing to add text. You can also click an icon to add other types of content, such as a picture or a chart. The new slide - - www.office.com/setup To change the layout of an existing slide, click the Layout command, then choose the desired layout. Applying a new layout to a

WWW.OFFICE.COM/SETUP BLOGS: INTRODUCTION www.office.com/setup Blogs: Every PowerPoint presentation is composed of a series of slides. To begin creating a slide show, you'll need to know the basics of working with slides. You'll need to feel comfortable with tasks such as inserting a new slide, changing the layout of a slide, arranging existing slides, changing the slide view, and adding notes to a slide. Optional: Download our practice presentation. Watch the video below to learn more about slide basics in PowerPoint. UNDERSTANDING SLIDES AND SLIDE LAYOUTS When you insert a new slide, it will usually have placeholders to show you where content will be placed. Slides have different layouts for placeholders, depending on the type of information you want to include. Whenever you create a new slide, you'll need to choose a slide layout that fits your content. Different slide layouts - www.office.com/setup Placeholders can contain different types of content, including text, images, and videos. Many placeholders have thumbnail icons you can click to add specific types of content. In the example below, the slide has placeholders for the title and content. A slide with empty placeholders - www.office.com/setup TO INSERT A NEW SLIDE: Whenever you start a new presentation, it will contain one slide with the Title Slide layout. You can insert as many slides as you need from a variety of layouts. From the Home tab, click the bottom half of the New Slide command. Clicking the bottom half of the New Slide command - www.office.com/setup Choose the desired slide layout from the menu that appears. Choosing a slide layout - www.office.com/setup The new slide will appear. Click any placeholder and begin typing to add text. You can also click an icon to add other types of content, such as a picture or a chart. The new slide - - www.office.com/setup To change the layout of an existing slide, click the Layout command, then choose the desired layout. Applying a new layout to a

www.office.com/setup Blogs: ML Gomes is getting a new PC running Windows 8, and wants to know which version of Microsoft Office is best for her needs Microsoft office - www.office.com/setup Blogs Which version of Microsoft Office is best with Windows 8? Photograph: Justin Sullivan/Getty Images Which version of Microsoft Office should I use on Windows 8? I am buying a new laptop and need to use Outlook. ML Gomes Microsoft usually brings out new versions of Office to match new versions of Windows, and Windows 8 is no exception. The new Office 2013 is designed to work with Windows 8, and both have a similar modern styling that puts the emphasis on your content rather than Microsoft's software. Also, both are designed to work with cloud (online) services, particularly Microsoft's SkyDrive. However, other things have changed now that Microsoft is not a software company but a cloud-based "devices and services company". As chief executive Steve Ballmer said last year, this "impacts how we run the company, how we develop new experiences, and how we take products to market for both consumers and businesses." Under the old system, you could buy a copy of Microsoft Office on DVD, and use it without an internet connection. Under the new system, you buy a Product Key, which is 25 alphanumeric characters long. Entering the code online enables you to download your copy of Office, or activate a free trial version pre-installed on your new PC. FREE OFFICE WEB APPS The good news is that under the new system, most home users don't need to pay anything for Microsoft Office: they can use the free, cloud-based service in the form of Microsoft Office web apps. Sign up for an email address at Outlook.com, and you get free web-based email, a contacts book (People), a calendar, and 7GB of online storage in SkyDrive. (Outlook.com has replaced Hotmail, so you can use a Hotmail address, if you already have one.) Log on, click SkyDrive, and you can create and edit files in the four main Of

www.office.com/setup Blogs: Microsoft Word is an essential tool for any individual in today's digital age. Whether you are a working professional, a diligent student or an active retiree, proficiency in Microsoft Word is a vital skill1 that is useful for both complex business requirements as well as basic day-to-day purposes. Not only is Microsoft Word a flexible tool that allows you to achieve many of your digital document needs, it is also one of the most user- friendly applications from the Microsoft Office suite. Below are 10 MS Word features that you should be using at work, school or home but likely aren't. 1. SMART ART The Office 2007 and Office 2010 applications share very similar features for working with a range of graphics including pictures, Clip Art, Shapes, diagrams and Charts. It's easy to confuse SmartArt with the similarly named WordArt. Where WordArt just allows you to display text using a wide variety of different formats and effects, SmartArt is a comprehensive and flexible business diagram tool that greatly improves upon the 'Diagram Gallery' feature found in previous versions of Office. Smart Art screen shot 2 - www.office.com/setup The great thing about SmartArt is the ability to swap between different diagrams, even diagrams from other categories, without losing the information that you have already entered. From the selection available, use whichever SmartArt is appropriate to give your document that little bit extra charm. 2. TURN DATA INTO VISUAL CHARTS Charts are created using the same chart 'engine' that Excel uses. Accordingly, as your chart is created, another window will appear containing the Excel-generated data that the chart is based on. Use the Insert Chart button in the Illustrations group to insert a chart and select from the variety of options. The charts are versatile, just like the user-friendly data represented separately in MS Excel to smooth out the whole data-input-to-graph process. Visual Charts -

www.office.com/setup Blogs: Last year, we released Microsoft Bookings to customers in the U.S. and Canada, introducing an easy way for small businesses to schedule and manage appointments with their customers. Today, we are pleased to announce that we're beginning to roll out the service to Office 365 Business Premium subscribers worldwide. Based on your feedback, we are bringing several new features to Bookings: Add your Office 365 calendar to Bookings-Connect your Office 365 calendar to Bookings, so that the times you are busy will automatically be blocked in your public Booking page. Add buffer time before and after your appointments-Do you need prep time before or after an appointment? Adding buffer time to a service automatically blocks that time in your Booking page too. Bookings apps for your iOS and Android phone-Now you can book an appointment, contact a customer or check a staff member's appointments while away from the office. Customize your Booking page-We added more color customization options, so you can better personalize your Booking page. These new capabilities will start showing up automatically in Bookings in the coming weeks. Let's take a detailed look at what's new. ADD YOUR OFFICE 365 CALENDAR TO BOOKINGS One of the top pieces of feedback we've heard is that you want to be able to add events from your Office 365 calendar to Bookings. So, we added integration between these calendars to help you avoid booking customer meetings during the time you've set aside for personal appointments, staff and partner meetings or other aspects of running your business. To add Office 365 calendars to Bookings, click the Staff tab on the left navigation panel. On the Staff details page, select the Events on Office 365 calendar affect availability checkbox. www.office.com/setup Add Office 365 calendar events to Bookings. Once you activate this option, the system automatically blocks busy times on the Bookings calendar and on the self-ser

Forms are the cornerstone of business applications, and plenty of options exist to create a form in SharePoint. Which one you use will depend on your needs, technical skill and the version of SharePoint you are using. In this article we'll explore seven ways to build forms in SharePoint along with some of the pros and cons of each. All these options will be storing the data in an existing SharePoint list. SHAREPOINT LISTS Default forms are available for any SharePoint list. Create a list and you have a corresponding form to add and modify items. Options are available to organize the order of fields, format them, validate input, add basic calculations and attach files. There are also more advanced options such as limiting permissions to item owners and enabling workflows. You can modify all of these under List Settings for the list. These generic SharePoint forms are a good choice for simple applications that don't have too many columns or records and that only require basic functionality. Lists also offer a data sheet view to edit a limited set of columns, much like a spreadsheet. What you see is what you get with these basic forms. If you need to break fields up into multiple tabs, or perhaps have business logic run on them in real time, you'll need to keep on reading. And although theoretically a list can store millions of items, you can only access up to 5,000 items in any view (in reality the numbers are far lower before performance degrades considerably). Basic Sharepoint list form - www.office.com/setup SHAREPOINT DESIGNER Creating a custom form in SharePoint Designer is relatively easy. You take an existing SharePoint list and use Designer to create a new .aspx page which renders and controls the form. There are files used by a list to create forms, one each to add, edit and view. These are located in the same folder as their associated SharePoint list. With Designer you can show or hide fields based on certain criteria, change the layout, use va

This post is brought to you by Seayoung Rhee, Product Marketing Manager in the SharePoint Product Marketing Group. Reliable business intelligence and insight are key to a thriving business. Excel, SharePoint and Office 365 make business intelligence (BI) in the new Office more accessible to everyone across an organization as part of their everyday work. New and enhanced features in familiar tools such as Excel empower everyone in a business to easily explore, model, analyze, and visualize data from various sources. With SharePoint, users of all levels can collaboratively develop and share insights through dashboards and scorecards, and this experience continues seamlessly in the cloud with Office 365. For corporate environments, these features are further enhanced by SQL Server for higher levels of performance and scalability both on-premises and in the cloud with BI Azure. Ultimately with Microsoft BI, anyone in the organization can develop the insights that help drive new discoveries and make better, more informed decisions. EXPLORE YOUR DATA PowerPivot was a popular add-in to Excel 2010, allowing users to create large data models with hundreds of millions of rows in Excel. This feature is now natively embedded in Excel to reduce the hassle of downloads and installation. PowerPivot is also supported in SharePoint with SQL Server Analysis Services where the workbooks with PowerPivot models can be shared broadly across the organization. New features like Quick Explore aid users in navigating their data, and Quick Analysis provides previews of their charts, graphs, and scorecards. Users can: Combine and analyze large datasets with PowerPivot Summarize data and discover trends with Quick Explore Instantly preview charts and pivot tables with Quick Analysis www.office.com/setup VISUALIZE YOUR INSIGHTS Introduced with SQL Server 2012, Power View provided a canvas to create visual dashboards in SharePoint. Now this feature is embedded into Excel and SharePoint so