Group items tagged

When FHI 360 wanted to move to cloud-based business productivity services, the organization decided to implement a Microsoft cloud-based solution. We recently spoke to Douglas Wilkins, Director of IT Infrastructure at FHI 360, to learn how the company is benefiting: FHI360 logoQ: Please tell us about FHI 360. Douglas Wilkins: FHI 360 is a nonprofit human development organization dedicated to improving lives in lasting ways by advancing integrated, locally driven solutions. Our staff includes experts in health, education, nutrition, environment, economic development, civil society, gender equality, youth, research, technology, communication, and social marketing-creating a unique mix of capabilities to address today's interrelated development challenges. FHI 360 serves more than 60 countries and all US states and territories. Q: Why did you want to move to cloud-based services for messaging and collaboration? Wilkins: We had a diverse IT infrastructure. Employees in the US had different IT toolsets and Internet access than staff in countries like Mozambique. Subscribing employees to a single, cloud-based solution was the most expedient way to ensure that everyone had the same IT tools, to work efficiently regardless of location. Migrating our communication and collaboration technologies to the cloud reduced much of the time required by our IT staff to manage divergent IT infrastructures and connectivity options found around the world. Q: What criteria did you use to select Microsoft as your vendor for cloud-based business productivity services? Wilkins: We wanted a vendor that demonstrated a real interest in our mission and goals, and that offered online business productivity tools tailored for the enterprise space. The capabilities of the Microsoft Services Consulting team, and the work of Intellinet, the partner Microsoft introduced us to, provided us with that. We migrated our 4,300 staff members around the world from diverse platforms to a Microsoft Offi

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

Most people know that you can create PowerPoint presentations with pictures, music, images, web content, and text, but one little known trick is the ability to save PowerPoint presentations as videos. PowerPoint presentations have been a long time favorite for use in business and academic presentations all over the world. They are highly versatile and offer a wide variety of features that you can use to enhance them. In order to save your PowerPoint as a video you will first need to create a presentation or download the sample we used for this tutorial. Once you have the document open, you will need to save it as a video. Begin by pressing "File." sshot-1 - www.office.com/setup Instead of following the logical train of thought and opening the "Save" section, you will need to click on "Export," then click on "Create a video." sshot-2 - www.office.com/setup Once you do this, you will see the "Create a Video" option. This will offer a few options in the form of two drop-down menus and a time value box. sshot-3 - www.office.com/setup The first drop-down box is where you will choose the quality of your exported video. These three options will also determine the size of your exported video file. For the purposes of this example, we will choose the second option to reduce the size of the video without compromising too much video quality. sshot-4 - www.office.com/setup The second drop-down menu allows you to include or exclude any timings or narrations that you inserted on your PowerPoint presentation. Since the sample document has no timings or narrations, we will leave this as is. The "Use Recorded Timings and Narrations" will be unavailable if you don't have any of them in your presentation. sshot-5 - www.office.com/setup The time value box is where you can edit the amount of time that your slides will appear in the video. The default time is set at 5 seconds. For this tutorial, we will set it to 3 seconds. Lastly, you need

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: Microsoft Office www.office.com/setup Blogs: Windows 10 has grabbed the attention of social media and customers alike more so because it is a crucial operating system for Microsoft after the debacle of Windows 8 and a not so great reception for Windows 8.1. But, Microsoft has another major product on their cards now, Office, which enhances the Windows productivity of five major products into a system of applications. With Office 2016, Microsoft plans to build from scratch, a mobile and cloud first approach which is customer centric and doesn't only focus on web compared to Office 365 and 2013. Office 2016 has recently been launched on September 22, 2015. www.office.com/setup The Cost factor The first and the most important thing we look at during major software products and updates is the price tag that comes along with it as there are so multiple updates for major software and it is not feasible to go through each and every revision. The all new Office 2016 suite is free for customers on mobile and tablets (conditions apply) and pretty cheap at $145 for "Office Home & Student 2016" and the RRP version of the same is priced at $165, along with subscription version of the suite (Office 365 Personal) at about $70 per year. Built for collaboration Office suite has changed how businesses operate and more focus is laid on connectivity and collaboration of projects. So, the latest offering from Microsoft, Office 2016 is emphasized on collaborations among spread out team members who may never work in the same office environment, but easily enhance productivity by accomplishing a major task that took a week to get it done. Touch centric user interface If you have used the Office for Windows 10, it is quite evident that Microsoft has given a universal app style for the apps and a touch friendly UI which is more familiar to the iPad owners. For instance, in Word, Microsoft lays focus on providing touch friendly controls for ease of

Today's post was written by Jacob Guttman, IT Manager, Menchies It's hard to believe it when you look at our rapid growth, but Menchies is still a very young company. We were founded in 2007 with a single store in Valley Village, California. Now, we have more than 300 franchise locations around the world. Maintaining connections between Menchies headquarters, the franchise community, and our guests is critical to our success. In the past, we used hosted services for email, collaboration, and document management. And we used a separate, Java-based application for instant messaging. One of the most persistent challenges I faced was trying to support our company's growth with a set of applications that weren't tightly linked together and that didn't fit the day-to-day work needs of our employees. An increasing number of our employees want to be able to access email and other applications on a range of different devices, including their smartphone or tablet. Ultimately, they want to be able to connect with colleagues and seamlessly move information between applications without having to think much about the underlying technology. When we started looking at moving to a new productivity and collaboration solution, the major factors influencing our decision were ease of use, anywhere access, simplified administration, and cost-effective scalability. As we took a closer look at Microsoft Office 365, it was the obvious choice. And, with help from our partner Cal Net Technology Group, we were able to make the switch to Office 365 quickly and easily. With Office 365, we get online access to all of the capabilities we need-email, calendaring, document management, and unified communications-all rolled into one solution. And it automatically works together with the Microsoft Office tools that our employees use every day. One great example of how Office 365 supports the business needs of Menchies and fits the way our people like to work is through our use of Micro

As announced earlier today, over the next few days we are releasing an update to Microsoft account. For people who use Outlook.com, this includes a number of new features such as two-step verification, the ability to sign in with an alias and new international domains for your email address. OPTIONAL TWO-STEP VERIFICATION HELPS KEEP YOU MORE SECURE You can now choose to enable two-step verification for your entire account. Two-step verification is when we ask you for two pieces of information when you sign in to your account-your password plus a code sent to a phone or email that you gave us as security info. Many of you have asked for this and we're delighted to be able to offer this capability. Two-step verification is a great way to add extra protection to your account. Once you've enabled two-step verification, even if a criminal gets your password (for example, through malware on a friend's machine that you used, or if you use the same password for another service that gets breached) they can't access your account. You can read more about two-step verification here, or just start setting it up at https://account.live.com/proofs/Manage -it only takes a few minutes. SIGN IN WITH ANY ALIAS ON YOUR ACCOUNT We've heard from a lot of you that you love using Outlook.com but you wish you had more flexibility signing in. Many of you have added an email alias to your account, but you can't use the alias to sign in to your account. Previously the only option was to permanently rename your account, which is a hassle and requires you to reset certain devices. With this release, you can now sign in with any alias that has been added to your account. We've also simplified the experience of adding and managing aliases, with better advice on when you should add an alias vs. renaming your primary alias.

While we are lucky enough to work with extremely innovative clients that are eager to embrace the latest technology, we always advise them not to adopt the latest version of software until after the kinks are worked out. For a consumer it's not a big deal to be test driving new features and experimenting with the latest version. For a business user, if there's a bit of a learning curve, buggy features or errors that make an application crash, it can be a huge detriment to productivity. That's why we take a lot of time testing out new applications and operating systems before we encourage our clients to adopt them. You may have read that Microsoft recently unveiled Office 2016. We spent some time with it and have some mixed feedback for our business users. Here's the good, bad and the ugly surrounding the Office 2016 suite: The Good: Built to make business better. Word is probably our favorite when it comes to the new suite of products. While there has been minimal change to formatting and structure - the overall design has definitely gotten a facelift. We're all about function, though and when it comes to function we see definite improvements. Word has many more templates. This allows businesses to refine their documents and be more professional without having to go online and download templates to use inside Word. There are also some pretty awesome co-authoring features that we wrote about in this blog. Attachments in Outlook reference recent documents. This is a great feature since it's available on any device that you use Office on. You can easily attach documents in e-mails in Outlook or reference them in an e-mail on your phone. This is really valuable for mobile users or users that work from more than one machine. (Which, lets face is, 90% of the workforce these days does.) OneDrive is also attempting to make its way into the life of business users by making sharing documents, collaborating on documents and authoring documents across devices a l

www.office.com/setup Blogs: Whenever you use the Internet, you use hyperlinks to navigate from one webpage to another. If you want to include a web address or email address in your PowerPoint presentation, you can choose to format it as a hyperlink so a person can easily click it. It's also possible to link to files and other slides within a presentation. Optional: Download our practice presentation. Watch the video below to learn more about inserting hyperlinks in PowerPoint. ABOUT HYPERLINKS Hyperlinks have two basic parts: the address of the webpage, email address, or other location they are linking to, and the display text (which can also be a picture or a shape). For example, the address could be http://www.youtube.com, and YouTube could be the display text. In some cases, the display text might be the same as the address. When you're creating a hyperlink in PowerPoint, you'll be able to choose both the address and the display text or image. TO INSERT A HYPERLINK: Select the image or text you want to make a hyperlink. Right-click the selected text or image, then click Hyperlink. Alternatively, you can go to the Insert tab and click the Hyperlink command. - www.office.com/setup The Insert Hyperlink dialog box will open. - www.office.com/setup If you selected text, the words will appear in the Text to display field at the top. You can change this text if you want. Type the address you want to link to in the Address field. Click OK. The text or image you selected will now be a hyperlink to the web address. - www.office.com/setup TO INSERT A HYPERLINK TO AN EMAIL ADDRESS: Right-click the selected text or image, then click Hyperlink. The Insert Hyperlink dialog box will open. On the left side of the dialog box, click Email Address. - www.office.com/setup Type the email address you want to connect to in the Email Address box, then click OK. - www.office.com/setup PowerPoint often recognizes email and web addresses as you type and will format them as hyperlin

Let's say you really like the style of a theme, but you'd like to experiment with different color schemes. That's not a problem: You can mix and match colors, fonts, and effects to create a unique look for your presentation. If it still doesn't look exactly right, you can customize the theme any way you want. If you're new to PowerPoint, you may want to review our lesson on Applying Themes to learn the basics of using themes. Optional: Download our practice presentation. Watch the video to learn more about modifying themes in PowerPoint. TO SELECT NEW THEME COLORS: If you don't like the colors of a particular theme, it's easy to apply new theme colors; everything else about the theme will remain unchanged. From the Design tab, click the drop-down arrow in the Variants group and select Colors. - www.office.com/setup Blogs Select the desired theme colors. The presentation will update to show the new theme colors. - www.office.com/setup Blogs TO CUSTOMIZE COLORS: Sometimes you might not like every color included in a set of theme colors. It's easy to change some or all of the colors to suit your needs. From the Design tab, click the drop-down arrow in the Variants group. Select Colors, then click Customize Colors. - www.office.com/setup Blogs A dialog box will appear with the 12 current theme colors. To edit a color, click the drop-down arrow and select a different color. You may need to click More Colors to find the exact color you want. - www.office.com/setup Blogs In the Name: field, type the desired name for the theme colors, then click Save. - www.office.com/setup Blogs The presentation will update to show the new custom theme colors. With some presentations, you may not notice a significant difference when changing the theme colors. For example, a textured background will not change when theme colors are changed. When trying different theme colors, it's best to select a slide that uses several colors to see how the new theme colors will affect your prese

WWW.OFFICE.COM/SETUP BLOGS: FREE RESOURCES FOR LEARNING OFFICE FOR MAC www.office.com/setup Blogs: Our Microsoft Office tutorials are some of the most popular courses we offer. These tutorials, however, are designed for those using Office on computers with Microsoft Windows, so perhaps it's no surprise that we frequently hear from learners who want to know why we don't offer tutorials on Office for Mac. While Office for Mac shares a lot of functionality with the Windows version, its interface and design are different enough that we would need to create entirely new courses. Image of Office for Mac 2011 Product Box - www.office.com/setup With our small staff, it would be a real challenge to produce the same kind of detailed tutorials for the Mac-friendly Office we provide for the Windows version. We may consider adding some type of Office for Mac tutorial in the future, but for now we'd like to share a number of excellent-and mostly free!-resources that can help you learn how to use Office for Mac. Office 2016 for Mac is very similar to the Windows version. So if you have Office 2016 for Mac, check out our Office 2016 tutorial. FREE OFFICE FOR MAC TUTORIALS If you're using Office for Mac, the Office for Mac team has provided great series of tutorials and how-to guides to help you get started and even learn advanced skills: If you're just getting started, check out the Office 2016 for Mac Quick Start Guides, which provide an overview of each Office for Mac product. If you're looking for even more, the Office for Mac Blog and YouTube channel provide the latest news and step-by-step videos to guide you through. If you're using an earlier version of Office for Mac, check out the video below from the Office for Mac team on the Word 2011 Interface. Of course, you can also find help on the Microsoft Office for Mac Support page from the Office community and support team. If you need additional support, you might consider purchasing a subscription to Lynda.com to

WWW.OFFICE.COM/SETUP BLOGS: HOW TO CREATE FORMS IN WORD www.office.com/setup Blogs: If you've ever used Microsoft Word, you've probably spent a lot of time customizing different options to get your document to look exactly the way you want. But have you ever created a document for other people to use? For example, let's say you're organizing a field trip and want everyone to send in their permission forms electronically. To simplify the process, you could create a form in Microsoft Word. A form allows you to create placeholders for different types of information, such as text, dates, yes-no questions, and so on. This makes it easier for everyone to know what type of information to include, and it also helps ensure all of the information is formatted the same way. We'll use Word 2013 to show you how to create a form, but this should work the same way for Word 2010 or Word 2007. You can also download our example file if you'd like to follow along. STEP 1: TURN ON THE DEVELOPER TAB Before you create form elements in a document, you'll need to activate the Developer tab on the Ribbon. To do this, click File > Options to access the Word Options dialog box. Select Customize Ribbon, then click the check box for the Developer tab. Screenshot of Microsoft Word - www.office.com/setup The Developer tab will appear on the Ribbon. Screenshot of Microsoft Word - www.office.com/setup STEP 2: ADD CONTENT CONTROLS Now you're ready to add the different parts of the form, which Word calls content control fields. To add a content control field, place your cursor in the desired location, then choose a field from the Controls group on the Developer tab. You can hover your mouse over the fields to see the different options. In this example, we're adding a text field so users can type their first names. Screenshot of Microsoft Word - www.office.com/setup The content control field will appear in the document. Screenshot of Microsoft Word - www.office.com/setup You can add severa

www.office.com/setup Blogs: We're moving deeper into the modern "walled garden" of digital life. Generally speaking, you choose the garden you like best - be it Apple, Google or Microsoft - and the more time and money you invest, the more painful it is to leave that ecosystem. Similarly, many people pick Evernote or Microsoft OneNote as their repository of choice for digital scraps, doodlings and scanned documents. Then they usually stick with that choice, because it's not easy to toggle between them or switch. About a year ago, I chose Evernote over OneNote, and I started amassing my own digital archive. At the time, Evernote's Mac software was far superior to OneNote's Mac app. However, Microsoft has continually upgraded OneNote for Mac and iOS, and today it's a legitimate Evernote rival; if I were facing the Mac Evernote versus Mac OneNote decision today, it would be a different situation. If you're a Windows user, the choice is even more challenging, because the OneNote 2013 Windows desktop app has valuable features that aren't available in Evernote or OneNote for Mac. To help you decide between these two notebook tools, I've come up with seven things OneNote does that Evernote can't. Of course, this is only one side of the story. For the flip side, read "6 things Evernote does that OneNote can't." 1) ONENOTE IS A DESIGN-FRIENDLY, FREEFORM CANVAS Each OneNote note is a blank canvas, every element its own movable container. If you have a stylus, you can draw anywhere within the note, and you can insert handwriting, blocks of text, images or any other element wherever you want. onenote freeform canvas - www.office.com/setup OneNote 2013 for Windows also lets you customize your notes. For example, you can change the "paper" color, add rule or grid lines, change the dimensions of notes, create new page templates or apply existing ones, and apply text styles. Other versions of OneNote, including the iPad and Mac apps, offer some but not all, of these capab

With Google Apps and Office 365 revolutionizing the way people work, you may feel that Microsoft Office is quickly becoming a dated product that will soon be packed away to the back of the closet. But with the 2016 version set to launch in autumn of this year, Microsoft is looking to change your mind. Now they're adapting their classic Office package for today's modern workforce. Here are four of the new features that are reinventing the way you look at your Office applications. CLOUD FOCUS FOR OUTLOOK ATTACHMENTS Microsoft knows that sharing attachments amongst co-workers and teams can be a hassle. With many collaborators still sharing documents and files the old fashioned way - attaching it to an email and then sending to others - it's easy for users to get confused and send an incorrect or outdated version. To solve this problem, Microsoft is gently nudging us to use the cloud. Now when you add an attachment to an email, you're now asked if you'd also like to share a link to a file on your OneDrive, OneDrive for Business or SharePoint account. SHOWCASING EASY WAYS TO USE OFFICE BETTER If you're like most people, you probably aren't using Office to its full potential. And who can blame you? Between Word, Excel, PowerPoint and more, there are literally hundreds of features and tools you can use - if only you had the time to discover them all. To help you get the most out of Office, Microsoft has now added a Tell Me box in the top center of your program title bar. This tool gives you an easy way to get questions answered. For example, if you want to project your desktop screen to a second monitor or create a graph in Excel, simply type your question into the Tell Me box and Microsoft will find the answers that most closely fit your search criteria. SWAY Look out PowerPoint, here comes Sway - the new, hipper Office application that makes creating fluid, stylish presentations easy. With Sway, you can now gather content from various source

WWW.OFFICE.COM/SETUP BLOGS: CHANGING YOUR DEFAULT SETTINGS IN WORD www.office.com/setup Blogs: There may be certain settings in Word that get on your nerves, like default settings that you find yourself changing over and over-the paragraph spacing, the font size-each time you start a new document. Maybe you prefer a different font style instead of the default Calibri. Maybe you like all of your documents to have narrower margins so you can fit more information on the page. Maybe you even work for a company that has very specific document standards-regarding the color scheme or layout-and you're tired of changing these settings every time. Luckily, you can customize many of the default settings in Word. You just have to know where to look. USING SET AS DEFAULT You can't change the default settings for everything in Word, but there are certain tools and features that give you this option. Popular examples include: Font Paragraph spacing Line spacing Margins Page orientation To find out if you can customize the default settings for a certain element, look for an arrow in the bottom-right corner of the group. This will open a dialog box where you can access all of the basic settings, plus some more advanced ones that you won't find on the Ribbon. Screenshot of Microsoft Word - www.office.com/setup Next, look for a button near the bottom of the dialog box that says Set as Default. All you have to do is click this button, and Word will assign your current settings-like the font or font size you've chosen-as the new default for this particular element. Screenshot of Microsoft Word - www.office.com/setup Finally, Word will ask whether you want to set this as the default for this document only, or for all documents based on the Normal template (in other words, all documents in the future). Choose the second option, and Word will use these settings from now on. Screenshot of Microsoft Word - www.office.com/setup If you don't have a lot of experience with

Inserting images in a word file exemplifies the true meaning of the word document. It helps the document to be more artistic as it includes images and drawings. With the help of images, the word document can be understood in a better way.Whenever we wish to insert a picture/image in a word document, we can copy-paste the image from any directory to the word file but inserting through the conventional method must be preferred. In this article, we'll follow certain steps on how to insert and move a picture from your computer in Microsoft Word 2016: Step 1: Type "word 2016" in the Windows Search Bar located next to the Start icon. Click on the first option provided. insert-picture-office-2016-1-min - www.office.com/setup Step 2: Click on "Insert" tab located at the top left corner of the "Word" window. After clicking, a ribbon toolbar will appear providing numerous options like paging options, tables, illustrations, symbols etc. Click on "Pictures". insert-picture-office-2016-2-min - www.office.com/setup Step 3: After clicking, a window will open on your desktop asking you to insert any picture as per your choice. To select your desired picture, click on it & click on the "Insert" button located at the bottom of the window. You can also select multiple pictures at once. For instance, we have selected "birthday-candles". insert-picture-office-2016-3-min - www.office.com/setup Step 4: Now, the image is placed on the word page. You can reduce/enlarge the size of the image by clicking on the "circle" icon located at all corners of the image. Dragging these icons "towards" & "away" from the image will make it "smaller" & "larger" respectively. You can also rotate the image 360° by using the "rotate" icon located at the top of the image. Click on the icon & drag the cursor in your desired direction to rotate the image. insert-picture-office-2016-4-min - www.office.com/setup Step 4: If you need different

WWW.OFFICE.COM/SETUP BLOGS: SIMPLE RULES FOR BETTER POWERPOINT PRESENTATIONS www.office.com/setup Blogs: Have you ever given a PowerPoint presentation and noticed that something about it just seemed a little … off? If you're unfamiliar with basic PowerPoint design principles, it can be difficult to create a slide show that presents your information in the best light. Poorly designed presentations can leave an audience feeling confused, bored, and even irritated. Review these tips on making your next presentation more engaging. DON'T READ YOUR PRESENTATION STRAIGHT FROM THE SLIDES If your audience can both read and hear, it's a waste of time for you to simply read your slides aloud. Your audience will zone out and stop listening to what you're saying, which means they won't hear any extra information you include. Instead of typing out your entire presentation, include only main ideas, keywords, and talking points in your slide show text. Engage your audience by sharing the details out loud. FOLLOW THE 5/5/5 RULE To keep your audience from feeling overwhelmed, you should keep the text on each slide short and to the point. Some experts suggest using the 5/5/5 rule: no more than five words per line of text, five lines of text per slide, or five text-heavy slides in a row. Screenshot of Microsoft PowerPoint DON'T FORGET YOUR AUDIENCE Who will be watching your presentation? The same goofy effects and funny clip art that would entertain a classroom full of middle-school students might make you look unprofessional in front of business colleagues and clients. Humor can lighten up a presentation, but if you use it inappropriately your audience might think you don't know what you're doing. Know your audience, and tailor your presentation to their tastes and expectations. CHOOSE READABLE COLORS AND FONTS Your text should be easy to read and pleasant to look at. Large, simple fonts and theme colors are always your best bet. The best fonts and colors can va

www.office.com/setup Blogs: If you're a fan of PowerPoint, you may have heard about Microsoft's latest presentation tool, Microsoft Sway. With Sway, you can create and share presentations like never before! In today's blog, we'll give you a basic overview as to what Sway can do as well as some of our personal favorite features. Let's dive in! Sway is a free app from Microsoft Office that helps gather, format, and share reports, newsletters, web pages, and presentations on an interactive, web-based canvas that looks great on almost any screen. That's right, we said interactive! Use videos or interactive charts to engage your audience like never before. If you've ever struggled with getting your PowerPoints to look exactly right, then you'll love the design capabilities of Sway. Sway does all the formatting, themes, fonts, and more with its built-in design engine. All you have to do is put in your content and sit back and let Sway take care of the rest. You can even use the Remix! button to see automated looks in a snap. Drag and drop your favorite web content all without having to exit Sway. Get content from your social media accounts, Flickr, YouTube, Bing, and more! Creating engaging and interesting presentations has never been this easy. Trust us! www.office.com/setup Blogs One of our personal favorite features about Sway is how easy it is to share your Sway creations. Simply send a link to anyone you wish to share with and they can see your work! No need to already have Sway or Office 365, literally anyone can see a Sway presentation you share. Want to keep things more private? No problem. You can change the privacy settings for any presentation so that you can control who sees the content or who can edit the content. Sway is available in Windows 10 and can be used on iPhones and iPad as well as Microsoft products! Want to see a Sway presentation in action? Check out this Sway presentation we made to show our PowerSurveyPlus users how t

www.office.com/setup Blogs: Missing a key security signal could mean not catching a breach, but the number of security signals is increasing exponentially. It's becoming impossible to manually prioritize them. That's why Office 365 applies intelligence to help you proactively manage risk and ward off threats. Today, we're pleased to introduce several new capabilities in Office 365 that help you manage risk and stay ahead of threats: Office 365 Secure Score-A new security analytics tool that applies a score to Office 365 customers' current Office 365 security configuration. Office 365 Threat Intelligence Private Preview-Service that leverages billions of data points from the Microsoft Intelligent Security Graph to provide actionable insights to the global threat landscape and help customers stay ahead of cyber threats. Office 365 Threat Intelligence is now in private preview, with general availability planned for later this quarter. Office 365 Advanced Data Governance Preview-Applies machine learning to help customers find and retain the most important data to them while eliminating redundant, obsolete and trivial data that could cause risk if compromised. Office 365 Advanced Data Governance is now in preview, with general availability planned for later this quarter. KNOW YOUR OFFICE 365 SECURE SCORE Do you know how you'd be rated if someone were to evaluate your security configuration? To give you better visibility into your Office 365 security configuration and the security features available to you, we're pleased to introduce Secure Score-a new security analytics tool. Secure Score helps you understand your current Office 365 security configuration and shows you how implementing additional controls can further enhance your security and reduce risk.* Here's how it works: Secure Score Summary-Displays your Secure Score and provides access to view your Score Analyzer. Your Secure Score, the numerator, is the sum of the points associated wi

www.office.com/setup Blogs: Good Morning America's "Boosting Your Business" segment, sponsored by Microsoft, provides entrepreneurs and small businesses with simple advice and tools to help them grow. On March 15, Good Morning America brought in Maxie McCoy, a career expert, to give tips and tricks to help businesses across the country be more productive and collaborative. To demonstrate some of these tips, Maxie visited WeWork, the hugely successful shared-office space startup, and talked about how the WeWork Creator Awards team can work together in a new way using Microsoft Teams, a new chat-based workspace in Office 365. Maxie gave the Creator Awards team advice on aligning their vision, delegating responsibility and communicating clearly within team workspaces. She showed them how Microsoft Teams creates a secure hub for teamwork, helping them communicate and collaborate more effectively. Unique vision and unquestionable talent has made the WeWork team into what it is today. Microsoft Teams gives them a new way to work together and continue to grow. Watch the segment now: Check out Microsoft Teams to see how your team can be more productive and collaborative as well. Download and read "The Ultimate Guide to Chat-Based Tools."