Group items tagged

The concept of a 'physical office' as a small business hub of productivity is quickly being replaced by the connected 'mobile office,' which connects employees wherever they happen to be. Today's business landscape favors those who are nimble and able to adapt rapidly by collaborating on the go, sharing ideas quickly and anticipating customer needs. Luckily, small businesses today can achieve this dynamic work environment through the use of Web-based software available for both desktop and mobile platforms. Web-based software is known as 'cloud services' or as 'the cloud' for short. Today, small businesses have access to IT solutions that were previously only available to enterprises - allowing them to punch above their weight class and better compete in their industry. By taking advantage of these Web-based and mobile solutions, small businesses can effectively run their company from anywhere - even from a mobile device or tablet. Here are just a few of the ways technology can help small businesses overcome everyday business challenges: ELIMINATE THE NEED FOR A PHYSICAL OFFICE Starting a business is difficult. Many small businesses owners may not have the capital to lease office space, or they may be hiring friends and staff who aren't based in the same city. Modern cloud technology can unify small business teams, removing the need for a physical office space. WORK WHEREVER IT'S CONVENIENT Cloud services let employees set up a shared folder from a mobile device while taking the bus; create a new spreadsheet on a tablet at lunch; get a presentation from the company's shared drive and make edits from a friend's computer; or schedule a team meeting from a home computer. Office 365 can be installed on up to 5 devices, giving small businesses the ability to do more than just read documents from a mobile device, a tablet, a laptop or even a desktop* by extending the office experience to employees wherever and whenever they need to cond

Part of the thrill of working for the Office Division is the opportunity to tackle thorny business issues on behalf of our customers while providing them with a road map for the future. That may be why an interesting article caught my attention this week. In it, the author examined some of the investments Microsoft is making in the unified communications space. While I didn't agree with all of the conclusions it contained, the article certainly underscored the interest in communications and collaboration and how to make people more productive. Communicating and collaborating with others is really at the heart of what we do every day. Whether at work or at home, people have the need to make meaningful connections with one another. Compounding that need are the realities of the world we live in where instant access to information is expected, friends and coworkers are scattered across geographies and many adults are juggling multiple mobile devices. At Microsoft, we believe technology isn't the problem to these complexities, it's the answer. We're committed to providing capabilities that help people make sense of it all and to do so in a way that is intuitive, barrier free and agnostic to the devices on which we rely. We're incredibly proud of the fact that our long term-term vision for communications and collaboration not only marries the best of the cloud and the desktop, it's a holistic approach that spans "from the living room to the boardroom" placing people at the center of everything we do. Our communication and collaboration vision comes to life utilizing client and cloud assets, including Lync, Skype, Yammer, Outlook and SharePoint. These tools are enabling enterprise social capabilities, HD video conferencing and document collaboration as part of a highly secured, reliable and extensible platform. At the risk of looking geeky, I have to admit that I have a soft spot for Lync and it's comforting to know I'm not alone. More than 90% of

WWW.OFFICE.COM/SETUP BLOGS: INTRODUCTION www.office.com/setup Blogs: Indenting text adds structure to your document by allowing you to separate information. Whether you'd like to move a single line or an entire paragraph, you can use the tab selector and the horizontal ruler to set tabs and indents. Optional: Download our practice document. Watch the video below to learn more about how to use indents and tabs in Word. INDENTING TEXT In many types of documents, you may want to indent only the first line of each paragraph. This helps to visually separate paragraphs from one another. - www.office.com/setup It's also possible to indent every line except for the first line, which is known as a hanging indent. - www.office.com/setup TO INDENT USING THE TAB KEY A quick way to indent is to use the Tab key. This will create a first-line indent of 1/2 inch. Place the insertion point at the very beginning of the paragraph you want to indent. - www.office.com/setup Press the Tab key. On the Ruler, you should see the first-line indent marker move to the right by 1/2 inch. The first line of the paragraph will be indented. - www.office.com/setup If you can't see the Ruler, select the View tab, then click the check box next to the Ruler. - www.office.com/setup INDENT MARKERS In some cases, you may want to have more control over indents. Word provides indent markers that allow you to indent paragraphs to the location you want. - www.office.com/setup The indent markers are located to the left of the horizontal ruler, and they provide several indenting options: First-line indent marker adjusts the first-line indent Hanging indent marker adjusts the hanging indent Left indent marker moves both the first-line indent and hanging indent markers at the same time (this will indent all lines in a paragraph) TO INDENT USING THE INDENT MARKERS Place the insertion point anywhere in the paragraph you want to indent, or select one or more paragraphs. - www.office.com/set

A teacher would never be satisfied with her performance if she discovered that the entire back row of her classroom was unable to hear her lecture. In the world of cloud services for business, we see things the same way. With Office 365, every user counts! Google has a different approach. It starts counting downtime only after at least 5 percent of users are affected. Imagine if 100 of your 2,000 users had no access to email. Would you, as an IT professional, be satisfied with your performance? Would your business hold you accountable for your performance? The answers to these questions are clear. Calculating downtime only after 5 percent of your users cannot access email, as Google does, makes it more difficult for you to assess impact to user productivity. Google's approach doesn't help your business with meaningful performance metrics. With Office 365, every affected customer and every service counts when we calculate downtime. Downtime means the total minutes in a month during which service is unavailable, excluding scheduled downtime. For services like email, there is no scheduled downtime, an experience that our many Exchange Server customers have long been accustomed to-system maintenance while they continue to be productive in their Outlook inboxes. In addition to the way it calculates downtime, Google also combines consumer and commercial service availability when reporting the availability of Gmail. This means if you are considering Google Apps for Business, you cannot get accurate information regarding the availability of the commercial service that you need. On the other hand, Microsoft's approach to calculating downtime, which includes every user minute, helps you understand whether your users' productivity is being impacted by downtime of email. Google takes a "use at your risk" approach around Google+, Hangout and Google Voice. These services are not part of Google Apps for Business and are excluded from the SLA. Excluding these serv

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: INTRODUCTION www.office.com/setup Blogs: A chart is a tool you can use to communicate data graphically. Including a chart in a presentation allows your audience to see the meaning behind the numbers, which makes it easy to visualize comparisons and trends. Optional: Download our practice presentation for this lesson. Watch the video below to learn more about using charts in PowerPoint. TYPES OF CHARTS PowerPoint has several types of charts, allowing you to choose the one that best fits your data. In order to use charts effectively, you'll need to understand how different charts are used. Click the arrows in the slideshow below to learn more about the types of charts in PowerPoint. Slide 1 - www.office.com/setupPowerPoint has a variety of chart types, each with its own advantages. Click the arrows to see some of the different types of charts available in PowerPoint. Slide 1 - www.office.com/setup Slide 1 - www.office.com/setup Slide 1 - www.office.com/setup Slide 1 - www.office.com/setup Slide 1 - www.office.com/setup IDENTIFYING THE PARTS OF A CHART In addition to chart types, you'll need to understand how to read a chart. Charts contain several different elements-or parts-that can help you interpret data. Click the buttons in the interactive below to learn about the different parts of a chart. Book sales chart - www.office.com/setup LEGEND The legend identifies which data series each color on the chart represents. In this example, the legend identifies the different months in the chart. INSERTING CHARTS PowerPoint uses a spreadsheet as a placeholder for entering chart data, much like Excel. The process of entering data is fairly simple, but if you are unfamiliar with Excel you might want to review our Excel 2016 Cell Basics lesson. TO INSERT A CHART: Select the Insert tab, then click the Chart command in the Illustrations group. - www.office.com/setup A dialog box will appear. Select a category from the left pane, an

www.office.com/setup Blogs: PowerPoint allows you to insert a video onto a slide and play it during your presentation. This is a great way to make your presentation more engaging for your audience. You can even edit the video within PowerPoint and customize its appearance. For example, you can trim the video's length, add a fade in, and much more. Optional: Download our practice presentation. Watch the video below to learn more about inserting videos in PowerPoint. TO INSERT A VIDEO FROM A FILE: In our example, we'll insert a video from a file saved locally on our computer. If you'd like to work along with our example, right-click this link to our example video and save it to your computer. From the Insert tab, click the Video drop-down arrow, then select Video on My PC. Inserting a video from a file - www.office.com/setup Locate and select the desired video file, then click Insert. Selecting a video to insert - www.office.com/setup The video will be added to the slide. The inserted video - www.office.com/setup With the Screen Recording feature on the Insert tab, you can create a video of anything you are doing on your computer and insert it into a slide. the Screen Recording button on the Insert tab - www.office.com/setup TO INSERT AN ONLINE VIDEO: Some websites-like YouTube-allow you to embed videos into your slides. An embedded video will still be hosted on its original website, meaning the video itself won't be added to your file. Embedding can be a convenient way to reduce the file size of your presentation, but you'll also need to be connected to the Internet for the video to play. Inserting an online video - www.office.com/setup WORKING WITH VIDEOS TO PREVIEW A VIDEO: Click a video to select it. Click the Play/Pause button below the video. The video will begin playing, and the timeline next to the Play/Pause button will advance. The Play/Pause button and the timeline - www.office.com/setup To jump to a different part of the video, click anywhe

www.office.com/setup Blogs: Another tool you can use to connect to a webpage, file, email address, or slide is called an action button. Action buttons are built-in shapes you can add to a presentation and set to link to another slide, play a sound, or perform a similar action. When someone clicks or hovers over the button, the selected action will occur. Action buttons can do many of the same things as hyperlinks. Their easy-to-understand style makes them especially useful for self-running presentations at booths and kiosks. Optional: Download our practice presentation. Watch the video below to learn more about using action buttons in your presentations. INSERTING ACTION BUTTONS You can insert action buttons on one slide at a time, or you can insert an action button that will show up on every slide. The second option can be useful if you want every slide to link back to a specific slide, like the title page or table of contents. TO INSERT AN ACTION BUTTON ON ONE SLIDE: Click the Insert tab. Click the Shapes command in the Illustrations group. A drop-down menu will appear with the action buttons located at the very bottom. - www.office.com/setup Select the desired action button. Insert the button onto the slide by clicking the desired location. The Action Settings dialog box will appear. Select the Mouse Click or Mouse Over tab. Selecting the Mouse Click tab means the action button will perform its action only when clicked. Selecting the Mouse Over tab will make the action button perform its action when you move the mouse over it. - www.office.com/setup In the Action on click section, select Hyperlink to:, then click the drop-down arrow and choose an option from the menu. - www.office.com/setup Check the Play Sound box if you want a sound to play when the action button is clicked. Select a sound from the drop-down menu, or select Other sound to use a sound file on your computer. When you're done, click OK. - www.office.com/setup TO INSERT AN ACTION BUTTON ON A

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

WWW.OFFICE.COM/SETUP BLOGS: FROM USING ONENOTE FOR PROJECT MANAGEMENT TO DISCOVERING HIDDEN FEATURES IN WORD, THERE ARE TONS OF WAYS YOU CAN GET MORE OUT OF OFFICE 365. HERE'S A LOOK BACK AT THIS YEAR'S MOST POPULAR TIPS. @MENTIONS IN OUTLOOK www.office.com/setup Blogs: This is an excerpt from our post Get Someone's Attention in Outlook with @Mentions. Using the @ symbol is a quick way to draw people's attention to important things. Microsoft has rolled this handy feature into Outlook, so here's how you can use it to get people's attention in emails and also save time. (Note: This feature is only available in Outlook 2016, Outlook 2016 for Mac, Outlook on the web for Office 365 Business, Outlook.com, and Outlook on the web for Exchange Server 2016.) ONENOTE FOR PROJECT MANAGEMENT This is an excerpt from our post 5 Keys to Using OneNote for Project Management. Instead of investing in costly project management software, how about using a free program like Microsoft OneNote? OneNote digital notebooks are available on all your devices and can be used for a variety of projects. Whether you are planning a wedding, heading up an office presentation, or writing a thesis paper, OneNote bends to your needs. This post focuses on tips for the office, but personal and school projects can be managed with OneNote using many of these same key principles. HIDDEN FEATURES IN WORD This is an excerpt from our post 3 Hidden & Useful Tricks in Microsoft Word. There are lots of great hidden features tucked away in Microsoft Word that you probably don't know about. From activating research tools, to changing the page color of documents to reduce eye strain, to easily capturing screenshots, here are three tricks that you will enjoy. WORD ONLINE VS. WORD DESKTOP This is an excerpt from our post 3 Things You Can Do With Word Online That You Can't Do With Word Desktop. Word Online isn't just a simple online word processor. To get the full value of the product

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

Sometimes there is frantic need to create links in database table to web pages, files, folders, images, etc. Access 2010 provides a convenient way to link up data field values with anything to complement the database in much better way. In this post we will guide you on creating a table field having Hyperlink data type. To start off with, launch Access 2010 and navigate to Create tab and click Table. createtable1 Create Hyperlink Field In Access 2010 - www.office.com/setup It will create a new table namely Table1. Right-click newly created table and select Design View to add fields with specific Data types. table11 Create Hyperlink Field In Access 2010 - www.office.com/setup Enter an appropriate table name and start adding fields. We will be entering some generic table fields with their data types such as, ID, Name, Phone Number, Email and other Links. design view - www.office.com/setup Select Email table field and under data type options, select Hyperlink. select hyperlink - www.office.com/setup Repeat the procedure for assigning Hyperlink data field for other fields as well. hyperlink other - www.office.com/setup Now close the Design view and save the changes made. Open the database table in Datasheet view. Start filling out table fields with values. In Hyperlink assigned data fields, you will notice that on entering values it will automatically turns them into blue, indicating linked data. hyerplinks created - www.office.com/setup Now we will move to editing Hyperlinks. In Email field, highlight the email address and right-click to select Edit Hyperlink. edit hyperlink - www.office.com/setup It will instantly open Edit Hyperlink dialog. Under E-mail address box, enter the email address, and from Subject box, write the subject of the mail. Click OK. edit hyperlink 1] - www.office.com/setup Upon clicking on hyperlink, it will immediately open Outlook mail compose window, with specified email address and subject inserted. email open - www.office.co

WWW.OFFICE.COM/SETUP BLOGS: INTRODUCTION www.office.com/setup Blogs: A theme is a predefined combination of colors, fonts, and effects. Different themes also use different slide layouts. You've already been using a theme, even if you didn't know it: the default Office theme. You can choose from a variety of new themes at any time, giving your entire presentation a consistent, professional look. Optional: Download our practice presentation. Watch the video below to learn more about applying themes in PowerPoint. WHAT IS A THEME? In PowerPoint, themes give you a quick and easy way to change the design of your presentation. They control your primary color palette, basic fonts, slide layout, and other important elements. All of the elements of a theme will work well together, which means you won't have to spend as much time formatting your presentation. Each theme uses its own set of slide layouts. These layouts control the way your content is arranged, so the effect can be dramatic. In the examples below, you can see that the placeholders, fonts, and colors are different. The Frame theme and the Integral theme - www.office.com/setup If you use a unique slide layout-such as Quote with Caption or Name Card-and then switch to a theme that does not include that layout, it may give unexpected results. Every PowerPoint theme-including the default Office theme-has its own theme elements. These elements are: Theme Colors: There are 10 theme colors, along with darker and lighter variations, available from every Color menu. Theme Colors - www.office.com/setup Theme Fonts: There are two theme fonts available at the top of the Font menu under Theme Fonts. Theme Fonts - www.office.com/setup Theme Effects: These affect the preset shape styles. You can find shape styles on the Format tab whenever you select a shape or SmartArt graphic. Theme Effects - www.office.com/setup When you switch to a different theme, all of these elements will update to reflect the new them

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

www.office.com/setup Blogs: Presentations are used every day to educate, enlighten and energize. Head teachers will have to present to teachers, teachers will need to present daily to their students, and those students will have to present on many occasions throughout their education and beyond. Because of this, it is important that presentations are engaging, modern and easy to create, in order to have the impact that is intended. This tutorial in our Sway series will show you how Sway can be used to make great presentations, and how you can make the most of the easy to use features to make your presentation as interactive and informative. Recently we're been working our way through a number of Sway video tutorials, and this next offering demonstrates the ways you can use Sway to create and liven up your presentations: In education planning is key, so most educators and students will draw up a plan of their presentation before they start creating it and, now you have Sway, it has never been easier to transform your plan into fun, interactive content in just a few clicks. If you write up an outline in Word for example, just drop it into Sway and it will automatically create headings and sections based on your document. You can then update and change the formatting of the text cards by using the emphasis and accent features, which draw attention to what matters to you in your presentation. To support the messaging in your text, you can then add some helpful or exciting images to the storyline, categorising them easily with the grouping tool and using focus points to make sure you don't lose what is important. If, like many educators, you like to have visual signposts in your presentation, then you can use the images and text as headings to section your work. This will make it easier for the student navigating the presentation, and allow you to keep the flow when you are presenting. And if you like to have a brief preview of what is coming in the presentation

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."

WWW.OFFICE.COM/SETUP BLOGS: START THE SHOW INSTANTLY We've all seen too much of presenter's laptop screens, full of messy icon-strewn desktops or unread emails, as they try to start a PowerPoint presentation. Get right to it by naming the file with a .PPS (or .PPSX) file extension. That's a PowerPoint Show, and a quick double click on it goes right into the slideshow, not PowerPoint editing mode. Click Esc to exit the slideshow. www.office.com/setup Blogs: There comes a time in almost every young (or old) office worker's life where the cubicle must give way to the boardroom, or worse, to the dais. That means speaking in public, and more often than not, that speaking is usually accompanied by slides. Such presentations are ingrained in the public consciousness, from watching big-name CEOs spew speeds-and-feeds about new gadgets, to fascinating TED talks on every topic under the sun. Even teachers in the classroom give lessons in a way the old blackboard could never convey. It's fair to say that the vast majority of those presentations are created using PowerPoint, the presentation tool that's a staple of the Microsoft Office suite. The site SlideNirvana.com estimates that PowerPoint is on at least 1 billion (with a B!) computers worldwide. If even a third of them use the software, that's still the equivalent of the entire population of the United States making slide-based exhibitions. And most of them suck. Perhaps that's not quantifiable, but so many articles are written on that fact-and so many of us live through them-it's hard to argue the (power)point. Likewise, many, many articles and entire books are written on how to make effective presentations. This is not one of those stories. This collection of tips is all about the vagaries of the powerful PowerPoint software itself. It's meant for those with a grasp of the basics and beyond who are looking for that extra little goose to get the most out of the program. We hope with these tricks-some of which wi

www.office.com/setup Blogs: Microsoft Office 2016 for Windows has landed and it brings many smart new features, including co-authoring with real-time collaboration, simplified sharing, a great feature search engine called Tell Me, and much more. The Mac version of Office 2016 has actually been around for a few months already. If you have an Office 365 subscription, you can get it now for free and we show you how below.A Microsoft Office 2016 Preview: Smart & Subtle Changes A Microsoft Office 2016 Preview: Smart & Subtle ChangesOffice 2016 for Mac was just released and the Windows version will follow in the fall. We show you the new look and features of the world's most popular productivity suite. Will you upgrade?READ MORE Alternatively, you can buy it at the Microsoft store (different packages available and Microsoft has a guide for installing it) or your local retailer and if you're unsure, we have a guide for what Office suite to get. Note that if you're running Office 2010 on Windows 10, you can get a 50% discount on a one year subscription of Office 365 Home; simply use the Get Office app in Windows 10. Get Office - www.office.com/setup Before you overspend your budget, remember you can get Microsoft Word for free and you can choose from many free alternatives for the entire Microsoft suite.This Is How You Can Get Microsoft Word for Free This Is How You Can Get Microsoft Word for FreeDo you really want the entire Microsoft Office suite? If all you need is Word without the fancy features, Microsoft will give it to you for free. Here is how.READ MORE FIND OUT YOUR VERSION OF OFFICE Unsure whether you have an Office 365 subscription? You can look up your status. Open a file, any Office document, then navigate to File > Account and under you'll see whether you have an Office 365 subscription. Office 2016 Account - www.office.com/setup Here is a complete list of ways to check your version of Office from Microsoft. YOUR UPGRADE WILL BE FINAL Before you

www.office.com/setup Blogs: Microsoft Office files are still very common, but if you're more of a Google Docs, Sheets, and Slides user, you can still edit Word, Excel, and PowerPoint files in Google Drive-if you know how. On the desktop, you'll need to use the Google Chrome browser and an official Chrome extension to edit Microsoft Office documents, using Google Drive's Office Compatibility Mode (OCM). You can edit them like that, or convert them to Google Docs format, which will provide more features. (Don't worry-even if you convert them to Google Docs format, you can re-download them in Microsoft Office format later). You can also edit Microsoft Office files using the Google Drive app and the Google Docs, Google Sheets, and Google Slides apps on iOS or Android. We'll show you both methods in the guide below. HOW TO WORK WITH MICROSOFT OFFICE FILES ON GOOGLE DRIVE ON A PC OR MAC Let's start with the desktop. If the Office file you want to edit and share is still on your PC's hard drive, you can easily upload it to Google Drive and open it for editing in Chrome using a Chrome extension. Open Chrome, go to the Office Editing for Docs, Sheets & Slides extension page, click "Add to Chrome", and follow the on-screen instructions to install it. 01_adding_extension_to_chrome - www.office.com/setup Blogs Once the extension is installed, drag the Office file onto the Chrome window until you see a copy icon as shown below. For my example throughout this article, I'm going to use a Word/Google Docs file, but the procedure is the same for Excel/Google Sheets files and PowerPoint/Google Slides files. 04_dragging_word_file_onto_chrome - www.office.com/setup The first time you drag an Office file onto the Chrome window, the following dialog box displays. Click "Got it" to close the window. You won't see this dialog box again. 05_office_editing_popup - www.office.com/setup Blogs The Office file is uploaded to your Google Drive account and

WWW.OFFICE.COM/SETUP BLOGS: USE THIS HELPFUL FEATURE TO QUICKLY VERIFY FACTS AND FIND ADDITIONAL INFORMATION AS YOU WORK. www.office.com/setup Blogs: Among all of Office 2016's useful new features, there's one in particular you'll definitely want to take the time to master: Smart Lookup. In short, it serves as a digital research assistant, pulling in information from the Web to enhance your work or help you decipher unfamiliar content. If you're an Office regular, Smart Lookup holds the key to a more powerful workflow. WHERE TO FIND IT Smart Lookup is just one right-click away in any Office 2016 app. Highlight a word or phrase you want to research, right-click, and select Smart Lookup from the context menu. You can also get to this feature by launching Review > Smart Lookup and entering a query. smart lookup word - www.office.com/setup Right-click on a word or phrase to launch Office's Smart Lookup tool. Smart Lookup works similarly in both Windows and Mac versions of Office 2016. When you launch the tool, a sidebar appears on the right side of the screen that displays the results of your query. Here's the really cool thing about Smart Lookup: It takes context from the words around the one you're searching for in order to provide you with the most relevant results, because so many words and terms have multiple meanings. There's a reason it's called Smart Lookup! Smart Lookup proves its value in many scenarios. Here are some examples. BE A WORD NERD Living up to its name, Smart Lookup will find a definition, synonyms, and the parts of speech for any word you highlight. smart lookup definitions - www.office.com/setup Find definitions and other information to assist with writing. Select the Explore tab to get word-usage information, or scroll down the page for entries from Wikipedia or Bing search results. Click on Define for a word's meaning and to hear how it's pronounced. PULL IN RESEARCH FROM THE WEB The most useful feature for me on a day