Group items tagged

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

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: OFFICE 2016 OFFERS MANY ENHANCEMENTS THAT INTEGRATE MORE TIGHTLY WITH SHAREPOINT AND ONEDRIVE. IT CAN BE CONFUSING TO KEEP TRACK OF ALL THE FEATURES, SO WE PICK 10 YOU ARE SURE TO LOVE. Collaboration is the key to Microsoft's still-ubiquitous productivity suite. To the casual user, the applications that make upOffice 2016 - Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Outlook are the anchor tenants, of course, rounded out by OneNote, Access and Publisher - will be indistinguishable from their predecessors. But make no mistake about it; Microsoft's reboot of its flagship software suite is a major update, offering a wealth of collaboration capabilities that integrate more tightly with SharePoint and OneDrive than before. The many tweaks and enhancements across the board can be confusing though, and we peek under the hood to highlight the features that matter most. 1. REAL-TIME CO-AUTHORING The capability to work on the same document simultaneously with your colleagues comes to the desktop version of the productivity suite in Office 2016. Colleagues can work on the same Word documents and PowerPoint presentations that are saved on SharePoint or OneDrive without overwriting each other's changes. Note that the "real-time typing" feature in which you can see your colleagues working on the same document is only available in Word for now. PowerPoint supports co-authoring, but without real-time typing. 2. SIMPLIFIED DOCUMENT SHARING You can now easily share your documents in Office 2016, courtesy of a prominent "Share" button in the Ribbon. Available across Word, Excel and PowerPoint, the Share button lets you share access to a document to your team members, and serves as a one-stop location to review access permissions or see who is currently working on the document. As with co-authoring, the files must be saved in either SharePoint or OneDrive in order to be shared. 3. CAPABILITY TO SEND LARGE FILES USING ONEDRIVE While the ability to sha

www.office.com/setup Blogs: Having come around to the idea that it needed different versions of Office for different kind of users, Microsoft introduced lightweight versions of Word, Excel, Power Point and OneNote that are neither as pricey or as feature laden as the main versions included in Office. iPad users were the first to get their hands on this new take on Office. With Windows 10, the free Microsoft Office Mobile apps have arrived for some Windows users. 10 Things to Love About Windows 10 (7) - www.office.com/setup Blogs Read: Windows 10 Review - A Love Affair Here's how to get that free Microsoft Office in Windows 10, and what you need to know about it why it's possible for some to take advantage and not possible for others. HOW TO GET FREE MICROSOFT OFFICE IN WINDOWS 10: WHAT IS IT? Microsoft Office is wildly successful. Everyday millions of users all open it to get work done. Millions of documents are written in Microsoft Word. Millions of budgets and sales breakdowns are created in Microsoft Excel. Everyone has created a Microsoft PowerPoint presentation at some point in their life. Screenshot (236) - www.office.com/setup Blogs Windows and Microsoft Office are synonymous. Because the two are often used together and both made by Microsoft, many assume that one comes included with the other. That's never been true. Windows device makers often included shortcuts to trials for Microsoft Office with new PCs. Some even bundled it with their PCs, passing the cost on to buyers. Microsoft Office costs $149 if purchased outright or $6.99 a month through Microsoft's Office 365 subscription service. Office Mobile is what Microsoft collectively calls the free Microsoft Office apps that are now available. Word Mobile lets Windows 10 users view documents. Excel Mobile focuses on spreadsheets. PowerPoint Mobile lets users look at presentations. Outlook is separated into to apps, Outlook Calendar and Outlook Mail. Outlook Mail and Outlook Calendar are a

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

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

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

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

www.office.com/setup Blogs: Today, we are pleased to announce the availability of Microsoft Forms for our Office 365 Education customers. Forms is the result of direct feedback from educators that they want to have a quizzing function with Office 365 Education. Educators told us they need an easy way to assess student progress on an ongoing basis. They also told us they want an assessment solution that will save them time, help differentiate instruction for all students and provide quiz takers with real-time personalized feedback. We designed Forms to be super easy so that anyone could confidently create a form and easily see results as they come in. Forms lets anyone with an Office 365 Education account create and/or respond to quizzes. What makes Forms unique and so valuable for educators is the automatic grading and in-quiz feedback functionality. Automatic grading does exactly what the name implies and greatly reduces the time spent grading. In-quiz feedback is a feature that lets quiz authors personalize messages depending how a student answers a question. For example, if a student answers a question incorrectly they may get a message, such as: "The answer is incorrect. I suggest you review chapter four as this will be on the final." HOW FORMS WORKS When an instructor wants to assess how well the students understand a given topic, they can quickly author a quiz directly from their desktop or mobile web browser. The instructor simply determines the questions they would like to ask and then chooses an answer type, such as multiple choice, text or a rating. The Forms authors can then send a link or QR code to quiz takers or embed the quiz into a web page, blog or Learning Management System (LMS), and recipients can complete the quiz on phones, tablets or PCs. And with the real-time feedback in Forms, the instructor can very quickly see where the class may need additional instruction or could advance more rapidly. Forms responses can also be exported to Mi

WWW.OFFICE.COM/SETUP BLOGS: GO TEAM! THAT'S WHAT OFFICE 2016 IS BUILT TO ENCOURAGE, WITH NEW COLLABORATIVE TOOLS AND OTHER WAYS TO TIE WORKERS AND CONTENT TOGETHER. pcw office primary 2 - www.office.com/setup www.office.com/setup Blogs: Office 2016 is a major upgrade, but not in the way you'd first suppose. Just as Windows 10 ties notebooks, desktops, phones and tablets together, and adds a layer of intelligence, Office 2016 wants to connect you and your coworkers together, using some baked-in smarts to help you along. I tested the client-facing portion of Office 2016. Microsoft released the trial version of Office 2016 in March as a developer preview with a focus on administrative features (data loss protection, multi-factor authentication and more) that we didn't test. I've been using it since the consumer preview release in May. Microsoft seeded reviewers with a Microsoft Surface 3 with the "final code" upon it. That's a slight misnomer, as the Office 2016 apps upon it used the same version that Microsoft had tested with the public, with a few exceptions: Outlook was pre-populated with links and contacts of a virtual company to give reviewers the look and feel of Delve, Outlook's new Groups feature, and more. Office 2013 users can rest easy about one thing: Office 2016's applications are almost indistinguishable from their previous versions in look and feature set. To the basic Office apps, Microsoft has added its Sway app for light content creation, and the enterprise information aggregator, Delve. Collaboration in the cloud is the real difference with Office 2016. Office now encourages you to share documents online, in a collaborative workspace. Printing out a document and marking it up with a pen? Medieval. Even emailing copies back and forth is now tacitly discouraged. office 2016 review powerpoint demo shot - www.office.com/setupMicrosoft Microsoft says its new collaborative workflow reflects how people do things now, from study groups

www.office.com/setup Blogs: Microsoft Office 2016 Landed in late September, and it brought a number of changes with it. On the slightly less-exciting side are the transformations to the update system. Microsoft Office 2016 will be running an auto-update feature, similar to Windows 10, as well as a number of different servicing branches, also similar to the new operating system. Let's explore what that means for your Office 2016 installation. OFFICE 2016 UPDATE Since the September 22 release, Microsoft has likely fielded thousands of questions regarding the new Office update system. One of the most pertinent will concern Office 2016 adoption of the somewhat overbearing Windows 10 auto-update system. Office 2016 logo - www.office.com/setup The Office 2016 system will use a similar style to the Windows 10 update branches, locking those with Office 2016 into a cycle of updates depending on their version. The branches are: Current Branch (CB): features monthly updates, potentially including new and/or improved features, security patches, and non-security bug fixes. Current Branch for Business (CBB): features a four-monthly update schedule, with the same content as the current branch, delivered slowly to enable any preceding issues to be alleviated. Failure to install the CB updates will, as with Windows 10, result in a severance from scheduled security updates rendering consumers vulnerable to attack. CBB works slightly differently: business will be able to defer one four-month update, but must pick up the next offering or face the same perilous fate. It is one thing to pressure home users, but forcing businesses to update lest Microsoft expose them to vulnerabilities is another. Furthermore, there will be no Long Term Servicing Branch equivalent, the Windows 10 branch eschewing all but security patches over long periods of time. IS IT YOUR TURN TO UPDATE? The combination of Office 365 Business, Office 365 ProPlus, Office 365 Home, Personal, and University, pl

www.office.com/setup Blogs: Excel 2016 includes a powerful new set of features based on the Power Query technology, which provides fast, easy data gathering and shaping capabilities and can be accessed through the Get & Transform section on the Data ribbon. Today, we are pleased to announce 10 new data transformation and connectivity features that have been requested by customers. These updates are available as part of an Office 365 subscription. If you are an Office 365 subscriber, find out how to get these latest updates. If you have Excel 2010 or Excel 2013, you can take advantage of these updates by downloading the latest Power Query for Excel add-in. Updates include the following new or improved data connectivity and transformation features: Web Connector-UX support for specifying HTTP Request Headers. OData Connector-support for "Select Related Tables" option. Oracle Connector-improved Navigator preview performance. SAP HANA Connector-enhancements to parameter input UX. Query Dependencies view from Query Editor. Query Editor ribbon support for scalar values. Add custom column based on function invocation. Expand & Aggregate columns provide support for "Load More" values. Convert table column to a list-new transformation. Select as you type in drop-down menus. WEB CONNECTOR-UX SUPPORT FOR SPECIFYING HTTP REQUEST HEADERS With this update, we have added support for specifying HTTP Request Headers within the Web connector dialog. Users can specify header name/value pairs from the Advanced mode in this dialog. november-2016-updates-for-get-transform-in-excel-1 - www.office.com/setup ODATA CONNECTOR-SUPPORT FOR "SELECT RELATED TABLES" OPTION In this update, we have added relationship detection support for OData V4 feeds. When connecting to OData V4 feeds, users will be able to use the Select Related Tables button in the Navigator dialog to help you easily select all the tables needed for your reports. november-2016-updates-for-get-

www.office.com/setup Blogs: If you are still using Microsoft Office 2003, you should be aware that Official support has long ended. If you are using Office 2007, support is due to end in 2 short years. Microsoft Office 2016, the latest Windows-based version of the major technology company's application suite, is scheduled for a release sometime in spring, 2015. However, we already know quite a bit about the product, thanks to a preview and testing program that Microsoft has been running. Here are 6 details to look forward to, ahead of the product's mainstream release: 1. Better Security Microsoft Office 2016 will emphasize the value of better security parameters. In addition to a file-level encryption functionality, new data loss protection tools inside of Microsoft Word, Microsoft Excel, and Microsoft PowerPoint will warn users when they attempt to save confidential files to unsafe locations. Microsoft Outlook will also be more secure, thanks to a multi-factor authentication feature. Similarly, the application suite will have stronger information rights management tools that let you limit what people can do with your documents or emails after you've shared access with them. For example, you can allow access to a certain document to expire after a set period of time, and prevent it from being forwarded. These tools will also stop people from copying and pasting information out of Microsoft Office 2016 applications. 2. Business Intelligence Features Microsoft Excel lives up to its name in Microsoft Office 2016. The latest version of this application features a built-in business intelligence tool called Power Query. This tool can dramatically change the way that you approach your data. Using it, you can quickly combine your own numbers with figures from public databases like Data.gov and Microsoft Azure Marketplace. After doing this, the application has another tool that lets you create detailed visualizations of the combined data. The data analysis tool

In order to be taken seriously, small businesses need to convince customers of their professional ability and their value. Small businesses can punch above their weight by taking the time to go to market with a professional set of business documents, templates and content to ensure customers aren't dismissing them before they have a chance to pitch the value of their product or service. But how can small businesses deliver a professional image when they don't have the same resources as big businesses? Web-based solutions, also known as 'cloud solutions,' help small businesses maintain professional-looking documents even while collaborating and editing with employees in real-time from different locations. Gone are the days where employees hoped documents maintained proper spacing and margins; small businesses can now create materials in confidence and showcase their professional ability to customers. Below are just a few of the ways small businesses can ensure they are maintaining a professional appearance when it comes to the business communications: MAKE THE FIRST IMPRESSION A PROFESSIONAL ONE An email newsletter is often a small business' first connection with a potential customer; they can keep it professional by registering a business email domain (johndoe@yourbusiness.com) and sending all communications to customers and potential customers from there. Most cloud solutions offer a cost-efficient and easy way to customize emails with basic client information - small businesses should take the time to add a personal touch to connect with their customers. Messages should be short and to the point to ensure their email will bring value to potential customers. Email signatures should be simple, clean and professional, and employees shouldn't forget to run a spell-check before hitting send. CREATE CUSTOMER-READY DOCUMENTS Whether creating documents on an office desktop or on-the-go on a mobile or tablet device through Office Mobile Apps in Office 3

www.office.com/setup Blogs: New to Visio? This tutorial will help get you started with Visio 2016. We'll take you through starter diagrams to give you an idea of what diagrams look like. Then we'll take you through the four basic steps to creating your own diagram. START VISIO Click the Start button, type Visio, and then click the Visio icon to open the program. (If Visio is open already, clickFile > New.) LOOK AT THE STARTER DIAGRAMS Before you dig in and start making things yourself, let's show you a couple starter diagrams that Visio has made for you. That way you can get an idea of what diagrams look and feel like in the program. Click Categories. Categories link - www.office.com/setup Click Flowchart. Flowchart category thumbnail - www.office.com/setup Now pay attention to this step: single-click the Basic Flowchart thumbnail. Basic Flowchart thumbnail - www.office.com/setup Let's explain what this dialog is all about. Visio Basic Flowchart thumbnails: 1 blank template, and 3 starter diagrams - www.office.com/setup You choose the blank template when you have some experience with Visio (like after you've made a few practice diagrams). But if you don't have any experience, choose one of the other three starter diagrams. Double-click one of the starter diagram thumbnails. This is a starter diagram. Visio 2016 comes with many starter diagrams to give you ideas and examples. You can customize this starter diagram by typing your own text, adding your own shapes, and so on. Also, take a look at the tips and tricks. These help you work with the diagram. Let's open another starter diagram. Click File > New > Categories > Network. Single-click the Basic Network thumbnail. Basic Network thumbnail - www.office.com/setup Double-click one of the two starter diagram thumbnails. This is just another example of what you can do with Visio. On your own, go to File > New > Categories and explore the various starter diagrams in Visio. Not all diagrams have them, but many of the

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: 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: Sway: Microsoft Office presentation software. PowerPoint: Microsoft Office presentation software. So what's the difference? You're watching Jeopardy! when the presenter utters the following answer in keeping with the game show's famous format: "A software tool from Microsoft for creating presentations, web-based reports and projects." Quick as a flash you spit out the question in unison with the contestant: "What is PowerPoint?" To your astonishment, presenter Alex Trebek shakes his head and utters a curt "No". The correct question was "What is Sway?" To the best of our knowledge, that scenario has yet to surface on the American quiz show, but it's hypothetically possible. After all, there are a number of similarities between PowerPoint and Sway on first inspection: Both are part of Microsoft Office Both can be used to create rich presentations Both support multimedia including video, audio and images Both feature customisable templates There's no disputing that there are areas where PowerPoint and Sway overlap. But if you're thinking Sway is just a web-based clone of PowerPoint, think again - each piece of software has highly specific functions. It's well worth familiarising yourself with the differences between the two, cos if you Sway when you're meant to PowerPoint, you're gonna have a bad time. POWERPOINT IN A PARAGRAPH As the world's preeminent slideshow software, PowerPoint requires no introduction. From classroom projects to delivering keynote addresses, Microsoft's easy to use presentation software has graced overhead projectors on every continent. Slides; audience handouts; speaker's notes. Whatever you choose to create and however you choose to deliver your story, PowerPoint makes it simple. SWAY IN SUMMARY Sway is an online presentation and storytelling app that's free for anyone with a Microsoft or Office 365 account. The newest addition to Microsoft Office, Sway helps

As governments strive to become more responsive and transparent, it's important for them to make public information easily accessible to citizens. At the same time, it's critical that they protect confidential data. A key reason why governments choose Microsoft Office 365 is Microsoft's leadership in the industry when it comes to privacy, security, and compliance practices. In short, governments know they can trust Microsoft to help protect their data. So how does Microsoft demonstrate leadership and why exactly do governments trust Office 365 to help protect their data? Here are four reasons: We respect your privacy. Google is under criticism for its privacy practices. Office 365 does not build advertising products out of customer data, unlike other companies. Nor do we scan your email or documents for building analytics, data mining, or advertising, or to improve the service. What's more, you own your data. Office 365 customer data belongs to the customer. Customers can remove their data whenever they choose. Office 365 is independently verified. Office 365 is compliant with many world-class industry standards, and it is verified by third parties. For example, Office 365 is the first major business productivity public cloud service to have implemented the rigorous set of physical, logical, process, and management controls defined by ISO 27001, one of the best security benchmarks available in the world. In addition, Office 365 is the first major business productivity public cloud service provider to sign the standard contractual clauses created by the European Union ("EU Model Clauses") with all customers. Office 365 also implements security processes that adhere to the Federal Information Security Management Act (FISMA) required by U.S. federal agencies and to the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA). With Office 365, you know where your data is located. Office 365 customers know where major Office 365 datacenters are located

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