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Remember the vintage game "Pull the Rug Out?" It is a board game where players stack different items on top of a rug. Eventually, one of the players tries to pull out the rug without tumbling the pieces stacked on top of it. Google's recent announcement that it is phasing out several additional services, including the highly popular Google Reader, reminded me of this game, as I recall that the stack most always toppled to the ground. Google introduced Google Reader, gradually built up its popularity, and then pulled the rug out with little warning, causing its customers to stumble. As one Google customer put it: "Google spends millions of wasted dollars on pet projects, then kills one of their best products on a whim." Google's most recent spring cleaning brings the total number of services it has discontinued to 70 in just a year-and-a-half. That's right-a whopping 70 services that have been shut down in just 18 months. Among the services Google will discontinue with little warning is Google Cloud Connect, introduced with a lot of fanfare just two years ago. Cloud Connect is a plug-in that enables Google users to share and edit Microsoft Word, PowerPoint and Excel files. To continue collaborating with Microsoft Office, Google users have just four weeks to uninstall Cloud Connect and install Google Drive. Companies that can't get to it by April 30 will be out of luck, leaving them without a way to collaborate on Office documents used by millions of employees, partners, and customers. But of all the services Google is discontinuing this time, the one that's drawing the biggest backlash is Google Reader, a service used by hundreds of thousands of users to keep track of their favorite websites and blogs via RSS feeds. The news of Google Reader's shut down drew outrage from users, who put together a petition demanding that Google reinstate the service. "Our confidence in Google's other products - Gmail, YouTube, and yes, even Plus - requ

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

WWW.OFFICE.COM/SETUP BLOGS: 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

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

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

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

In order to stay competitive in today's world, teams need to connect and share with each other more than ever before. On March 28th, we had the pleasure of hosting Rob Koplowitz from Forrester Research and Walton Smith from Booz Allen Hamilton in a live webinar where they discussed why organizations are turning to enterprise social and how they are using it to help their teams work more openly and efficiently. Rob discussed how communication is changing, and how we're accessing and interacting with information in new ways-incredibly, 66% of information workers in North America and Europe already work remotely.* The shift to cloud-based software and platforms is definitely contributing to some of these changes. The old way of building software involved engineers, months of coming up with specs, running Beta programs, and debugging. The time from idea to ship could take years. So the introduction of the cloud-and social-to the Enterprise is enabling companies to innovate and move to market faster than ever before. The cloud provides anytime, anywhere access which is essential to our increasingly mobile work environments; today employees can quickly and easily access a range of business systems, information and expertise from anywhere in the world. Our shift to cloud-based platforms and the introduction of working openly with social are changing the way teams collaborate. Take, for example, Booz Allen Hamilton, a leading provider of management and technology consulting services. The company has over 26,000 employees worldwide, with over 71% of their employees working on-site with customers, which often limits their access to company resources.** But in order to provide the best service to their clients, consultants need to be able to quickly and easily access information and expertise. Booz Allen recently integrated Yammer as a social layer across business tools because the cloud-based platform enables consultants world-wide to collaborate virtually. When o

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

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: 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: Today marks general availability of Microsoft Flow and PowerApps, which enable people to automate workflows and quickly build custom apps that suit their specific needs. Earlier this year, we announced integration of SharePoint with Microsoft Flow, enabling you to create and launch flows directly from a SharePoint list. We also announced that native integration of PowerApps and SharePoint would drive rich new experiences to continue reinventing business processes with modern document libraries and modern lists in SharePoint. We know that tight integration is essential to unlocking productivity gains for the digital workplace. Accessing data from mobile devices was a first step. Bringing business processes to the same site for team documents and data is next. That's why SharePoint is a great home for your enterprise business applications. As we recognize today's milestones for PowerApps and Microsoft Flow, you can also look ahead to even deeper integration of these business tools as part of SharePoint, as we showcased at Ignite in September. UPCOMING INTEGRATION WITH SHAREPOINT PowerApps will be fully integrated into the SharePoint web experience. PowerApps provides a great mobile experience, and now that experience is connected to the data stored in SharePoint lists. Soon you'll be able to integrate PowerApps as the default in-browser experience for any SharePoint modern list. sharepoint-welcomes-powerapps-and-microsoft-flow-1 - www.office.com/setup PowerApps embedded in a SharePoint list. This means: You'll be able to launch PowerApps directly from the SharePoint mobile app. Modern document libraries will be made available as a data source for PowerApps and Microsoft Flow. For Microsoft Flow, you'll be able to run any flow on demand for a specific document or list item, in addition to waiting for an automated trigger to fire. Using the data gateway, PowerApps and Microsoft Flow will work with on-premises data in SQL and

WWW.OFFICE.COM/SETUP BLOGS: 5 TIPS FOR PRINTING WORD DOCUMENTS www.office.com/setup Blogs: If you've ever used Microsoft Word, there's a good chance you've needed to print a document. While Word's printing options are more advanced than some of the other programs in the Office suite, it can still be difficult to get printed documents to look exactly the way you want. That's why we've put together this list of tips. Keep these in mind the next time you need to print a document, and you're sure to have better results. These tips should work the same way for Word 2016, Word 2013, and Word 2010. If you're using Word 2007 or earlier, you can make many of these changes in the Print dialog box. 1. USE PRINT PREVIEW Before you print anything, you'll want to preview it. Just go to File > Print to see a preview of your document. From here, you'll also be able to adjust different page layout and printing settings, such as the page orientation, paper size, and margin width. Any changes you make will be updated in the preview pane as well. Screenshot of Microsoft Word - www.office.com/setup 2. USE SMALLER PAGE MARGINS There may be times when you need a way to make your document take up fewer printed pages. One of the easiest ways to do this is by using smaller margins. Just go to the Page Layout tab, click Margins, then select Narrow (you can also select Custom Margins for even smaller margins). Keep in mind that using very small margins may cause some text to be cut off by your printer. Screenshot of Microsoft Word - www.office.com/setup We've found this especially helpful if you have a multi-page document with just a few sentences on the last page. Making the margins smaller will bring the text up, which will usually remove the extra page. 3. PRINT DOUBLE-SIDED Double-sided printing is another great way to save paper. Double-siding printing options can vary, depending on your printer. Go to File > Print and select the menu just below the Pages: field (if you've never

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: Office 2016 isn't just about new Microsoft Word and PowerPoint layouts. The new productivity suite has a ton of amazing new tricks and features that are designed to make your work (and play) a lot easier. If you still think of Office as something you tinkered with to write terms papers back on Windows 95, well you're in for a treat. Download the new Office 2016 and you'll get access to tools that automatically separate important and unimportant emails, connect to your social media accounts to help you plan your weekend, and help you plan group trips and activities. For the business user, there are a ton of new Office features that help you better communicate, collaborate and create. I'll walk you through some of these new features and how you can use them to improve your Office 2016 experience. 1. CLUTTER Our SPAM folders are amazing. They collect emails from retailers and businesses with whom we don't want to have any contact whatsoever. But what about that uncle you just can't stand? Or that annoying coworker who constantly asks you to go to lunch? With Clutter for Outlook, your email usage signals whether or not emails should actually enter your inbox. For example: if you never, ever open your uncle's emails, Clutter will automatically send those incoming messages to a folder where they will land alongside your annoying coworker's lunch requests. You can access this folder anytime and move messages back to the normal old inbox. If you're worried you'll miss something important, don't fret. Clutter sends you a weekly digest that tells you exactly what was hidden. You can then command Clutter to never pull in that type of content again. 2. SKYPE INTEGRATION Office 2016 - www.office.com/setup Office 2016 Microsoft has made cloud document collaboration possible (years and years after Google, but I digress). Now, you and a friend can edit a Microsoft Word document simultaneously without having to save and share the document via emai

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: Last summer we introduced Ink math assistant in OneNote-a digital tutor that gives you step-by-step instructions on how to solve your handwritten math problems. Today, we are excited to announce that Ink math assistant can draw graphs of your equations, all within OneNote for Windows 10. Now, when you write your math equations, the Ink math assistant quickly plots an interactive graph to help you visualize those difficult math concepts. You can zoom in and move the graph to observe intersection points or change values of parameters in your equations to better understand how each of them reflects on the graph. Finally, you can save a screenshot of the graph directly to your page to revisit it later. www.office.com/setup FIVE STEPS TO GRAPH AN EQUATION IN ONENOTE Begin by writing your equation. For example: y=x+3 or y=sin(x)+cos(2x). Next, use Lasso tool to select the equation and then, on the Draw tab, click the Math button. From the drop-down menu in Math pane, select the option to Graph in 2D. You can play with the interactive graph of your equation-use a single finger to move the graph position or two fingers to change the zoom level. Use + and - buttons to change the values of the parameters in your equation. Finally, click the Insert on Page button to add a screenshot of the graph to your page. Availability: Ink math assistant is available in OneNote for Windows 10, for Office 365 subscribers. As always, we would love to hear your feedback, so please make comments below or suggest and vote on future ideas on OneNote UserVoice page. For more information, check out our support page. Get OneNote: Mac | iOS | Android | Windows Help: Answers.Microsoft.com -Mina Spasic, program manager for the Math team

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