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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: 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

A since deceased, highly-regarded fellow faculty member, Anthony (Tony) Athos, occasionally sat on a bench on a nice day at the Harvard Business School, apparently staring off into space. When asked what he was doing, ever the iconoclast, he would say, "Nothing." His colleagues, trained to admire and teach action, would walk away shaking their heads and asking each other, "Is he alright?" It is perhaps no coincidence that Tony often came up with some of the most profound insights at faculty meetings and informal gatherings. This story captures much of the sense of the responses to this month's question about why managers don't think deeply. The list of causes was much longer than the list of proposed responses. But in the process, some other questions were posed. Ben Kirk kicked off the list of reasons for the phenomenon when he commented, "… what rises to the top levels are very productive and very diligent individuals who tend not to … reflect and are extremely efficient at deploying other people's ideas," implying that this type of leader is not likely to understand, encourage, or recognize deep thinking in others. Adnan Younis added the possibility that "… managers are not trained for it." Dianne Jacobs cited the possibility that persisting assumptions borne out of success serve as "roadblocks to act on needed change" (proposed by those who engage in deep thinking?). Ulysses U. Pardey, whose comment triggered my recollection of Tony Athos, wrote that "Time-for-thinking is a special moment which can be resource consuming and an unsafe activity …" (Fortunately, Athos held a tenured position in an academic organization.) A number of comments alluded to the triumph of bureaucracies and large organizations over deep thinking. As Lorre Zuppan said, "I think Jeff Immelt's efforts to protect deep thinking reflect a nice sentiment but … If his team could carry the ball, would he need to announce that he's protecting it?" Tom Henkel was more succinct: "Ther

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

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-

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

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

WWW.OFFICE.COM/SETUP BLOGS: INTRODUCTION www.office.com/setup Blogs: Databases in Access are composed of four objects: tables, queries, forms, and reports. Together, these objects allow you to enter, store, analyze, and compile data however you want. In this lesson, you will learn about each of the four objects and come to understand how they interact with each other to create a fully functional relational database. Watch the video below to learn more about objects in Access. TABLES By this point, you should already understand that a database is a collection of data organized into many connected lists. In Access, all data is stored in tables, which puts tables at the heart of any database. You might already know that tables are organized into vertical columns and horizontal rows. Rows and columns in an Access table - www.office.com/setup In Access, rows and columns are referred to as records and fields. A field is more than just a column; it's a way of organizing information by the type of data it is. Every piece of information within a field is of the same type. For example, every entry in a field called First Name would be a name, and every entry in field called Street Address would be an address. Fields and field names - www.office.com/setup Likewise, a record is more than just a row; it's a unit of information. Every cell in a given row is part of that row's record. A record - www.office.com/setup Notice how each record spans several fields. Even though the information in each record is organized into fields, it belongs with the other information in that record. See the number at the left of each row? It's the ID number that identifies each record. The ID number for a record refers to every piece of information contained on that row. Record ID numbers - www.office.com/setup Tables are good for storing closely related information. Let's say you own a bakery and have a database that includes a table with your customers' names and information, lik

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

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: INTRODUCTION www.office.com/setup Blogs: Microsoft Access is a database creation and management program. To understand Access, you must first understand databases. In this lesson, you will learn about databases and how they are used. You will familiarize yourself with the differences between data management in Microsoft Access and Microsoft Excel. Finally, you will get a look ahead at the rest of the Access tutorial. Watch the video below to learn more about databases in Access. WHAT IS A DATABASE? A database is a collection of data that is stored in a computer system. Databases allow their users to enter, access, and analyze their data quickly and easily. They're such a useful tool that you see them all the time. Ever waited while a doctor's receptionist entered your personal information into a computer, or watched a store employee use a computer to see whether an item was in stock? If so, then you've seen a database in action. The easiest way to understand a database is to think of it as a collection of lists. Think about one of the databases we mentioned above: the database of patient information at a doctor's office. What lists are contained in a database like this? To start with, there's a list of patients' names. Then there's a list of past appointments, a list with medical history for each patient, a list of contact information, and so on. This is true of all databases, from the simplest to the most complex. For instance, if you like to bake you might decide to keep a database containing the types of cookies you know how to make and the friends you give these cookies to. This is one of the simplest databases imaginable. It contains two lists: a list of your friends, and a list of cookies. An illustration of two lists - www.office.com/setup However, if you were a professional baker, you would have many more lists to keep track of: a list of customers, a list of products sold, a list of prices, a list of orders, and so on.

Want to transfer all your good pictures from camera to computer? Then go through this tutorial. Nowadays, there are many cameras which have the facility to connect to a wireless network and perform the task of uploading.

How about a wristband that glows when you get a text message or a phone call on your smartphone? EMBRACE+ is the new gadget in the market that will glow in various colors on your wrist. The wristband will be a wearable gadget made for your smart phone and will display specific colors to indicate depending on what kind of notification you have received on your phone. You do not have to even take the phone out of the pocket. As soon as you get the notification, the wristband will give a visual notification in a specific color and will let you differentiate between a tweet and text message. The wristband connects to your smartphone using Wi-Fi connection.The EMBRACE+ wristband features will includes indications for incoming calls, text messages, new emails, notifications from social networks like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and will even give you low battery levels indications. It will have a special feature that will help secure your phone. It will give notification if the smartphone goes far away from the wristband. The release date of the EMBASE+ wristband is July 2013. By-The Xpert Crew @ http://techvedic.com https://www.facebook.com/techvedicinc https://twitter.com/techvedicinc http://pinterest.com/techvedic1 http://techvedicinc.tumblr.com/

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

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: Project 2016 has all the functionality and features you're used to, with some enhancements and the best new features from Office 2016. NOTE: The following feature updates are available to Project Online subscribers. They will first roll out to Office Insider participants. If you have a Project Online subscription, make sure you have the latest version of Office. MARCH 2017 TASK SUMMARY NAME FIELD With long lists of tasks, it can be difficult to know what a task is indented under in the overall project plan. The Task Summary Name field is a read-only field that shows the name of a task's summary task. Adding this field as a column in your Task view can help clarify your project's structure. To add this field, right-click the title of a column (to the right of where you want to add the field), select Insert Column, and then choose Task Summary Name from the drop-down list. Task Summary Name column - www.office.com/setup NOVEMBER 2016 TIMELINE BAR LABELS AND TASK PROGRESS Communicating project progress just got easier! Timeline bars can now be labeled, and task progress is shown right on the tasks themselves, making it simple to quickly illustrate your plan and the work in progress when sharing status. Timeline bars with labels and task progress - www.office.com/setup OCTOBER 2016 IN-APP FEEDBACK Have a comment or suggestion about Microsoft Office? We need your feedback to help us deliver great products. In Project, you can suggest new features, tell us what you like or what's not working by clicking File > Feedback. Click File > Feedback to offer comments or suggestions about Microsoft Project - www.office.com/setup SEPTEMBER 2015 MORE FLEXIBLE TIMELINES With Project 2016, not only can you leverage multiple timelines to illustrate different phases or categories of work, but you can also set the start and end dates for each timeline separately, to paint a clearer overall picture of the work involved. Formatted timeline in Project

Last week, we welcomed Brian Solis, Altimeter principal analyst, thought leader and book author, to Yammer HQ to give a fireside chat, followed by signing of his new book: "What's The Future of Business?" I was thrilled to interview Brian, and we covered a variety of really meaty subjects - just check out the video below! The theme of the evening was transformation - transformation that is happening in our lives as individuals, how we relate to each other through technology and what we as businesses must do to stay relevant to the connected customer. Even the book itself is transformation of the book publishing convention. Unlike a regular, information-dense business book, "What's the Future of Business" attempts to bring together the best of both worlds: hard-hitting facts and practical frameworks, as well as a visual experience. The experience of the book is just as important as the content therein. What is the future of business? The future of business is experience, according to Solis. We as connected consumers make decisions outside of the sales funnel that companies have organized themselves around. We reference experiences of consumers who came before us, and contribute our own experiences to this dynamic tapestry. When consumers share, they are reacting to an experience, and the future of any business depends on its ability to provide experiences that are worth sharing. In his talk, Brian talked about the 4 moments of truth that add up to shareable experiences. At every stage of the customer journey, it is our job as businesses to design an experience to trigger the sharing of a moment. The Zero Moment of Truth comes when the consumer is starting to explore choices and is just becoming aware of needs and possible solutions. 1st Moment of Truth happens when the consumer is ready to buy. Consumer packaged goods companies have perfected providing the right experience at this point. 2nd Moment of Truth happens after the consumer purchases,

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

www.office.com/setup Blogs: Today marks the general availability of Office 2016 for Windows, a suite of desktop applications that together with new mobile and web apps pushes Microsoft's new vision for PC-based productivity. Office 2016 is available immediately to Office 365 subscribers, as well as to individuals who would prefer to buy the software in standalone form. "We see Office 2016 as being just as important as the first release of Office," Microsoft group program manager Shawn Villaron told me in a briefing last week. "In the early days, Office was about bringing really important tools together to empower the individual for personal productivity. That was the way people wanted to work at that time. And for 20 to 30 years, Office fit right in. Today, things are changing. More people collaborate on work as groups and teams, so Office 2016 represents the change from personal productivity to team productivity." And that, really, is Office 2016 in a nutshell. If you're a typical information worker, student, or other person in need of standard productivity tools, Office 2016 of course works fine and represents an obvious and stable evolution from the Office version you're currently using. But the real meat in this release-now and going forward, as Office will of course be updated regularly, like Windows 10-is the designed around this new way of working. Confusing matters somewhat, Office-not Office 2016, but Office generally-is all over the place now. In addition to the classic, full-featured desktop suites on both Windows and Mac, Microsoft has high-quality Office Online web apps, mobile apps for Android, iOS, and Windows/Windows phones-and Office 365-specific solutions that are often available as web apps but are sometimes just integrated into the desktop applications. This ain't your father's Office anymore. Office everywhere: Microsoft Office is available on virtually any device you care to use. - www.office.com/setup Office eve

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