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Yana Terukhova is a Product Marketing Manager on the Microsoft Visio team. Visio offers over 60 types of professional templates to build compelling diagrams, and organization charts are among most the frequently created. Visio organization charts are simple and visual, but what if you want to connect them to key business indicators tracked by your organization, such as sales by region, budget by department, vacation status, or training progress? Sometimes this information is located in another source, like Excel or a complex database. Data-linked diagrams let you add data to Visio diagrams-no code required-and anyone in an organization can quickly create such dashboards to get better insights into data using Visio Professional 2013 or Visio Pro for Office 365.

Productivity? Sweet www.office.com/setup Blogs: Office 2016 for Mac was a long time coming, but it brings plenty of new features and better feature parity with the Windows version than ever. Microsoft has done a lot to streamline the experience, with a customizable, collapsible Ribbon as well as cross-platform keyboard shortcuts, but with any major Office update, there's bound to be a learning curve. These tips for Word, PowerPoint, Excel, Outlook, and OneNote should come in handy, and if you're stumped about anything specific, let us know in the comments. Office 2016 is available for Office365 subscribers, with a wider release coming in September. Don't forget to save! This is probably our most important tip: Don't forget to save! When Apple introduced Auto Save and Versions into OS X, many Mac users started losing our ingrained habit of hitting Command-S often. Unfortunately, Office 2016 (except for OneNote-more on that in a bit) doesn't take advantage of Auto Save. So don't forget to save often. Versioning is also missing, but on the plus side, fans of Save As will find the command in its rightful place in the File menu. Store your files in OneDrive or SharePoint If you need access to your files from anywhere, Office 2016's built-in OneDrive & SharePoint integration makes cloud storage simple. To save to your OneDrive or SharePoint account, click the Online Locations button in the lower-left corner of a Save dialog box. Choose your existing account from the list, or click the Plus button to add another location. What's the difference? Glad you asked. OneDrive is a consumer product for cloud storage, like iCloud Drive. Aimed more at businesses, SharePoint acts like an intranet, letting teams share and collaborate on files. Office 2016 for Mac: Ribbon - www.office.com/setup See larger image Maximize your workspace The redesigned Ribbon in Office 2016 unifies the look and functionality across all platforms. It also takes up a lot of space, and c

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: 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.

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: Evernote and OneNote are two of our favorite tools, but both have changed substantially since we last compared these two apps-in some ways, not for the best. Here's where these two stand today. www.office.com/setup LIFEHACKER FACEOFF: ONENOTE VS. EVERNOTE Now that Microsoft OneNote is free for Mac and Windows, the price and cross-platform barriers to…Read more WHAT'S NEW IN EVERNOTE In the last year, Evernote introduced a new pricing plan, redesigned its webapp, and added new features for its Android and iOS apps. THE FREE PLAN LOSES A FEATURE, BUT NOW THERE'S A MORE AFFORDABLE PAID PLAN Let's talk price first with Evernote, since it's the biggest change in the last year. The free plan no longer lets you email notes to Evernote, something most users enjoyed and used often prior to that change. Although you can get around this limitation with an IFTTT recipe, you won't get the full flexibility of Evernote's email-to-notes feature, such as specifying your destination notebook in the email subject line. So that's a bummer. On the positive side, however, Evernote introduced a new, more affordable paid plan called Evernote Plus. For $25 a year, you get offline notebooks for Evernote's mobile apps and the ability to lock the app on your phone with a PIN. Both of these used to require Evernote's Premium plan, which used to cost $45 a year. Finally, Evernote's Premium plan now costs $50 a year. But in return for those five extra bucks, you get larger upload limits: 10GB a month, instead of the previous 4GB data cap. With Evernote Premium, you can search attachments, scan business cards, view previous note versions, annotate PDFs, and use the new note presentation mode. EVERNOTE'S USER INTERFACE KEEPS EVOLVING www.office.com/setup Last year, Evernote took its redesigned, minimalist web client out of beta. Though slicker and easier on the eyes, the makeover also made the webapp less functional. You can't order

www.office.com/setup Blogs: In today's post we take a look at the key admin setup steps of a Office 365 license. If you'd like the complete guide to Office 365 setup, you can download it here. This guide will walk you through the necessary steps to establish your Office 365 account, add your end users, and jumpstart collaboration. In today's post, we'll be discussing the setup process for you and your employee's Office 365 accounts from start to finish. What to Expect During The Setup Process Office 365 The process begins with the purchase of Office 365 licenses for all of your employees. There are different plans available, with options that include the full Microsoft Office downloadable suite of tools, and those that only provide the online, or web-based versions of the Office suite. There are plans available for an individual, small business, and for the enterprise. Each license type includes options for online and offline apps, email, and productivity solutions. Purchasing a New Office 365 Plan Once your plan is selected, you as the Administrator will walk through the purchasing process, allowing you to associate your new plan with any existing subscriptions, as well as associate your account to your personal Microsoft ID. If you've ever attended a Microsoft event or webinar, or purchased software from the Microsoft store, you probably already have a personal Microsoft ID. You can connect this to your new Office 365 account, or create a new Microsoft ID. The signup process has four simple steps: Provide your contact details Create a new ID (or associate your account with an existing ID) Review your order Place your order Once purchased, you will receive a welcome letter as the new Office 365 Administrator with details on signing onto the platform and getting started. If the license was purchased on your behalf, your profile will be added to the company account, and you will likewise receive a welcome email with your User ID and a temporary passw

www.office.com/setup Blogs: In today's post we take a look at the key admin setup steps of a Office 365 license. If you'd like the complete guide to Office 365 setup, you can download it here. This guide will walk you through the necessary steps to establish your Office 365 account, add your end users, and jumpstart collaboration. In today's post, we'll be discussing the setup process for you and your employee's Office 365 accounts from start to finish. What to Expect During The Setup Process Office 365 The process begins with the purchase of Office 365 licenses for all of your employees. There are different plans available, with options that include the full Microsoft Office downloadable suite of tools, and those that only provide the online, or web-based versions of the Office suite. There are plans available for an individual, small business, and for the enterprise. Each license type includes options for online and offline apps, email, and productivity solutions. Purchasing a New Office 365 Plan Once your plan is selected, you as the Administrator will walk through the purchasing process, allowing you to associate your new plan with any existing subscriptions, as well as associate your account to your personal Microsoft ID. If you've ever attended a Microsoft event or webinar, or purchased software from the Microsoft store, you probably already have a personal Microsoft ID. You can connect this to your new Office 365 account, or create a new Microsoft ID. The signup process has four simple steps: Provide your contact details Create a new ID (or associate your account with an existing ID) Review your order Place your order Once purchased, you will receive a welcome letter as the new Office 365 Administrator with details on signing onto the platform and getting started. If the license was purchased on your behalf, your profile will be added to the company account, and you will likewise receive a welcome email with your User ID and a temporary passw

Working with Excel - creating, viewing, editing and moving records - and understanding details thereof and deriving conclusion from it become easier with the advanced tools integrated with the Excel tables. For instance, if you want a row or column to come with total value, it would do so. Formatting and sorting data can be done in a quick and easy way without having much competence. And, eventually you can create a professional Excel tables that would help you manage information in a better manner.

Raptivity comes up with weekly workshop which you can attend. Many customers find Raptivity weekly workshop helpful. This webinar will help you to understand how Raptivity can be used in the most powerful way. The workshop will consist of detailed introduction, tips and tricks of how Raptivity works as a rapid development tool to create interactive elearning courses.

Would you like to play an interactive game with me? It's one of the more popular games used by instructional designers to create interest in a subject. Let's start with a few hints from Wikipedia. An American television quiz show created by Merv Griffin. …

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

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

Guest blogger Emily Warn is co-owner of Two Pens, which provides blogging services and teaches business how to write content that grows a social media following. My writer friends think I'm a geek. You can do what?! I can create a spreadsheet with book sales numbers that can be sorted by name and number. I know that is only the first rung of Excel Geek-dom, and unlike my compatriots, I aspire to climb into the ranks of those who know how to create snazzy charts and perform other formatting feats. Perhaps I'll be able to brand myself as a writer who plays with numbers.

WWW.OFFICE.COM/SETUP BLOGS: POWERPOINT MIGHT BE INCLUDED IN OFFICE 2016, BUT EVERYONE KNOWS IT'S SO PASSÉ. as easy as drag and drop - www.office.com/setup www.office.com/setup Blogs: These days it's all about Sway - the first of many native apps to be rolled out to Microsoft Office 365 subscribers. To put it simply, Sway is a web browser-based storytelling app. It allows anyone with the most basic computing knowledge to create beautiful-looking websites and presentations with images, text, tweets, videos or whatever other media you want to include. It works a bit like Word and Powerpoint combined - and finished products can be used on websites to display family photos, or in a beautiful work presentation. "The interface is based around a storyline, which allows users to bring in raw content such as PDFs, spreadsheets, graphs, photos, video and text," a spokesman for Microsoft told news.com.au. When creating a new presentation, users begin with a blank page containing nothing more than a title card. From there, add raw content, such as photos or text, and either place it all where desired or use a template that does the work for you. "It is as simple as clicking and dragging the content the user wants to add the presentation," the spokesman said. An impressive feature that sets this application apart from the likes of Powerpoint is its integration with popular social media networking sites. Users can import pictures from Facebook, YouTube videos, tweets and other content without having to leave the app. Once happy with the content included, users can tweak its appearance by using the "Remix" feature. This will cycle the appearance of the presentation through the many templates available in the app. Microsoft has completely embraced the cloud with Sway, with work available to view through a web browser on any device the moment its finished. The work can then be shared on social media or even embedded on other websites. Best of all, itâ€

SmartArt allows you to communicate information with graphics instead of just using text. There are a variety of styles to choose from, which you can use to illustrate different types of ideas. Watch the video below to learn more about working with SmartArt. TO INSERT A SMARTART GRAPHIC: Select the slide where you want the SmartArt graphic to appear. From the Insert tab, select the SmartArt command in the Illustrations group. selecting the SmartArt command on the Insert tab - www.office.com/setup A dialog box will appear. Select a category on the left, choose the desired SmartArt graphic, then click OK. choosing a SmartArt graphic - www.office.com/setup The SmartArt graphic will appear on the current slide. the inserted smartart - www.office.com/setup You can also click the Insert a SmartArt Graphic command in a placeholder to add SmartArt. Inserting a SmartArt Graphic from a placeholder - www.office.com/setup TO ADD TEXT TO A SMARTART GRAPHIC: Select the SmartArt graphic. The text pane will appear to the left Enter text next to each bullet in the text pane. The text will appear in the corresponding shape. It will be resized automatically to fit inside the shape. adding text to the SmartArt graphic - www.office.com/setup You can also add text by clicking the desired shape and then typing. This works well if you only need to add text to a few shapes. However, for more complex SmartArt graphics, working in the text pane is often quicker and easier. adding text directly in the shapes of the SmartArt instead of the text pane - www.office.com/setup TO REORDER, ADD, AND DELETE SHAPES: It's easy to add new shapes, change their order, and even delete shapes from your SmartArt graphic. You can do all of this in the text pane, and it's a lot like creating an outline with a multilevel list. For more information on multilevel lists, you may want to review our Lists lesson. To demote a shape, select the desired bullet, then press the Tab key. The bullet will move to the

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

WWW.OFFICE.COM/SETUP BLOGS: INTRODUCTION www.office.com/setup Blogs: While there are four types of database objects in Access, tables are arguably the most important. Even when you're using forms, queries, and reports, you're still working with tables because that's where all of your data is stored. Tables are at the heart of any database, so it's important to understand how to use them. In this lesson, you will learn how to open tables, create and edit records, and modify the appearance of your table to make it easier to view and work with. 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 working with tables in Access. TABLE BASICS TO OPEN AN EXISTING TABLE: Open your database, and locate the Navigation pane. In the Navigation pane, locate the table you want to open. Double-click the desired table. Opening a table - www.office.com/setup The table will open and appear as a tab in the Document Tabs bar. The open table - www.office.com/setup UNDERSTANDING TABLES All tables are composed of horizontal rows and vertical columns, with small rectangles called cells in the places where rows and columns intersect. In Access, rows and columns are referred to as records and fields. A field is a way of organizing information by type. Think of the field name as a question and every cell within that field as a response to that question. In our example, the Last Name field is selected, which contains all the last names in the table. Fields and field names - www.office.com/setup A record is one unit of information. Every cell on a given row is part of that row's record. In our example, Quinton Boyd's record is selected, which contains all of the information related to him in the table. Records and record ID numbers - www.office.com/setu