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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

www.office.com/setup Blogs: Previews of PowerPoint2013 show that it will be easier to create and share professional presentations with a range of new and improved features. 1. NEW RANGE OF DESIGN THEMES Powerpoint 2013 start screen - www.office.com/setup Easier inclusion of videos, or pictures to give a more professional edge to presentations. Easy access to a collection of new themes available via the start screen. The ability to quickly change themes using theme variants. Alignment Guides have been added that make it easier to align text boxes, graphics and shapes with text. Merge Shapes tools -2013 includes Union, Combine, Fragment, Intersect, and Subtract tools making it easier for the user to merge two or more shapes into the shape required. 2. IMPROVEMENTS TO THE PRESENTER'S VIEW AND ORGANISATION OF THE PRESENTATION. The One click Slide Zoom allows the user to zoom in and out on diagram, or chart. The addition of a presenter's Navigation Grid, making it easier for the presenter to switch slides within a sequence using a navigation grid that the audience cannot see. The ability to easily project a presentation on a second screen using Auto-extend. 3. IMPROVED COLLABORATION WITH EASIER SHARING AND CO-AUTHORING. The Reply Comment feature. PowerPoint 2013 makes it easier to add and track comments next to the relevant section of text. Everyone working on the presentation can follow the discussion easily and act on any suggestions. Collaboration and Sharing. With Microsoft's emphasis on improved collaboration, the new default setting means that presentations are saved online to SkyDrive or SharePoint . This allows the author to send a link to the same file to everyone involved, complete with personalised viewing and editing permissions, so that everyone is working on the same version. The PowerPoint Web App Co-authoringfeature via PowerPoint Web. 2013 makes it easier for several people to work on the same presentation at the same time from the desktop or in bro

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

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

Reaching your work goals may look like a daunting task at first. With careful planning and implementation of right strategies, you can step up the career ladder quicker than you thought of. Here are few tips on how to get promoted at work quickly:



Continue learning

Learning is a lifelong process. To grow in your career, it is imperative that you keep accumulating knowledge across industries' trends, challenges and insights. Staying updated about your domain knowledge enables you to tackle challenges at work more efficiently and higher your chances of getting noticed by employers.

Lead when required

To take charge in a work environment doesn't always require you to be in a top position. You can assume a leadership role when circumstances demands at workplace. Exhibit your leadership skills while solving a critical problem at work by effectively communicating, motivating and working in coordination with other team members. Also start taking responsibilities a level in advance to show that you are ready for the next role.

Give your best

When you give your best in your work, you stay visible for your passion and performance. If you want to add more value to your work, then go t

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: The OneNote API team is pleased to announce that we have enabled application-level permissions support for the OneNote API. Until now, OneNote API calls could only be made with user-delegated permissions. This meant that your application would be restricted to scenarios that required a user to be signed in. With application-level permissions support, your application now supports scenarios that do not require a user to be signed in! Read the MSDN article for details of the OneNote API application-level permissions support. With the availability of OneNote API application-level permissions support, many new scenarios that weren't possible earlier are now enabled. Some example scenarios include: Analytics (based on OneNote metadata and content exposed by the OneNote API). Dashboards (based on OneNote metadata and content exposed by the OneNote API). Background provisioning of OneNote content. Background update of OneNote content. During the development process of building the new application-level permissions support for OneNote API, our Product Management and Engineering teams worked closely with third-party partners to ensure that relevant and key education scenarios were implemented. We also ensured that our API would work well with new and upcoming third-party solutions. One of these education companies we worked closely with during the API development was Hapara. "The Hapara Dashboard provides educators with a bird's-eye view into student work across the Office 365 platform. With Dashboard, educators view and access student work from OneDrive and OneNote Class Notebooks from a central hub, making it easier to engage with students and their work across the Office 365 platform. Hapara relies on the new OneNote API to help co-teachers, counselors, coaches and school administrators gain appropriate access to student work in any classroom, something that previously required manual sharing and significant administrative effort by th

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

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: 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

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

www.office.com/setup Blogs: I've been installing Office 2013 on a lot of computers lately and I've ran into quite a few problems along the way. From annoying messages like "Sorry we ran into a problem" and "Something went wrong" to slow downloads, hanging at certain percentages during the install, it's been typical Microsoft problems all along the way. If you've been trying to install Office 2013 on Windows 8 or Windows 7 and you're running into issues, I'm going to try and give you as many possible solutions as I could find. If you run into a different issue not mentioned here, feel free to post a comment and let us know. It's also worth noting that you can't install Office 2013 on Windows Vista or Windows XP, it's just not possible. You'll get an error message like: This is not a valid Win32 application or We are sorry, you couldn't install your Office product because you don't have a modern Windows operating system. You need Microsoft windows 7 (or newer) to install this product or The procedure entry point K32GetProcessImageFileNameW could not be located in the dynamic link library KERNERL32.dll Now let's talk about some of the problems that can occur when installing Office 2013 on Windows 7 and Windows 8. FIX "SOMETHING WENT WRONG" OFFICE 2013 You might get this error if a first installation stalled and you ended up starting a second installation over the first one. You might also get this error if the computer restarted for some reason before the installation was finished. In this case, you should go to the Control Panel, click on Microsoft Office 2013 or Microsoft Office 365 and click on Change. Office 2013 change - www.office.com/setup Blogs Depending on your version of Office installed, you should either see an option called Repair or Online Repair. If you have Office 365, you'll see Online Repair and then the Repair option. Office 2013 repair - www.office.com/setup Blogs If, for some reason, this fails or

WWW.OFFICE.COM/SETUP BLOGS: 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€

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

www.office.com/setup Blogs: Microsoft today detailed the new features and improvements that it delivered to Office 365 users this month. Key among them are new Excel co-authoring capabilities, Microsoft Teams, and new OneNote inking and accessibility updates. "Office 365 provides the broadest and deepest toolkit for collaboration between individuals, teams and entire organizations," Microsoft corporate vice president Kirk Koenigsbauer explains. Here's what's new in March. CO-AUTHORING IN EXCEL 2016 FOR WINDOWS Following similar functionality in Word and PowerPoint, Microsoft has enabled co-authoring capabilities in Excel for the Windows desktop (Excel 2016). (This feature is also available in Excel Online and Excel Mobile on Android, iOS, and Windows 10; Excel for Mac support is coming soon.) "This allows you to know who else is working with you in a spreadsheet, see where they're working and view changes automatically within seconds," Mr. Koenigsbauer says. Co-authoring in Excel 2016 for Windows is rolling out for Office 365 subscribers in Office Insider Fast, Microsoft says. Co-authoring in Excel for iOS is currently available for Office Insider. The feature is generally available in Excel Mobile for Android and Windows, and in Excel Online. AUTOSAVE Microsoft is working to expand the availability of AutoSave beyond mobile versions of Office: Office 365 subscribers in Office Insider Fast now have access to AutoSave in Word, Excel and PowerPoint on Windows desktop, for files stored in SharePoint Online, OneDrive and OneDrive for Business. "With AutoSave, you can stop worrying about hitting the Save button, whether you're working alone or with others," Mr. Koenigsbauer explains. MICROSOFT TEAMS Microsoft delivered its long-awaited Slack alternative, called Microsoft Teams, earlier this month to all Office 365 commercial customers. And last week, it shipped Microsoft Teams to all Office 365 Education subscribers as well. "We are thri

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

Forms are the cornerstone of business applications, and plenty of options exist to create a form in SharePoint. Which one you use will depend on your needs, technical skill and the version of SharePoint you are using. In this article we'll explore seven ways to build forms in SharePoint along with some of the pros and cons of each. All these options will be storing the data in an existing SharePoint list. SHAREPOINT LISTS Default forms are available for any SharePoint list. Create a list and you have a corresponding form to add and modify items. Options are available to organize the order of fields, format them, validate input, add basic calculations and attach files. There are also more advanced options such as limiting permissions to item owners and enabling workflows. You can modify all of these under List Settings for the list. These generic SharePoint forms are a good choice for simple applications that don't have too many columns or records and that only require basic functionality. Lists also offer a data sheet view to edit a limited set of columns, much like a spreadsheet. What you see is what you get with these basic forms. If you need to break fields up into multiple tabs, or perhaps have business logic run on them in real time, you'll need to keep on reading. And although theoretically a list can store millions of items, you can only access up to 5,000 items in any view (in reality the numbers are far lower before performance degrades considerably). Basic Sharepoint list form - www.office.com/setup SHAREPOINT DESIGNER Creating a custom form in SharePoint Designer is relatively easy. You take an existing SharePoint list and use Designer to create a new .aspx page which renders and controls the form. There are files used by a list to create forms, one each to add, edit and view. These are located in the same folder as their associated SharePoint list. With Designer you can show or hide fields based on certain criteria, change the layout, use va

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