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www.office.com/setup Blogs: With the release of Office 2016, you can now get the latest version of Office on your PC or Mac if you have an existing Office 365 for business subscription that includes the Office desktop applications. The information below is for individuals in an organization, including educational institutions and non-profits using Office 365. NOTE: Office 365 has different services and the steps to upgrade are different. If you have an Office 365 Home, Personal, or University subscription, a one-time purchase of Office such as Office Home & Student or Office Home & Business, see How do I get Office 2016? If you're using Office 365 for Business operated by 21Vianet in China, see Office 365 operated by 21Vianet: How do I get the new Office 2016 apps? If you follow these steps and don't see an option to install Office 2016, or Project or Visio, contact your admin. Your admin may not have assigned a licensed to you or given you permission to install the version of Office you want. Are you an Office 365 admin? See Upgrade users to the latest Office client using Office 365 for business for step-by-step guidance to help you upgrade users in your organization to the latest version of Office. UPGRADE TO OFFICE 2016, PROJECT PROFESSIONAL 2016, OR VISIO PRO 2016 Select what Office product you want to upgrade. If you're not sure what version of Office you're currently using, see What version of Office am I using? SIGN UP for A NEW OFFICE 365 for BUSINESS SUBSCRIPTION Depending on the plan you choose, Office 365 for business plans include the latest versions of Office. If you're interested in setting up Office 365 in your organization and would like to learn more or buy it, see Office 365 Business and Enterprise plans. SEE ALSO Upgrade users to the latest Office client using Office 365 for business Manage user software in Office 365 Need help with Office 2016 in Office 365 for business? Install Office on your PC or Mac Troubleshoot installing Offic

www.office.com/setup Blogs: Microsoft Office 2016 for Windows has landed and it brings many smart new features, including co-authoring with real-time collaboration, simplified sharing, a great feature search engine called Tell Me, and much more. The Mac version of Office 2016 has actually been around for a few months already. If you have an Office 365 subscription, you can get it now for free and we show you how below.A Microsoft Office 2016 Preview: Smart & Subtle Changes A Microsoft Office 2016 Preview: Smart & Subtle ChangesOffice 2016 for Mac was just released and the Windows version will follow in the fall. We show you the new look and features of the world's most popular productivity suite. Will you upgrade?READ MORE Alternatively, you can buy it at the Microsoft store (different packages available and Microsoft has a guide for installing it) or your local retailer and if you're unsure, we have a guide for what Office suite to get. Note that if you're running Office 2010 on Windows 10, you can get a 50% discount on a one year subscription of Office 365 Home; simply use the Get Office app in Windows 10. Get Office - www.office.com/setup Before you overspend your budget, remember you can get Microsoft Word for free and you can choose from many free alternatives for the entire Microsoft suite.This Is How You Can Get Microsoft Word for Free This Is How You Can Get Microsoft Word for FreeDo you really want the entire Microsoft Office suite? If all you need is Word without the fancy features, Microsoft will give it to you for free. Here is how.READ MORE FIND OUT YOUR VERSION OF OFFICE Unsure whether you have an Office 365 subscription? You can look up your status. Open a file, any Office document, then navigate to File > Account and under you'll see whether you have an Office 365 subscription. Office 2016 Account - www.office.com/setup Here is a complete list of ways to check your version of Office from Microsoft. YOUR UPGRADE WILL BE FINAL Before you

With Google Apps and Office 365 revolutionizing the way people work, you may feel that Microsoft Office is quickly becoming a dated product that will soon be packed away to the back of the closet. But with the 2016 version set to launch in autumn of this year, Microsoft is looking to change your mind. Now they're adapting their classic Office package for today's modern workforce. Here are four of the new features that are reinventing the way you look at your Office applications. CLOUD FOCUS for OUTLOOK ATTACHMENTS Microsoft knows that sharing attachments amongst co-workers and teams can be a hassle. With many collaborators still sharing documents and files the old fashioned way - attaching it to an email and then sending to others - it's easy for users to get confused and send an incorrect or outdated version. To solve this problem, Microsoft is gently nudging us to use the cloud. Now when you add an attachment to an email, you're now asked if you'd also like to share a link to a file on your OneDrive, OneDrive for Business or SharePoint account. SHOWCASING EASY WAYS TO USE OFFICE BETTER If you're like most people, you probably aren't using Office to its full potential. And who can blame you? Between Word, Excel, PowerPoint and more, there are literally hundreds of features and tools you can use - if only you had the time to discover them all. To help you get the most out of Office, Microsoft has now added a Tell Me box in the top center of your program title bar. This tool gives you an easy way to get questions answered. for example, if you want to project your desktop screen to a second monitor or create a graph in Excel, simply type your question into the Tell Me box and Microsoft will find the answers that most closely fit your search criteria. SWAY Look out PowerPoint, here comes Sway - the new, hipper Office application that makes creating fluid, stylish presentations easy. With Sway, you can now gather content from various source

WWW.OFFICE.COM/SETUP BLOGS: FROM USING ONENOTE FOR PROJECT MANAGEMENT TO DISCOVERING HIDDEN FEATURES IN WORD, THERE ARE TONS OF WAYS YOU CAN GET MORE OUT OF OFFICE 365. HERE'S A LOOK BACK AT THIS YEAR'S MOST POPULAR TIPS. @MENTIONS IN OUTLOOK www.office.com/setup Blogs: This is an excerpt from our post Get Someone's Attention in Outlook with @Mentions. Using the @ symbol is a quick way to draw people's attention to important things. Microsoft has rolled this handy feature into Outlook, so here's how you can use it to get people's attention in emails and also save time. (Note: This feature is only available in Outlook 2016, Outlook 2016 FOR Mac, Outlook on the web FOR Office 365 Business, Outlook.com, and Outlook on the web FOR Exchange Server 2016.) ONENOTE FOR PROJECT MANAGEMENT This is an excerpt from our post 5 Keys to Using OneNote FOR Project Management. Instead of investing in costly project management software, how about using a free program like Microsoft OneNote? OneNote digital notebooks are available on all your devices and can be used FOR a variety of projects. Whether you are planning a wedding, heading up an office presentation, or writing a thesis paper, OneNote bends to your needs. This post focuses on tips FOR the office, but personal and school projects can be managed with OneNote using many of these same key principles. HIDDEN FEATURES IN WORD This is an excerpt from our post 3 Hidden & Useful Tricks in Microsoft Word. There are lots of great hidden features tucked away in Microsoft Word that you probably don't know about. From activating research tools, to changing the page color of documents to reduce eye strain, to easily capturing screenshots, here are three tricks that you will enjoy. WORD ONLINE VS. WORD DESKTOP This is an excerpt from our post 3 Things You Can Do With Word Online That You Can't Do With Word Desktop. Word Online isn't just a simple online word processor. To get the full value of the product

WWW.OFFICE.COM/SETUP BLOGS: CHANGING YOUR DEFAULT SETTINGS IN WORD www.office.com/setup Blogs: There may be certain settings in Word that get on your nerves, like default settings that you find yourself changing over and over-the paragraph spacing, the font size-each time you start a new document. Maybe you prefer a different font style instead of the default Calibri. Maybe you like all of your documents to have narrower margins so you can fit more information on the page. Maybe you even work for a company that has very specific document standards-regarding the color scheme or layout-and you're tired of changing these settings every time. Luckily, you can customize many of the default settings in Word. You just have to know where to look. USING SET AS DEFAULT You can't change the default settings for everything in Word, but there are certain tools and features that give you this option. Popular examples include: Font Paragraph spacing Line spacing Margins Page orientation To find out if you can customize the default settings for a certain element, look for an arrow in the bottom-right corner of the group. This will open a dialog box where you can access all of the basic settings, plus some more advanced ones that you won't find on the Ribbon. Screenshot of Microsoft Word - www.office.com/setup Next, look for a button near the bottom of the dialog box that says Set as Default. All you have to do is click this button, and Word will assign your current settings-like the font or font size you've chosen-as the new default for this particular element. Screenshot of Microsoft Word - www.office.com/setup Finally, Word will ask whether you want to set this as the default for this document only, or for all documents based on the Normal template (in other words, all documents in the future). Choose the second option, and Word will use these settings from now on. Screenshot of Microsoft Word - www.office.com/setup If you don't have a lot of experience with

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: Microsoft announced two new tools, Researcher and Editor, for Word 2016 today that introduce better research integration and writing assistance. Word 2016 is the newest version of the popular word editing software that is available to Office 365 users and customers who purchased a standalone copy of Office 2016. The update is available today to all Office 365 subscribers who are using Word 2016 on the Windows desktop according to Microsoft. The easiest way to find out whether you have it or not is to open Word 2016 on the Windows desktop and check whether the new "Researcher" option is available under References when you edit a document. RESEARCHER word 2016 researcher - www.office.com/setup Researcher is a new tool that you may use to find references directly from within Word 2016. The feature uses Bing's Knowledge Graph for that and displays data in a sidebar in the Word 2016 when enabled. You find the new option under References > Researcher. Researcher is a new service in Word that helps you find and incorporate reliable sources and content for your paper in fewer steps. Right within your Word document you can explore material related to your topic and add it-and its properly-formatted citation-in one click. Researcher uses the Bing Knowledge Graph to pull in the appropriate content from the web and provide structured, safe and credible information. You may use the new tool to add quotes and "properly formatted citation" to documents. While this may not be suitable for science-grade documents, it may do for many other types of documents. EDITOR word 2016 editor - www.office.com/setup Editor is touted as a new digital writing assistant that assists you with proofing and editing services. The initial release flags unclear phrases, redundancy or complex words, and makes recommendations by displaying alternatives to you. The service uses machine learning and natural language processing for that, and will improve over time

WWW.OFFICE.COM/SETUP BLOGS: USE THIS HELPFUL FEATURE TO QUICKLY VERIFY FACTS AND FIND ADDITIONAL INFORMATION AS YOU WORK. www.office.com/setup Blogs: Among all of Office 2016's useful new features, there's one in particular you'll definitely want to take the time to master: Smart Lookup. In short, it serves as a digital research assistant, pulling in information from the Web to enhance your work or help you decipher unfamiliar content. If you're an Office regular, Smart Lookup holds the key to a more powerful workflow. WHERE TO FIND IT Smart Lookup is just one right-click away in any Office 2016 app. Highlight a word or phrase you want to research, right-click, and select Smart Lookup from the context menu. You can also get to this feature by launching Review > Smart Lookup and entering a query. smart lookup word - www.office.com/setup Right-click on a word or phrase to launch Office's Smart Lookup tool. Smart Lookup works similarly in both Windows and Mac versions of Office 2016. When you launch the tool, a sidebar appears on the right side of the screen that displays the results of your query. Here's the really cool thing about Smart Lookup: It takes context from the words around the one you're searching for in order to provide you with the most relevant results, because so many words and terms have multiple meanings. There's a reason it's called Smart Lookup! Smart Lookup proves its value in many scenarios. Here are some examples. BE A WORD NERD Living up to its name, Smart Lookup will find a definition, synonyms, and the parts of speech for any word you highlight. smart lookup definitions - www.office.com/setup Find definitions and other information to assist with writing. Select the Explore tab to get word-usage information, or scroll down the page for entries from Wikipedia or Bing search results. Click on Define for a word's meaning and to hear how it's pronounced. PULL IN RESEARCH FROM THE WEB The most useful feature for me on a day

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: 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: As new Office 365 features become available, they are sometimes rolled out over a period of time to all subscribers. If you have an Office 365 work or school account, the timing of when you receive new features may also depend on your organization's settings. Eventually, all Office 365 subscribers will receive the new features. If you don't see a feature you're expecting in your Office apps, there's no need to worry-it's on its way! NOTE: New builds are also rolled out this way. This means when a build becomes available, not all customers will receive the new features right away. However, you can expect it to come to your device soon. Who gets new features? All new features are included for free as part of your Office 365 subscription. If you have a work or school account, your administrator may control when you see new features. If you have a one-time purchase of Office 2016, you will receive security and performance updates but no new features. How do I get new features? You will get them automatically as they are rolled out. You can also check for and install updates manually. (This does not guarantee that you will receive the newest features right away.) When will new features arrive in my Office? We don't publish an exact day when the updates occur because that day can vary, and multiple updates could happen in a month. All Office 365 subscribers will eventually get the new features. However, if you'd like to get them sooner, you can join the Office Insider program. HOW ARE OFFICE UPDATES ROLLED OUT? If you've joined the Office Insider program, you get preview builds for the latest features, security updates, and performance fixes that Microsoft releases before anyone else. for the Windows, Mac, and Windows Mobile Office Insider programs, there are two tracks: Office Insider Fast and Office Insider Slow. Office Insider for iOS has fast, while Android currently only has slow. When new features and updates are distribu

This post is brought to you by Seayoung Rhee, Product Marketing Manager in the SharePoint Product Marketing Group. Reliable business intelligence and insight are key to a thriving business. Excel, SharePoint and Office 365 make business intelligence (BI) in the new Office more accessible to everyone across an organization as part of their everyday work. New and enhanced features in familiar tools such as Excel empower everyone in a business to easily explore, model, analyze, and visualize data from various sources. With SharePoint, users of all levels can collaboratively develop and share insights through dashboards and scorecards, and this experience continues seamlessly in the cloud with Office 365. For corporate environments, these features are further enhanced by SQL Server For higher levels of perFormance and scalability both on-premises and in the cloud with BI Azure. Ultimately with Microsoft BI, anyone in the organization can develop the insights that help drive new discoveries and make better, more inFormed decisions. EXPLORE YOUR DATA PowerPivot was a popular add-in to Excel 2010, allowing users to create large data models with hundreds of millions of rows in Excel. This feature is now natively embedded in Excel to reduce the hassle of downloads and installation. PowerPivot is also supported in SharePoint with SQL Server Analysis Services where the workbooks with PowerPivot models can be shared broadly across the organization. New features like Quick Explore aid users in navigating their data, and Quick Analysis provides previews of their charts, graphs, and scorecards. Users can: Combine and analyze large datasets with PowerPivot Summarize data and discover trends with Quick Explore Instantly preview charts and pivot tables with Quick Analysis www.office.com/setup VISUALIZE YOUR INSIGHTS Introduced with SQL Server 2012, Power View provided a canvas to create visual dashboards in SharePoint. Now this feature is embedded into Excel and SharePoint so

www.office.com/setup Blogs: Andy Wolber shows you how to edit Word, Excel, and PowerPoint documents stored on Google Drive from your desktop or mobile device. Office and Drive - www.office.com/setup Many organizations that rely on Google Apps also use Microsoft Office applications. Mass conversion of highly formatted documents, complex spreadsheets, or animated presentations may not always be practical. As a result, people still open and edit Word, Excel, and PowerPoint documents after a move to Google Apps. Microsoft Office files, however, no longer need to be stored on your local computer, server, or even on MIcrosoft's OneDrive. Google Drive stores Microsoft Word, Excel, and PowerPoint files much like any file server. And Google encrypts the files when you upload them to Drive, and it stores the files in an encrypted state, too. Google also offers several ways to edit Microsoft Office files stored on Google Drive. Edit capabilities vary by operating system. Here's a look at the options as of August 2015. EDIT WITH MICROSOFT OFFICE The most full-featured way to edit a Word, Excel, or PowerPoint file stored on Google Drive is with Microsoft Office, of course. People who use Office on Windows may open Office files from Google Drive with a plug-in. Simply install the Google Drive plug-in for Microsoft Office, and Google Drive will display as a file storage location in Word, Excel, and PowerPoint (Figure A). From within your Office app, open a file on Google Drive, make your changes, then save the file back to Google Drive. Figure A Figure A - www.office.com/setup OPEN MICROSOFT OFFICE FILES STORED ON GOOGLE DRIVE WITH A GOOGLE-CREATED PLUG-IN. You can also open an Office file stored on Google Drive from your Chrome browser-on either Windows or a Mac. First, install the Google Drive app for your system. Next, start Chrome and browse to your file on Google Drive (http://drive.google.com). Right-click (or, [Ctrl]+click) on a Word, Excel, or PowerPoint documen

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

We aim to make SkyDrive the place for all your documents, notes, photos, videos and other files. With the release of Windows 8 and Windows RT back in October, more and more people every day are using SkyDrive for their most important files through the SkyDrive app, as well as through SkyDrive integration in File Explorer. Of course, there are great SkyDrive experiences for Windows devices, but being the place for all your files means we invest a significant amount of effort ensuring you have a great experience across all the devices you want to use. Today, we're excited to release v3.0 of the SkyDrive app for iOS that includes improved photo features, an updated UI, and a number of other new features and enhancements. You can install or update the SkyDrive app for iOS now via iTunes. Here are the updates we've made to v3.0 of the SkyDrive app for iOS: Support for iPhone 5 and iPad Mini Updated app icons and user experience Works better with your photos: Download full resolution photos to your iPhone or iPad Control the size of photos you upload and download Photo metadata is retained when you upload to SkyDrive Opening and saving files to SkyDrive works better with other apps on your iOS devices Many other small changes, bug fixes and performance improvements

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

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