Group items tagged

www.office.com/setup Blogs: Sway: Microsoft Office presentation software. PowerPoint: Microsoft Office presentation software. So what's the difference? You're watching Jeopardy! when the presenter utters the following answer in keeping with the game show's famous format: "A software tool from Microsoft for creating presentations, web-based reports and projects." Quick as a flash you spit out the question in unison with the contestant: "What is PowerPoint?" To your astonishment, presenter Alex Trebek shakes his head and utters a curt "No". The correct question was "What is Sway?" To the best of our knowledge, that scenario has yet to surface on the American quiz show, but it's hypothetically possible. After all, there are a number of similarities between PowerPoint and Sway on first inspection: Both are part of Microsoft Office Both can be used to create rich presentations Both support multimedia including video, audio and images Both feature customisable templates There's no disputing that there are areas where PowerPoint and Sway overlap. But if you're thinking Sway is just a web-based clone of PowerPoint, think again - each piece of software has highly specific functions. It's well worth familiarising yourself with the differences between the two, cos if you Sway when you're meant to PowerPoint, you're gonna have a bad time. POWERPOINT IN A PARAGRAPH As the world's preeminent slideshow software, PowerPoint requires no introduction. From classroom projects to delivering keynote addresses, Microsoft's easy to use presentation software has graced overhead projectors on every continent. Slides; audience handouts; speaker's notes. Whatever you choose to create and however you choose to deliver your story, PowerPoint makes it simple. SWAY IN SUMMARY Sway is an online presentation and storytelling app that's free for anyone with a Microsoft or Office 365 account. The newest addition to Microsoft Office, Sway helps

WWW.OFFICE.COM/SETUP BLOGS: GO TEAM! THAT'S WHAT OFFICE 2016 IS BUILT TO ENCOURAGE, WITH NEW COLLABORATIVE TOOLS AND OTHER WAYS TO TIE WORKERS AND CONTENT TOGETHER. pcw office primary 2 - www.office.com/setup www.office.com/setup Blogs: Office 2016 is a major upgrade, but not in the way you'd first suppose. Just as Windows 10 ties notebooks, desktops, phones and tablets together, and adds a layer of intelligence, Office 2016 wants to connect you and your coworkers together, using some baked-in smarts to help you along. I tested the client-facing portion of Office 2016. Microsoft released the trial version of Office 2016 in March as a developer preview with a focus on administrative features (data loss protection, multi-factor authentication and more) that we didn't test. I've been using it since the consumer preview release in May. Microsoft seeded reviewers with a Microsoft Surface 3 with the "final code" upon it. That's a slight misnomer, as the Office 2016 apps upon it used the same version that Microsoft had tested with the public, with a few exceptions: Outlook was pre-populated with links and contacts of a virtual company to give reviewers the look and feel of Delve, Outlook's new Groups feature, and more. Office 2013 users can rest easy about one thing: Office 2016's applications are almost indistinguishable from their previous versions in look and feature set. To the basic Office apps, Microsoft has added its Sway app for light content creation, and the enterprise information aggregator, Delve. Collaboration in the cloud is the real difference with Office 2016. Office now encourages you to share documents online, in a collaborative workspace. Printing out a document and marking it up with a pen? Medieval. Even emailing copies back and forth is now tacitly discouraged. office 2016 review powerpoint demo shot - www.office.com/setupMicrosoft Microsoft says its new collaborative workflow reflects how people do things now, from study groups

In order to be taken seriously, small businesses need to convince customers of their professional ability and their value. Small businesses can punch above their weight by taking the time to go to market with a professional set of business documents, templates and content to ensure customers aren't dismissing them before they have a chance to pitch the value of their product or service. But how can small businesses deliver a professional image when they don't have the same resources as big businesses? Web-based solutions, also known as 'cloud solutions,' help small businesses maintain professional-looking documents even while collaborating and editing with employees in real-time from different locations. Gone are the days where employees hoped documents maintained proper spacing and margins; small businesses can now create materials in confidence and showcase their professional ability to customers. Below are just a few of the ways small businesses can ensure they are maintaining a professional appearance when it comes to the business communications: MAKE THE FIRST IMPRESSION A PROFESSIONAL ONE An email newsletter is often a small business' first connection with a potential customer; they can keep it professional by registering a business email domain (johndoe@yourbusiness.com) and sending all communications to customers and potential customers from there. Most cloud solutions offer a cost-efficient and easy way to customize emails with basic client information - small businesses should take the time to add a personal touch to connect with their customers. Messages should be short and to the point to ensure their email will bring value to potential customers. Email signatures should be simple, clean and professional, and employees shouldn't forget to run a spell-check before hitting send. CREATE CUSTOMER-READY DOCUMENTS Whether creating documents on an office desktop or on-the-go on a mobile or tablet device through Office Mobile Apps in Office 3

We're excited to announce a major upgrade for our Outlook.com app for Android devices that overhauls the entire user interface and provides a number of new features. You can get the latest app here. www.office.com/setup We believe that the best mobile experience is enabled through Exchange ActiveSync-which provides a rich, powerful, network-optimized experience for Windows Phone, iOS and other mobile devices. However, native support for Exchange ActiveSync on Android devices varies significantly and so we build a separate app to ensure as many people as possible can have a great Outlook.com experience across all their devices. As you've heard us talk about previously, the overall response to Outlook.com has been very positive. However, our Android app has been behind and so we're excited to take this large step forward. Starting today, you can get the same great Outlook.com look and feel you've come to love on Windows 8 and the web on your Android device.

Windows 10 has grabbed the attention of social media and customers alike more so because it is a crucial operating system for Microsoft after the debacle of Windows 8 and a not so great reception for Windows 8.1. But, Microsoft has another major product on their cards now, Office, which enhances the Windows productivity of five major products into a system of applications. With Office 2016, Microsoft plans to build from scratch, a mobile and cloud first approach which is customer centric and doesn't only focus on web compared to Office 365 and 2013. Office 2016 has recently been launched on September 22, 2015. www.office.com/setup The Cost factor The first and the most important thing we look at during major software products and updates is the price tag that comes along with it as there are so multiple updates for major software and it is not feasible to go through each and every revision. The all new Office 2016 suite is free for customers on mobile and tablets (conditions apply) and pretty cheap at $145 for "Office Home & Student 2016" and the RRP version of the same is priced at $165, along with subscription version of the suite (Office 365 Personal) at about $70 per year.

Today's post was written by Nick Portello, Network Manager, Steve Moore Chevrolet. Read more Office 365 customer stories here. Office 365 Customer Steve Moore Chevrolet_Nick PortelloWhen I joined Steve Moore Chevrolet as the sole IT staffer six months ago, the dealership was in dire need of new technology. Employees coped with aging PCs, an outdated POP3 email service, a poor mobility experience, data loss, and no collaboration tools. Then I heard about Microsoft Office 365, which gives you the latest version of Microsoft Office, plus a suite of cloud-based communication and collaboration tools that solved all our problems. Unlike Google Apps, the UI was familiar to our employees and Microsoft offered a flexible subscription-based payment option, which is ideal for our fluctuating workforce. Now that our documents are stored in Microsoft SharePoint Online and SkyDrive Pro, we have easy access to collaboration tools with robust security. I no longer worry about falling out of compliance with Chevrolet auditors, losing important financial data, or having to pay fines that could reach $250,000. I can also find data on-demand for Chevrolet auditors and use my mobile device to look up information, which saves about 40 percent of every day-I'm no longer running between my computer and the sales, service, and administration departments. I can focus on what I really need to do. Thanks to Office 365, we are all able to get on with our work! Learn more about Steve Moore Chevrolet and Office 365 by watching the video below and reading the case study.

Spoink.com provides Podcasting and multimedia social Blogging via any standard Telephone, Mobile Phone, Web Browser, IM and Email client

Meeting notes, vacation plans, grocery lists, great quotes, notes to self-let me count the ways to use OneNote. Consolidate all of your crucial information chunks and snippets in one place, then link with OneDrive to share this virtual notebook with yourself (roaming), with other people (collaboration), and with other devices (OneNote ecosystem). Can't view this video? It's also on Microsoft Showcase. Need a peek? Here's a 30-second trailer. Note SkyDrive is now OneDrive, and SkyDrive Pro is now OneDrive for Business. Read more about this change at From SkyDrive to OneDrive. What you will learn at Tuesday's webinar Using OneNote for your next household project Ways to share OneNote meeting notes Share with OneNote, even if you don't have it OneNote for Android, iPhone, iPad. References for this webinar Share your notebook (video) Share notes with other people (how-to) Work together on a shared notebook (OneNote 2010 training course) Share notes in a meeting (how-to) Plan a trip with others (video) OneNote keyboard shortcuts (2010) and (2013) OneNote mobile apps Go to http://aka.ms/offweb for more information on how to join the series. -Doug Thomas

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

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

When we launched the preview of Outlook.com, our goal was to build the best email service in the world, capable of scaling to over a billion active customers. When Outlook.com came out of preview, it was already the fastest growing email service thanks to your support. The last two months have seen the release of a new, modern Outlook.com calendar, a refreshed Outlook.com app for Android devices, two-factor authentication for your account, new international domains for people around the world, and the release of a preview of Skype calling in Outlook.com. Today, we're excited to announce that we've completed upgrading all Hotmail customers to Outlook.com. Coupled with the growing organic excitement for Outlook.com, this has pushed us to over 400 million active Outlook.com accounts, including 125 million that are accessing email, calendar and contacts on a mobile device using Exchange ActiveSync. We're also pleased to announce that we're adding two new features to Outlook.com: SMTP send, so it's easier to send mail from different email addresses, and deeper integration with SkyDrive.

www.office.com/setup Blogs: Microsoft Forms is a new part of Office 365 Education that allows teachers and students to quickly and easily create custom quizzes, surveys, questionnaires, registrations and more. When you create a quiz or form, you can invite others to respond to it using any web browser, even on mobile devices. As results are submitted, you can use built-in analytics to evaluate responses. Form data, such as quiz results, can be easily exported to Excel for additional analysis or grading. WHAT YOU'LL NEED An Office 365 Education subscription. If you're not sure you have this, please contact your IT administrator to verify. An organizational or school ID account for yourself with permissions to use Microsoft Forms. Screenshot showing monitor with form open - www.office.com/setup Create forms in minutes Screenshot showing three people sharing a form - www.office.com/setup Send forms to anyone Screenshot of a monitor displaying charts for a form - www.office.com/setup See results in real time Why can't I log in to Microsoft Forms? Microsoft Forms is available only to Office 365 Education subscribers using a school or organization ID account. GET STARTED QUICKLY Clipboard Bring together teachers and students. Get more done! Create a form or quiz with questions, define settings, share your form, and check the results-in a few easy steps. Step 1: Sign in and create a new form or quiz Step 2: Adjust settings for your form or quiz Step 3: Send your form or quiz to others and collect responses Step 4: Check your form results or quiz results Are you an admin? Learn about security and privacy, Microsoft Forms data storage, and how to turn on or turn off Microsoft Forms in your organization. ADD PICTURES AND VIDEOS TO YOUR FORM OR QUIZ People Enhance your quizzes and forms with pictures and videos. Want to add a logo to your form or display pictures or videos next to quiz questions? You can do all of these tasks quickly in Microsoft Forms. Add a picture

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

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

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 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

www.office.com/setup Blogs: The new admin center reached general availability one month ago. This was a big milestone in our mission to provide you with a first-class admin experience, with tools that enable you to efficiently manage all aspects of the service. We continue to evolve the admin center. This month, we focused on providing you with additional usage insights, including new usage reports, the preview of the Office 365 adoption content pack in Power BI and more role-based permissions through a new Power BI admin role. Here's a summary of the October updates: NEW USAGE REPORTS STARTING TO ROLL OUT TODAY In March, we launched the new reporting dashboard in the Office 365 admin center that makes it easier for you to efficiently monitor your service, identify issues, plan training and report back on the investment to your management. Today, we are happy to announce four new usage reports for active users, Email clients, Skype for Business clients and Office 365 Groups, that provide you with additional insights about how users in your organization are using and adopting Office 365. Here's a look at each report: Active Users report-Lets you see which of your users actively use one or more of the different Office 365 services. This report is especially helpful for admins to identify users for whom they might want to plan some additional training and communication. Often, after being assigned an Office 365 license, users need a helping hand to get started with the different services. They might not know how to activate the product or how the product can help them to be more productive. The image below shows all users that are licensed for one or more products and the last date they used any of those products. By clicking the Column icon, admins can modify the table to see which license has been assigned to a user, as well as when the license was assigned to the user. admin-center-october-1 - www.office.com/setup Blogs Skype for Business clients used r