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Believe it or not, proficiency in Microsoft Word ranks among the top 20 skills required for positions that have the highest growth and wage potential between now and 20201. This finding is part of an extensive IDC study, which also found that core skills such as communication and presentation will be in high demand among employers regardless of industry. That said, being just so-so at Microsoft Word won't boost your chances at landing a high-paying job or at getting promoted. To become more productive, more efficient, or more creative at using Microsoft Word, you can check out and unleash dozens of add-ins that are designed to augment Word's already powerful features. So here's a list which includes more than 50 of the best Microsoft Word add-ins to get you started.

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

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

Today's guest blogger is Javier Vasquez, Senior Director of Productivity Sales, State and Local Government at Microsoft. For the past 15 years, Javier has helped public sector customers implement solutions that help them realize value in their technology investments. As government agencies prepare for this week's Lean Government Virtual Summit, cloud innovation will surely be a hot topic. So why should governments choose Microsoft Office 365 as they consider moving their productivity software to the cloud? The infographic below highlights the advantages of Office 365 versus Google Apps for government agencies. As you can see from the infographic, the benefits of Office 365 are many: Office 365 offers governments substantial cost savings. Governments can rest assured their information is protected and their tools accessible to people with visual and hearing impairments. Office 365 makes it easy for governments to meet email retention policies and fulfill legal discovery requests. Governments have the tools they need to be highly responsive to the citizens they serve. As Todd Kimbriel, Director of E-Government for the Texas Department of Information Resource, puts it: "No other solution provides the rich capabilities of Office 365, including web conferencing, real-time collaboration, and document and calendar sharing." We hope you find the infographic helpful! Also, please note that officials from the City of Kansas City, Missouri and the U.S. Recovery Accountability and Transparency Board will be discussing their experiences with Office 365 at the Lean Government Virtual Summit. It's not too late to register! To learn more, click here.

This tutorial on using conditional formatting to highlight dates is brought to us by MVP Frédéric Le Guen, with special acknowledgment and thanks to Ken Puls for assistance with translation from French to English. Date functions in Excel make it is possible to perform date calculations, like addition or subtraction, resulting in automated or semi-automated worksheets. The NOW function, which calculates values based on the current date and time, is a great example of this. Taking this functionality a step further, when you mix date functions with conditional formatting, you can create spreadsheets that display date alerts automatically when a deadline is near or differentiates between types of days, like weekends and weekdays. THE BASICS OF CONDITIONAL FORMATTING FOR DATES To find conditional formatting for dates, go to Home > Conditional Formatting > Highlight Cell Rules > A Date Occuring. www.office.com/setup You can select the following date options, ranging from yesterday to next month: www.office.com/setup These 10 date options generate rules based on the current date. If you need to create rules for other dates (e.g., greater than a month from the current date), you can create your own new rule. Below are step-by-step instructions for a few of my favorite conditional formats for dates. HIGHLIGHTING WEEKENDS When you design an automated calendar you don't need to color the weekends yourself. With the conditional formatting tool, you can automatically change the colors of weekends by basing the format on the WEEKDAY function. Assume that you have the date table-a calendar without conditional formatting: www.office.com/setup To change the color of the weekends, open the menu Conditional Formatting > New Rule www.office.com/setup In the next dialog box, select the menu Use a formula to determine which cell to format. www.office.com/setup In the text box Format values where this formula is true, enter the following WEEKDAY formula to determ

Yana Terukhova is a Product Marketing Manager on the Microsoft Visio team. Visually displaying always up-to-date information on clearly laid out diagrams helps to communicate information effectively. In this post, we will see how to connect data from external sources to a diagram. Linking data to Visio diagrams was first introduced in 2007 and has been overwhelmingly popular. We've improved the functionality since then and the capability has become increasingly more powerful. Associating data with shapes on a diagram does not require any code. There's a simple wizard which guides you through linking your data source to your diagram. Once you've linked data to diagram shapes, apply data graphics to shapes-text, data bars, icons, or color by value conditional formatting-to visually display numerical data. The important point here is that data-linked diagrams are dynamic; the data graphics change when data is refreshed in the source (like Excel).

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.

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

It's possible to save your Word 2016 document in the Adobe Acrobat document format, also known as a PDF file. This type of electronic publishing is secretly a form of printing your document. Obey these steps: Finish your document. Yes, that includes saving it one last time. Press Ctrl+P to summon the Print screen. Click the Printer button. A list of available printers appears. Choose Microsoft Print to PDF. Click the Print button. Nothing is printed on paper, but the document is "printed" to a new PDF file. That requires the use of the special Save Print Output As dialog box. Choose a location for the PDF file. Use the dialog box's controls to locate the proper folder. Type a filename. Click the Save button. The PDF file is created. The original document remains in the Word window, unchanged by the print-to-PDF operation. You need a copy of the Adobe Reader program to view PDF files. Don't worry: It's free. Word 2016 document files are considered a standard. Therefore, it's perfectly acceptable to send one of your document files as an email attachment or make it available for sharing on cloud storage.

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

Sometimes there is frantic need to create links in database table to web pages, files, folders, images, etc. Access 2010 provides a convenient way to link up data field values with anything to complement the database in much better way. In this post we will guide you on creating a table field having Hyperlink data type. To start off with, launch Access 2010 and navigate to Create tab and click Table. createtable1 Create Hyperlink Field In Access 2010 - www.office.com/setup It will create a new table namely Table1. Right-click newly created table and select Design View to add fields with specific Data types. table11 Create Hyperlink Field In Access 2010 - www.office.com/setup Enter an appropriate table name and start adding fields. We will be entering some generic table fields with their data types such as, ID, Name, Phone Number, Email and other Links. design view - www.office.com/setup Select Email table field and under data type options, select Hyperlink. select hyperlink - www.office.com/setup Repeat the procedure for assigning Hyperlink data field for other fields as well. hyperlink other - www.office.com/setup Now close the Design view and save the changes made. Open the database table in Datasheet view. Start filling out table fields with values. In Hyperlink assigned data fields, you will notice that on entering values it will automatically turns them into blue, indicating linked data. hyerplinks created - www.office.com/setup Now we will move to editing Hyperlinks. In Email field, highlight the email address and right-click to select Edit Hyperlink. edit hyperlink - www.office.com/setup It will instantly open Edit Hyperlink dialog. Under E-mail address box, enter the email address, and from Subject box, write the subject of the mail. Click OK. edit hyperlink 1] - www.office.com/setup Upon clicking on hyperlink, it will immediately open Outlook mail compose window, with specified email address and subject inserted. email open - www.office.co

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

In the finale of our three part deep dive on customizing and deploying the new Office, our intrepid hosts demonstrate Office 365 ProPlus Click-to-Run integration with your existing management and deployment tools while exploring pre-installation via Windows image. Watch too as our fearless host Jeremy gets behind the wheel to test if Windows Intune can install Office as fast as a direct install from Office 365 from his car, in the time it takes him to go over Seattle's famous 520 floating bridge.

MANY POWERPOINT PRESENTATIONS INCLUDE HYPERLINKS TO OUTSIDE SOURCES LIKE WEBPAGES, BUT YOU CAN ALSO ADD LINKS TO LOCAL FILES OR OTHER SLIDES WITHIN THE PRESENTATION. ADDING THESE TYPES OF LINKS IS ANOTHER WAY TO MAKE PRESENTATIONS MORE INTERACTIVE, AND THE PROCESS IS SIMPLE. To add any kind of hyperlink, select the text, image, or shape you want to link and right-click. Then select Hyperlink. To insert a link to another slide, select Place in This Document and a table of contents will appear that lists slides in the presentation. Select the slide you'd like to link to, and click OK. To insert a link to a local file, select Existing File or Webpage. Browse to your file, select it, and click OK.

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

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

Inserting images in a word file exemplifies the true meaning of the word document. It helps the document to be more artistic as it includes images and drawings. With the help of images, the word document can be understood in a better way.Whenever we wish to insert a picture/image in a word document, we can copy-paste the image from any directory to the word file but inserting through the conventional method must be preferred. In this article, we'll follow certain steps on how to insert and move a picture from your computer in Microsoft Word 2016: Step 1: Type "word 2016" in the Windows Search Bar located next to the Start icon. Click on the first option provided. insert-picture-office-2016-1-min - www.office.com/setup Step 2: Click on "Insert" tab located at the top left corner of the "Word" window. After clicking, a ribbon toolbar will appear providing numerous options like paging options, tables, illustrations, symbols etc. Click on "Pictures". insert-picture-office-2016-2-min - www.office.com/setup Step 3: After clicking, a window will open on your desktop asking you to insert any picture as per your choice. To select your desired picture, click on it & click on the "Insert" button located at the bottom of the window. You can also select multiple pictures at once. For instance, we have selected "birthday-candles". insert-picture-office-2016-3-min - www.office.com/setup Step 4: Now, the image is placed on the word page. You can reduce/enlarge the size of the image by clicking on the "circle" icon located at all corners of the image. Dragging these icons "towards" & "away" from the image will make it "smaller" & "larger" respectively. You can also rotate the image 360° by using the "rotate" icon located at the top of the image. Click on the icon & drag the cursor in your desired direction to rotate the image. insert-picture-office-2016-4-min - www.office.com/setup Step 4: If you need different

Microsoft Word's table templates are great timesavers. With them, you can quickly apply your own custom formatting to any table in Word. Here's how to create your own table style and save it as a template. The easiest way to create your own table template is to start with one of Word's built-in table styles and then tweak it to your preferences. Go to the Insert tab and click Table. insert table - www.office.com/setup Mouse over the squares in the table grid to select the number of columns and rows you want in the table. Click on the last square to insert the table. Word will now switch you to the Design tab for formatting the table. Click inside the table. Select a style from the Table Styles gallery and take note of the style name. You'll need the name in the steps below. table style - www.office.com/setup table style gallery - www.office.com/setup Click the down arrow next to the Table Styles and select New Table Style. table style new - www.office.com/setup Give this table style a new name. table style create - www.office.com/setup Select the table style you want to base yours on in the dropdown box next to "Style based on" option. table style create select - www.office.com/setup Select your formatting options. For example, you can change the font and font style, change the border and cell colors, and change the text alignment. table style options - www.office.com/setup For additional formatting options, click the Format button at the bottom left of the window. table style format - www.office.com/setup Select "New documents based on this template" so the table style will be available in future Word docs. table style newdocs - www.office.com/setup11. Click OK.

Does Microsoft Word 2016 regularly detect words that you commonly use as misspelled words? You can change this by adding custom words to the dictionary. OPTION 1 - ADD WHILE WRITING Type the word in your document and right-click on it and select "Add to Dictionary". Add to Word dictionary - www.office.com/setup OPTION 2 - ADD FROM SETTINGS Expand the Office Quick Access Toolbar and select "More Commands…". Word 2016 More Comments option - www.office.com/setup Select "Proofing" in the left pane, then click the "Custom Dictionaries…" button. Word 2016 Custome Dictionaries button - www.office.com/setup Here you can add or remove dictionaries. Usually you just need to use one dictionary. To add a word to the dictionary, select "Edit Word List…" . Word 2016 Edit Word List button - www.office.com/setup Type the word you wish to add to the dictionary and click "Add". Word 2016 Add word to dictionary - www.office.com/setup Select "OK" then "OK" again when you are done adding words.Now your word will not be detected by Word as a misspelling. Note: This option is also available in other Office applications such as Outlook, Excel, Publisher, etc. FAQ Why is my "Add to Dictionary" option grayed out? This seems like a bug in the software. Try going to File > Options > Proofing > Customer Dictionaries. Then select the "Dictionary language". Then remove the checkbox next to the dictionary item, then check it again. These steps seem to toggle something in the software that makes the "Add to Dictionary" option available again.

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