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www.office.com/setup Blogs: Missing a key security signal could mean not catching a breach, but the number of security signals is increasing exponentially. It's becoming impossible to manually prioritize them. That's why Office 365 applies intelligence to help you proactively manage risk and ward off threats. Today, we're pleased to introduce several new capabilities in Office 365 that help you manage risk and stay ahead of threats: Office 365 Secure Score-A new security analytics tool that applies a score to Office 365 customers' current Office 365 security configuration. Office 365 Threat Intelligence Private Preview-Service that leverages billions of data points from the Microsoft Intelligent Security Graph to provide actionable insights to the global threat landscape and help customers stay ahead of cyber threats. Office 365 Threat Intelligence is now in private preview, with general availability planned for later this quarter. Office 365 Advanced Data Governance Preview-Applies machine learning to help customers find and retain the most important data to them while eliminating redundant, obsolete and trivial data that could cause risk if compromised. Office 365 Advanced Data Governance is now in preview, with general availability planned for later this quarter. KNOW YOUR OFFICE 365 SECURE SCORE Do you know how you'd be rated if someone were to evaluate your security configuration? To give you better visibility into your Office 365 security configuration and the security features available to you, we're pleased to introduce Secure Score-a new security analytics tool. Secure Score helps you understand your current Office 365 security configuration and shows you how implementing additional controls can further enhance your security and reduce risk.* Here's how it works: Secure Score Summary-Displays your Secure Score and provides access to view your Score Analyzer. Your Secure Score, the numerator, is the sum of the points associated wi

A teacher would never be satisfied with her performance if she discovered that the entire back row of her classroom was unable to hear her lecture. In the world of cloud services for business, we see things the same way. With Office 365, every user counts! Google has a different approach. It starts counting downtime only after at least 5 percent of users are affected. Imagine if 100 of your 2,000 users had no access to email. Would you, as an IT professional, be satisfied with your performance? Would your business hold you accountable for your performance? The answers to these questions are clear. Calculating downtime only after 5 percent of your users cannot access email, as Google does, makes it more difficult for you to assess impact to user productivity. Google's approach doesn't help your business with meaningful performance metrics. With Office 365, every affected customer and every service counts when we calculate downtime. Downtime means the total minutes in a month during which service is unavailable, excluding scheduled downtime. For services like email, there is no scheduled downtime, an experience that our many Exchange Server customers have long been accustomed to-system maintenance while they continue to be productive in their Outlook inboxes. In addition to the way it calculates downtime, Google also combines consumer and commercial service availability when reporting the availability of Gmail. This means if you are considering Google Apps for Business, you cannot get accurate information regarding the availability of the commercial service that you need. On the other hand, Microsoft's approach to calculating downtime, which includes every user minute, helps you understand whether your users' productivity is being impacted by downtime of email. Google takes a "use at your risk" approach around Google+, Hangout and Google Voice. These services are not part of Google Apps for Business and are excluded from the SLA. Excluding these serv

Remember the vintage game "Pull the Rug Out?" It is a board game where players stack different items on top of a rug. Eventually, one of the players tries to pull out the rug without tumbling the pieces stacked on top of it. Google's recent announcement that it is phasing out several additional services, including the highly popular Google Reader, reminded me of this game, as I recall that the stack most always toppled to the ground. Google introduced Google Reader, gradually built up its popularity, and then pulled the rug out with little warning, causing its customers to stumble. As one Google customer put it: "Google spends millions of wasted dollars on pet projects, then kills one of their best products on a whim." Google's most recent spring cleaning brings the total number of services it has discontinued to 70 in just a year-and-a-half. That's right-a whopping 70 services that have been shut down in just 18 months. Among the services Google will discontinue with little warning is Google Cloud Connect, introduced with a lot of fanfare just two years ago. Cloud Connect is a plug-in that enables Google users to share and edit Microsoft Word, PowerPoint and Excel files. To continue collaborating with Microsoft Office, Google users have just four weeks to uninstall Cloud Connect and install Google Drive. Companies that can't get to it by April 30 will be out of luck, leaving them without a way to collaborate on Office documents used by millions of employees, partners, and customers. But of all the services Google is discontinuing this time, the one that's drawing the biggest backlash is Google Reader, a service used by hundreds of thousands of users to keep track of their favorite websites and blogs via RSS feeds. The news of Google Reader's shut down drew outrage from users, who put together a petition demanding that Google reinstate the service. "Our confidence in Google's other products - Gmail, YouTube, and yes, even Plus - requ

www.office.com/setup Blogs: ML Gomes is getting a new PC running Windows 8, and wants to know which version of Microsoft Office is best for her needs Microsoft office - www.office.com/setup Blogs Which version of Microsoft Office is best with Windows 8? Photograph: Justin Sullivan/Getty Images Which version of Microsoft Office should I use on Windows 8? I am buying a new laptop and need to use Outlook. ML Gomes Microsoft usually brings out new versions of Office to match new versions of Windows, and Windows 8 is no exception. The new Office 2013 is designed to work with Windows 8, and both have a similar modern styling that puts the emphasis on your content rather than Microsoft's software. Also, both are designed to work with cloud (online) services, particularly Microsoft's SkyDrive. However, other things have changed now that Microsoft is not a software company but a cloud-based "devices and services company". As chief executive Steve Ballmer said last year, this "impacts how we run the company, how we develop new experiences, and how we take products to market for both consumers and businesses." Under the old system, you could buy a copy of Microsoft Office on DVD, and use it without an internet connection. Under the new system, you buy a Product Key, which is 25 alphanumeric characters long. Entering the code online enables you to download your copy of Office, or activate a free trial version pre-installed on your new PC. FREE OFFICE WEB APPS The good news is that under the new system, most home users don't need to pay anything for Microsoft Office: they can use the free, cloud-based service in the form of Microsoft Office web apps. Sign up for an email address at Outlook.com, and you get free web-based email, a contacts book (People), a calendar, and 7GB of online storage in SkyDrive. (Outlook.com has replaced Hotmail, so you can use a Hotmail address, if you already have one.) Log on, click SkyDrive, and you can create and edit files in the four main Of

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

www.office.com/setup Blogs: Presentations are used every day to educate, enlighten and energize. Head teachers will have to present to teachers, teachers will need to present daily to their students, and those students will have to present on many occasions throughout their education and beyond. Because of this, it is important that presentations are engaging, modern and easy to create, in order to have the impact that is intended. This tutorial in our Sway series will show you how Sway can be used to make great presentations, and how you can make the most of the easy to use features to make your presentation as interactive and informative. Recently we're been working our way through a number of Sway video tutorials, and this next offering demonstrates the ways you can use Sway to create and liven up your presentations: In education planning is key, so most educators and students will draw up a plan of their presentation before they start creating it and, now you have Sway, it has never been easier to transform your plan into fun, interactive content in just a few clicks. If you write up an outline in Word for example, just drop it into Sway and it will automatically create headings and sections based on your document. You can then update and change the formatting of the text cards by using the emphasis and accent features, which draw attention to what matters to you in your presentation. To support the messaging in your text, you can then add some helpful or exciting images to the storyline, categorising them easily with the grouping tool and using focus points to make sure you don't lose what is important. If, like many educators, you like to have visual signposts in your presentation, then you can use the images and text as headings to section your work. This will make it easier for the student navigating the presentation, and allow you to keep the flow when you are presenting. And if you like to have a brief preview of what is coming in the presentation

A teacher would never be satisfied with her performance if she discovered that the entire back row of her classroom was unable to hear her lecture. In the world of cloud services for business, we see things the same way. With Office 365, every user counts! Google has a different approach. It starts counting downtime only after at least 5 percent of users are affected. Imagine if 100 of your 2,000 users had no access to email. Would you, as an IT professional, be satisfied with your performance? Would your business hold you accountable for your performance? The answers to these questions are clear. Calculating downtime only after 5 percent of your users cannot access email, as Google does, makes it more difficult for you to assess impact to user productivity. Google's approach doesn't help your business with meaningful performance metrics.

Remember the vintage game "Pull the Rug Out?" It is a board game where players stack different items on top of a rug. Eventually, one of the players tries to pull out the rug without tumbling the pieces stacked on top of it. Google's recent announcement that it is phasing out several additional services, including the highly popular Google Reader, reminded me of this game, as I recall that the stack most always toppled to the ground. Google introduced Google Reader, gradually built up its popularity, and then pulled the rug out with little warning, causing its customers to stumble. As one Google customer put it: "Google spends millions of wasted dollars on pet projects, then kills one of their best products on a whim." Google's most recent spring cleaning brings the total number of services it has discontinued to 70 in just a year-and-a-half. That's right-a whopping 70 services that have been shut down in just 18 months. Among the services Google will discontinue with little warning is Google Cloud Connect, introduced with a lot of fanfare just two years ago. Cloud Connect is a plug-in that enables Google users to share and edit Microsoft Word, PowerPoint and Excel files. To continue collaborating with Microsoft Office, Google users have just four weeks to uninstall Cloud Connect and install Google Drive. Companies that can't get to it by April 30 will be out of luck, leaving them without a way to collaborate on Office documents used by millions of employees, partners, and customers. But of all the services Google is discontinuing this time, the one that's drawing the biggest backlash is Google Reader, a service used by hundreds of thousands of users to keep track of their favorite websites and blogs via RSS feeds. The news of Google Reader's shut down drew outrage from users, who put together a petition demanding that Google reinstate the service. "Our confidence in Google's other products - Gmail, YouTube, and yes, even Plus - req

The new Excel offers a rich set of charting capabilities that make creating and customizing charts simpler and more intuitive. One part of the fluid new experience is the Formatting Task pane. - www.office.com/setup Until now, precise adjustments to chart elements were made in the Format dialog box. The box sometimes obscured a portion of the chart, changes entered in the box were not visible until you closed it, and you had to select the exact element on the chart in order to see the options that were the best fit for the job. In the new Excel, the Format dialog box is replaced by the Formatting Task pane. The pane aligns neatly with the right or left side of the screen, so it's less likely to obscure the chart, and changes happen in real time, so you can immediately see how your choices affect the chart. The Formatting Task pane also offers an element selector so you can jump quickly between different elements without having to select one to modify. The new Formatting Task pane is the single source for formatting-all of the different styling options are consolidated in one place. With this single task pane, you can modify not only charts, but also shapes and text in Excel. USING THE FORMATTING TASK PANE The fastest way to open the Formatting Task pane is to double-click a chart element. You can also use the keyboard shortcut CTRL+1 while a chart element is selected. There are two other ways to open the task pane: The first way: On a chart, select an element. On the Ribbon, select the Chart Tools Format tab, then click Format Selection. - www.office.com/setup The second way: On a chart, select an element. Right-click, then select Format where is the axis, series, legend, title, or area that was selected. - www.office.com/setup Once open, the Formatting Task pane remains available until you close it. Since it always stays on the right or left side of the screen, the pane remains unobtrusive as you concentrate on other tasks. The