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The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency expects to save $12 million over four years. The City of Chicago anticipates saving $1.3 million over the same length of time. And the State of Minnesota expects to save at least $800,000. Governments of all sizes are finding ways to reduce IT costs while improving efficiency. What's their secret weapon? With public sector budgets shrinking in many places around the globe, smart governments are making taxpayer dollars stretch further by migrating from an on-premise environment to Microsoft Office 365 in the cloud. By moving to Office 365, governments can reduce both their capital and operating costs. And by saving money, they can make taxpayer dollars go further during a time when budgets are tight and there's often less revenue to work with. So how exactly can Office 365 save governments money? First, governments can cut back on the capital cost of investing in more computer servers. Second, they can reduce the administrative cost of having to maintain an IT environment. Third, they can lower their energy costs by reducing the size of their data centers. And they can also reduce costs using the many tools within Office 365 that improve employee efficiency. According to a study conducted by Forrester Consulting, Office 365 delivers an ROI of 321 percent with a payback period of two months for a composite midsize organization. That translates into huge value for public sector organizations! Among the government agencies that anticipating money saved by implementing Office 365 is the Environmental Protection Agency. The agency expects to save $12 million over four years by moving to the cloud and Office 365. Some of those savings will be in energy costs as the agency relies on Microsoft to operate its data centers. "The EPA will continue to lead the pack on environmental stewardship, and moving an IT environment to the cloud is a natural part of that," says Greg Myers, vice president of Microsoft Federal. "There

It's been a very busy year for SkyDrive and we'd like to thank all of you for helping us improve the service through your feedback, tweets, Facebook posts, and comments. The service continues to grow: since October 2012 when Windows 8 launched, 50 million more people have started using SkyDrive, helping us reach an important milestone - over 250 million people are now using SkyDrive as the new place to save their files. In just the past few months we've made SkyDrive the default save location for the new Office, updated the SkyDrive app for iOS, and made substantial performance improvements to SkyDrive uploading. Recently, we also announced that Microsoft accounts have grown to 700 million, that we've improved the security of our service with things like two-step verification, and that we now have Extended Validation Certificates integrated on SkyDrive.com. And a few days ago, our friends over at Outlook.com announced that they're rolling out a new feature that allows you to insert anything from your SkyDrive directly into an email message. We continue to push forward to a world where all your stuff is in SkyDrive, so you can always have it with you.

Small businesses have enough to focus on without having to spend time and energy worrying about email, data storage or backup servers. In fact, most small businesses don't know or understand what a server is. The good news is that in today's technology environment, they don't need to. This is because more small businesses are rapidly moving from outdated technology solutions to Web-based solutions to power their company, also known as "moving to the cloud." By moving to cloud solutions like Office 365, small businesses find they can concentrate their resources on growing their business rather than trying to solve technical issues.

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

Social apps can make working with Office 2013 more engaging, efficient, and fun. They combine the networking and outreach capabilities of social media sites with the mobile productivity power of Office. Together, Office and social apps give you more insight into your contacts, allow you to monitor your social channels without using a browser, and can spice up your SharePoint sites in ways that you'll "like" (thumbs up). The LinkedIn for Outlook app is one of the most popular of the social apps. It lets you see LinkedIn profile data for your contacts while you are using Outlook. Not only can this app give you greater insight into your email contacts, it can help you build your professional network quickly from one of your most valuable professional resources: your Outlook contact list. Likewise, if you're an active Tweeter, you may want to add the ExTweet app to your library. It offers a way to display real-time Tweets that match the data in your Excel workbook. From the most popular social media website comes the Facebook Integration App. Use it to add Facebook social plug-ins to your SharePoint site so people can interact with it as they would a Facebook page. It can make your site more social by encouraging increased user engagement and eliciting immediate feedback and comments. Similarly, the ConnectWithUs app lets you connect your SharePoint site to your page on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Google+, or any other community. These are just a few examples of apps that work with the Office applications you use every day to make them even more dynamic and useful. Explore the Office Apps Store to find more apps for Office 2013 that can make your work easier, increase your productivity, and help you have fun.

April's Customer of the Month is Robert Aichele, Senior Manager, Store Communications at Jamba Juice. I've been at Jamba since 2009 managing internal communication, primarily store and field communication, with a hand in some broader projects connecting our strategic vision with the managers in the field. Our Yammer network debuted in 2011, catching on with a small group and then expanding quickly to include our entire Support Center. It was so popular we extended it to our company-owned store managers later that year, and it plateaued happily there for several months as an interesting tool to share ideas and problem solve operational issues when we needed to hear diverse perspectives quickly. I'm a firm believer in story telling as a means to engage employees with the "why" behind what we do as a company - and sometimes what we stop doing - and in the spring of 2012 we had a big story to tell. Our first National Hiring Day was happening in Jamba stores across the country as we prepared to hire thousands of new employees and ramp up for our busy summer season. We'd organized the event through traditional channels: our intranet, email, weekly task management publications, and pre-event conference calls. And we had big plans to collect photographs, interview hiring managers, and write up a recap to share the success stories with everyone after the fact. On the big day I logged into Yammer and got a big surprise. The event was unfolding in glorious detail right as it happened with photos, comments, personal stories, and genuine pride and enthusiasm for the Jamba brand just pouring out. We never wrote that recap.

If you've got a really killer PowerPoint presentation but would like to extract all the information to Microsoft Word - you can. Sometimes this is necessary because the size of your PowerPoint presentation is rather large and you would like to share it with others over email or an intranet. Converting it to Word will help reduce the size and make it easier to view for everyone involved. It's also possible that you would like your slides presented as thumbnails, with or without speaker notes included, for easier reviewing, editing, or handing out during the presentation itself. You can convert your presentation in one of three ways. The directions for converting on a Mac OS and a Windows OS are as follows. If you're feeling a bit ambitious, why not become a PowerPoint Ninja?

WAIT, WHAT? EVERYTHING? www.office.com/setup Blogs: Yes! It has everything. Even if you are trying to setup a list of what to buy and what to do. You will never need any other software but Microsoft Office. It is great to have it on your computer. We recommend Microsoft Office to every person with any device with a display. Lets see why. IT WILL EASE YOUR WORK. Literally, it will check spellings, it will suggest you what you should be writing. Your grammar if its worst, well Office has some Brit English Grammar inside of its gut. Yeah thats write. Microsoft Office has been coming with the Spell check and Grammar corrections since it was rolled out. It has the best typing management system around the globe. You really wont need anything else but Office for beautiful emails, great presentations, Original Tables and wonderful Management. Well when i talk about management, i mean managing everything. You can use Microsoft Office Access to manage anything you would ever thought of. You can manage your company stocks, you can manage clothing business, you can manage raw materials lists, you can manage forms, you can look for tables, you can manage your packages and the best part it, everything you make can me transformed or put online just with a click of a button.

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.

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.

www.office.com/setup Blogs: Productivity? Sweet www.office.com/setup Blogs: Office 2016 for Mac was a long time coming, but it brings plenty of new features and better feature parity with the Windows version than ever. Microsoft has done a lot to streamline the experience, with a customizable, collapsible Ribbon as well as cross-platform keyboard shortcuts, but with any major Office update, there's bound to be a learning curve. These tips for Word, PowerPoint, Excel, Outlook, and OneNote should come in handy, and if you're stumped about anything specific, let us know in the comments. Office 2016 is available for Office365 subscribers, with a wider release coming in September. Don't forget to save! This is probably our most important tip: Don't forget to save! When Apple introduced Auto Save and Versions into OS X, many Mac users started losing our ingrained habit of hitting Command-S often. Unfortunately, Office 2016 (except for OneNote-more on that in a bit) doesn't take advantage of Auto Save. So don't forget to save often. Versioning is also missing, but on the plus side, fans of Save As will find the command in its rightful place in the File menu. Store your files in OneDrive or SharePoint If you need access to your files from anywhere, Office 2016's built-in OneDrive & SharePoint integration makes cloud storage simple. To save to your OneDrive or SharePoint account, click the Online Locations button in the lower-left corner of a Save dialog box. Choose your existing account from the list, or click the Plus button to add another location. What's the difference? Glad you asked. OneDrive is a consumer product for cloud storage, like iCloud Drive. Aimed more at businesses, SharePoint acts like an intranet, letting teams share and collaborate on files. Office 2016 for Mac: Ribbon - www.office.com/setup See larger image Maximize your workspace The redesigned Ribbon in Office 2016 unifies the look and functionality across all platforms. It also ta