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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

We're bringing Yammer to a city near you with Yammer on Tour-a free event series that brings together customers, partners and thought leaders for a unique opportunity to hear our vision for enterprise social, network with like-minded peers, and learn directly from customers how to usher in success in today's rapidly changing business environment. Yammer on Tour features an action-packed half-day agenda including: Keynotes and appearances by Yammer co-founder Adam Pisoni and customers Breakout sessions featuring product insights and expert discussions on enterprise social success Hands-on training and certification Networking and demos from Yammer and our partners in the expo hall Join us at Yammer on Tour in the following cities: New York-April 9: Register today Chicago-April 16: Register today Dallas-May 15: Registration opening soon We look forward to seeing you at one of these events!

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

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.

Five shows into the series, we've looked at what your options are, what's changed and what's new with the new Office. We threw skydiver Fully Sik out of a plane to test if Office 365 ProPlus could be installed during 90 seconds of free fall; we took a look at the new Office telemetry to help you optimize your Office configuration; and we've explored identity and data access with the new user-based Office and caught up with Zero Day and Trojan Horse Sci-Fi author and industry renowned cyber-security expert, Mark Russinovich on the security model for online services. We even performed the great race of Office installs. We've received a lot of your questions along the way so, for our sixth show, we changed gears to present a live 60-minute episode of the Garage Series Live! on real world adoption tips and tricks with live Q&A. If you missed the show you can see it again here.

Ever wish Word had an encyclopedia you could tap, or Excel could generate some dummy numbers? Office add-ins provide this kind of added functionality to Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and other Microsoft Office apps. Here are some of the handiest add-ins you can install for Office 2013 and above to get more out of your office suite. We previously highlighted Office add-ins and apps for Office 2013 and earlier, but since then Microsoft has renamed "Office Apps" to "Office Add-ins". Now there are more than a handful of these plugins you can install to enhance Microsoft Office, whether you're using Office 2013 or 2016, Office Online, or Office on the iPad.

Today's post was written by Howard Kourik, Director, Information Systems, San Diego County Regional Airport Authority The San Diego County Regional Airport Authority manages operations at one of Southern California's busiest regional airports, San Diego International. We were created to serve the public and have a mandate from the state of California to address the local area's long-term transportation needs. While we are a public entity, we function very much like any other business. In fact, we don't accept any tax dollars to support our operations. Instead, we rely on landing fees, the rent we receive from tenants, and a percentage of the profits from concessions-the restaurants, newsstands, and other shops located in the airport-to fund our growth. And like every business, we're constantly looking for ways to bring down our costs by operating more efficiently. We evaluated a lot of technologies to help us trim costs, but we selected Office 365 because it not only saves money, it gives us what we need to meet future IT demands. With our eyes on current and future needs, we did some modeling to gauge regional demand for our airport services over the next decade. It quickly became clear that we needed to add runways, terminals, and other "bricks and mortar" facilities, and upgrade our network infrastructure. Still, the only way we could budget for that expansion was to reduce or eliminate some of our fixed capital costs. I knew that one important way we could trim expenses was by taking a closer look at the technology we use and how we manage it. Our email system offered a prime example of how, by rethinking the way we deliver core IT services, we could cut down on operational "drag" and potentially save our IT team lots of time. Historically, we've managed our email in a clustered environment across four physical servers. So, we were not only worrying about the cost of the servers; we had to invest in mirroring software and an antivirus so

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.

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

Are you using the new Project and wishing you could enhance its powerful capabilities with apps? Project 2013 has great extensibility potential-even across devices. The new apps for Project enhance capabilities of Microsoft Project 2013 applications, including Project Pro for Office 365, Project Professional 2013, Project Online and Project Server 2013. www.office.com/setup HOW DO I ADD AN APP TO PROJECT PRO FOR OFFICE 365 OR PROJECT PROFESSIONAL 2013? Open Project. On the Ribbon, click PROJECT, then click Apps for Office. www.office.com/setup All apps for Project associated with your account will show up. If you need to acquire new Apps from the Microsoft Office Store, click the Find more apps in the Office Store link and follow the instructions on the screen. www.office.com/setup START USING YOUR APPS The example below shows a project plan that has been synchronized to a project site in SharePoint or SharePoint Online and the highlighted app on the right SharkPro Insite shows data from your project site next to your document. www.office.com/setup Here are apps you can acquire for Project Pro for Office 365 or Project Professional 2013: Sensei Task Analyzer SharkPro SharePoint Insite™ for Project Visit the Office Store for more apps HOW DO I ADD AN APP TO PROJECT ONLINE OR PROJECT SERVER 2013? Choose the site where you want to add the app. On the Gear menu, select Add an app. www.office.com/setup The apps you see will depend on your corporate environment and on whether you have already acquired apps from the Office Store. If you don't see the apps you want in the list, you can add them. On the left side of the screen, click the SharePoint Store link to browse all available apps. Follow the on-screen instructions to add the apps you want. www.office.com/setup Once the app is added to your site, launch the app by clicking on its name in the left hand navigation or see all apps that are ready to use on your site through the Site co

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