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"A tool for enhancing 360 images that lets you position audio within a scene, to easily create interactive experiences."

ChronoZoom is an intuitive on-line tool used to visualize all of time, from the Big Bang to today, using the concept of zooming along the timeline to express distance to highlight the scope of time. 

WHAT IS MICROSOFT PROJECT? www.office.com/setup Blogs: Microsoft Project is a flexible tool for project portfolio management (PPM) and daily work, delivered through Office 365. The first place in this category of products is held by Wrike which has a total score of 9.8/10 and is the winner of our Best Project Management Software Award for 2016. You can try out Wrike for free here. You can also compare Microsoft Project with Wrike and see which one is better for your company. Microsoft Project enables businesses to get started, manage project portfolio investments, and deliver successfully with the intended business value. Microsoft Project Professional gives businesses a powerful, visually enhanced way to efficiently manage a wide range of their projects and programs. From meeting important deadlines, to choosing the right resources and empowering your office teams, Project Professional delivers new as well as intuitive experiences to plan, manage, and collaborate with various individuals, teams, and the enterprise.

If you're a fan of PowerPoint, you may have heard about Microsoft's latest presentation tool, Microsoft Sway. With Sway, you can create and share presentations like never before! In today's blog, we'll give you a basic overview as to what Sway can do as well as some of our personal favorite features. Let's dive in! Sway is a free app from Microsoft Office that helps gather, format, and share reports, newsletters, web pages, and presentations on an interactive, web-based canvas that looks great on almost any screen. That's right, we said interactive! Use videos or interactive charts to engage your audience like never before.

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

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.

www.office.com/setup Blogs: Microsoft today detailed the new features and improvements that it delivered to Office 365 users this month. Key among them are new Excel co-authoring capabilities, Microsoft Teams, and new OneNote inking and accessibility updates. "Office 365 provides the broadest and deepest toolkit for collaboration between individuals, teams and entire organizations," Microsoft corporate vice president Kirk Koenigsbauer explains. Here's what's new in March. CO-AUTHORING IN EXCEL 2016 FOR WINDOWS Following similar functionality in Word and PowerPoint, Microsoft has enabled co-authoring capabilities in Excel for the Windows desktop (Excel 2016). (This feature is also available in Excel Online and Excel Mobile on Android, iOS, and Windows 10; Excel for Mac support is coming soon.) "This allows you to know who else is working with you in a spreadsheet, see where they're working and view changes automatically within seconds," Mr. Koenigsbauer says. Co-authoring in Excel 2016 for Windows is rolling out for Office 365 subscribers in Office Insider Fast, Microsoft says. Co-authoring in Excel for iOS is currently available for Office Insider. The feature is generally available in Excel Mobile for Android and Windows, and in Excel Online. AUTOSAVE Microsoft is working to expand the availability of AutoSave beyond mobile versions of Office: Office 365 subscribers in Office Insider Fast now have access to AutoSave in Word, Excel and PowerPoint on Windows desktop, for files stored in SharePoint Online, OneDrive and OneDrive for Business. "With AutoSave, you can stop worrying about hitting the Save button, whether you're working alone or with others," Mr. Koenigsbauer explains. MICROSOFT TEAMS Microsoft delivered its long-awaited Slack alternative, called Microsoft Teams, earlier this month to all Office 365 commercial customers. And last week, it shipped Microsoft Teams to all Office 365 Education subscribers as well. "We are thri

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

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

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

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

Most people know that you can create PowerPoint presentations with pictures, music, images, web content, and text, but one little known trick is the ability to save PowerPoint presentations as videos. PowerPoint presentations have been a long time favorite for use in business and academic presentations all over the world. They are highly versatile and offer a wide variety of features that you can use to enhance them. In order to save your PowerPoint as a video you will first need to create a presentation or download the sample we used for this tutorial. Once you have the document open, you will need to save it as a video. Begin by pressing "File." sshot-1 - www.office.com/setup Instead of following the logical train of thought and opening the "Save" section, you will need to click on "Export," then click on "Create a video." sshot-2 - www.office.com/setup Once you do this, you will see the "Create a Video" option. This will offer a few options in the form of two drop-down menus and a time value box. sshot-3 - www.office.com/setup The first drop-down box is where you will choose the quality of your exported video. These three options will also determine the size of your exported video file. For the purposes of this example, we will choose the second option to reduce the size of the video without compromising too much video quality. sshot-4 - www.office.com/setup The second drop-down menu allows you to include or exclude any timings or narrations that you inserted on your PowerPoint presentation. Since the sample document has no timings or narrations, we will leave this as is. The "Use Recorded Timings and Narrations" will be unavailable if you don't have any of them in your presentation. sshot-5 - www.office.com/setup The time value box is where you can edit the amount of time that your slides will appear in the video. The default time is set at 5 seconds. For this tutorial, we will set it to 3 seconds. Lastly, you need

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.

WWW.OFFICE.COM/SETUP BLOGS: INTRODUCTION www.office.com/setup Blogs: PowerPoint allows you to add audio to your presentation. For example, you could add background music to one slide, a sound effect to another, and even record your own narration or commentary. You can then edit the audio to customize it for your presentation. Optional: Download our practice presentation. Watch the video below to learn more about inserting audio in PowerPoint. TO INSERT AUDIO FROM A FILE: In our example, we'll insert an audio file saved locally on our computer. If you'd like to work along with our example, right-click this link to our example file and save it to your computer (music credit: Something Small (Instrumental) by Minden, CC BY-NC 3.0). From the Insert tab, click the Audio drop-down arrow, then select Audio on My PC. Inserting audio from a file - www.office.com/setup Locate and select the desired audio file, then click Insert. Selecting the desired audio file - www.office.com/setup The audio file will be added to the slide. The inserted audio file - www.office.com/setup RECORDING YOUR OWN AUDIO Sometimes you may want to record audio directly into a presentation. For example, you might want the presentation to include narration. Before you begin, make sure you have a microphone that is compatible with your computer; many computers have built-in microphones or ones that can be plugged in to the computer. TO RECORD AUDIO: From the Insert tab, click the Audio drop-down arrow, then select Record Audio. Clicking Record Audio - www.office.com/setup Type a name for the audio recording if you want. Renaming the audio recording - www.office.com/setup Click the Record button to start recording. Clicking the Record button - www.office.com/setup When you're finished recording, click the Stop button. Clicking the Stop button - www.office.com/setup To preview your recording, click the Play button. Previewing the recording - www.office.com/setup When you're done, click OK. The au

www.office.com/setup Blogs: Tables are another tool you can use to display information in PowerPoint. A table is a grid of cells arranged in rows and columns. Tables are useful for various tasks, including presenting text information and numerical data. You can even customize tables to fit your presentation. Optional: Download our practice presentation. Watch the video below to learn more about inserting tables in PowerPoint. TO INSERT A TABLE: From the Insert tab, click the Table command. Hover the mouse over the grid of squares to select the desired number of columns and rows in the table. In our example, we'll insert a table with six rows and six columns (6x6). inserting a table - www.office.com/setup The table will appear on the currently selected slide. In our example, that's slide 3. Click anywhere in the table, and begin typing to add text. You can also use the Tab key or the arrow keys on your keyboard to navigate through the table. adding text to a new table - www.office.com/setup You can also insert a table by clicking the Insert Table command in a placeholder. inserting a table from a placeholder - www.office.com/setup MODIFYING TABLES PowerPoint includes several options for customizing tables, including moving and resizing, as well as adding rows and columns. TO MOVE A TABLE: Click and drag the edge of a table to move it to a new location on a slide. moving a table - www.office.com/setup TO RESIZE A TABLE: Click and drag the sizing handles until the table is the desired size. resizing a table - www.office.com/setup TO ADD A ROW OR COLUMN: Click a cell adjacent to the location where you want to add a row or column. In our example, we'll select the cell that says Mystery. selecting a cell - www.office.com/setup Click the Layout tab on the right side of the Ribbon. Locate the Rows & Columns group. If you want to insert a new row, select either Insert Above or Insert Below. If you want to insert a new column, select either Insert Left or Insert Ri

WWW.OFFICE.COM/SETUP BLOGS: INTRODUCTION www.office.com/setup Blogs: Access offers several advanced options for creating and modifying reports. The Report Wizard is a tool that guides you through the process of creating complex reports. Once you've created a report-whether through the Report Wizard or the Report command-you can then format it to make it look exactly how you want. In this lesson, you'll learn how to use the Report Wizard to create complex reports. You'll also learn how to use formatting options to format text, change report colors and fonts, and add a logo. Throughout this tutorial, we will be using a sample database. If you would like to follow along, you'll need to download our Access 2016 sample database. You will need to have Access 2016 installed on your computer in order to open the example. Watch the video below to learn more about the Report Wizard in Access. THE REPORT WIZARD While using the Report command is a quick way to create reports from the current object, it's not as helpful if you want to create a report with data from multiple objects. The Report Wizard makes it easy to create reports using fields from multiple tables and queries. It even lets you choose how your data will be organized. TO CREATE A REPORT WITH THE REPORT WIZARD: Select the Create tab and locate the Reports group. Click the Report Wizard command. Clicking the Report Wizard command - www.office.com/setup Blogs The Report Wizard will appear. In the procedures below, we'll discuss the different pages in the Report Wizard. The Report Wizard dialog box - www.office.com/setup Blogs STEP 1: SELECT THE FIELDS TO INCLUDE IN YOUR REPORT Click the drop-down arrow to select the table or query that contains the desired field(s). Selecting a table that contains fields to include in the report - www.office.com/setup Blogs Select a field from the list on the left, and click the right arrow to add it to the report. Adding fields to a report - www.office.com/setup Blogs

WWW.OFFICE.COM/SETUP BLOGS: INTRODUCTION www.office.com/setup Blogs: Access offers several options that let you design and run queries that return exactly the information you're looking for. For instance, what if you need to find out how many of something exists within your database? Or what if you would like your query results to automatically be sorted a certain way? If you know how to use query options in Access, you can design almost any query you want. In this lesson, you'll learn how to modify and sort your queries within Query Design view, as well as how to use the Totals function to create a query that can perform calculations with your data. You'll also learn about additional query-building options offered in Access. Throughout this tutorial, we will be using a sample database. If you would like to follow along, you'll need to download our Access 2016 sample database. You will need to have Access 2016 installed on your computer in order to open the example. Watch the video below to learn more about modifying queries. MODIFYING QUERIES Access offers several options for making your queries work better for you. In addition to modifying your query criteria and joins after you build your queries, you can choose to sort and hide fields in your query results. TO MODIFY YOUR QUERY: When you open an existing query in Access, it is displayed in Datasheet view, meaning you will see your query results in a table. To modify your query, you must enter Design view, the view you used when creating it. There are two ways to switch to Design view: On the Home tab of the Ribbon, click the View command. Select Design View from the drop-down menu that appears. Switching to Design View with the View command on the Ribbon - www.office.com/setup In the bottom-right corner of your Access window, locate the small view icons. Click the Design View icon, which is the icon farthest to the right. Switching to Design View using the View Icon - www.office.com/setup Once in Desig

WWW.OFFICE.COM/SETUP BLOGS: USING THE FORMAT PAINTER IN POWERPOINT AND WORD www.office.com/setup Blogs: Themes can be a great way to make your PowerPoint presentation or Word document look nice, but sometimes you might want to add custom design elements to your project. Custom formatting can be tedious, though, especially when you're doing a lot of it. For instance, take this PowerPoint slide. Let's say you've applied a series of effects to the photo on the left, and now you'd like to do the same to the photo on the right. Screenshot of Microsoft PowerPoint - www.office.com/setup You could try to remember all of the effects applied and apply them to the second photo as well-or you could save some time and use the Format Painter. The Format Painter is a tool in Word and PowerPoint that lets you copy all of the formatting from one object and apply it to another one. Think of it as copying and pasting for formatting. USING THE FORMAT PAINTER Select the object with the formatting you want to copy. Screenshot of Microsoft PowerPoint - www.office.com/setup Click the Format Painter icon. It may be located in a slightly different place, depending on your version of Office, but it always looks like a paintbrush. Screenshot of Microsoft PowerPoint - www.office.com/setup Select the object you want to apply the formatting to. The object will be formatted. Screenshot of Microsoft PowerPoint - www.office.com/setup See? Simple! That was much quicker than applying the individual effects one at a time. If you want, you can even use the Format Painter to apply the formatting to multiple objects. Just double-click the Format Painter icon instead of clicking it once. Screenshot of Microsoft PowerPoint - www.office.com/setup Even though weonly looked at using the Format Painter for photos in PowerPoint, you can use it for anything you can apply formatting to in Word or PowerPoint. This includes text, table cells, and shapes. Once you start using it, you'll be surprised how often