Have you ever used Microsoft Office to stay productive when stranded, snowed in or stuck during the winter season. Interested in getting more tips? Want a chance to win a copy Microsoft Office 2010, a Windows Phone, and an Xbox 360 with Kinect? Follow us on Twitter (@Office) and simply retweet any tweets containing the hashtag #snowductivity between February 4th and - March 31st. We'll randomly choose new winners each week.
For those of us who crunch words instead of numbers, Excel can be intimidating. We don't know the difference between a workbook and a worksheet, and for sure don't know to ask about conditional formatting (a cool way to visually display data). Then one day your boss asks you to create a report--with numbers. Gulp.
In this video, the Office 911 emergency responders show a beginning Excel user how to add a table to a worksheet so she can better organize and view her data.
We wanted to let you know about some good news from the Exchange team.They've released a new administrative tool called PST Capture that helps IT administrators manage .pst files. It lets them search across networks to discover .pst files and then import them into Exchange Server or Exchange Online.So what's a .pst file?
By Cindy Bates, Vice President, US SMB, Microsoft Corp.
Yesterday was a bit of a different day for me. Instead of conducting business meetings, I found myself paddling down rivers and riding on rainbows. Of course, these were metaphoric rivers and rainbows. In reality, I spent the morning doing imaginative yoga with a class of pre-K students at Carden Cascade Academy in Hillsboro, Oregon. This class teaches kids to use their imaginations in the practice of yoga.
The class was being taught by Jamie Hopkins of Imagination Yoga, an Office 365 customer and Ready for Work contest winner. Ready for Work contest winners received $50,000 in technology and business services and a Microsoft executive to work for them for a day. So, I packed my bags and headed down to Portland to experience a day in the life of Imagination Yoga.
Two sisters, Jessica and Jamie, along with their brother, Jon, make up Imagination Yoga. It is a family business focused on a simple yet important mission-inspiring kids to move. The Imagination Yoga team works in schools throughout the Portland area to teach kids to imagine the possible, to be kind and thoughtful, and to become more active and healthy.
But for Imagination Yoga it is not all fun and yoga. Because they are so passionate about their core mission, the team is very focused on building a strong and sustainable business. After a morning yoga class with their students, I had the opportunity to spend the afternoon hearing about their business and long-term goals. I came away with a few key takeaways:
Jamie, Jessica, and Jon are wonderful and inspiring people, and I came away energized by their mission, by their love of the kids they teach, and by their focus on growing the business. Hearing about their plans for the future, I realized that Microsoft, with services like Office 365, is truly helping small businesses imagine the possible.
This morning, we reached an important development milestone: the beginning of the "Office 15" Technical Preview Program. Office 15 is the codename for the next generation of the Microsoft Office products and services, and the Technical Preview is the first time we share our work with a select group of customers under non-disclosure agreements. These customers play a key role in our development process by testing early builds and providing feedback, which we incorporate into the final release.
On the heels of October's open beta, today Research in Motion (RIM) launched BlackBerry® Business Cloud Services for Microsoft Office 365--a new service for organizations to extend Microsoft Exchange Online to BlackBerry® smartphones. The service ensures people have industry-leading business collaboration tools while on the go.
Some of the key features include:
The service is available at no additional charge to current medium-sized or enterprise subscribers of the Office 365 suite or standalone Exchange Online and works with BlackBerry smartphones on business or consumer data plans.
Go to www.blackberry.com/cloudservices to get started!
It happens. You made a mistake.
How do you "take back" or recall an Outlook email message that you already sent? How do you recall a message and replace it with another one? Go to your Outlook Sent Items folder first, and then recall that message! Quickly!
It's still January. There's still time to share the most popular posts on the Excel blog in 2011. Thanks for reading them!
The first one is--you guessed it--about keyword shortcuts. From the post, you can download Quick Reference Cards to pin to your corkboard.
Recently, someone posted a comment on IT Impact Inc.'s blog asking how to get SharePoint to remember his password when he logged in via Access. He wanted to avoid having to log in every time. Ben Clothier, a Senior Access Developer at IT Impact, knew the answer. He wrote a detailed blog post (with plenty of screenshots) that we'd like to share with you. ITImpact has been building custom databases with Microsoft Access since 1994, serving customers around the world. Ben Clothier has been Microsoft...(read more)
Perhaps you've heard about the advantages of Microsoft Office 365, and want to give it a try. Or maybe you've already completed a 30-day trial and are ready to subscribe on an ongoing basis. The question is: Which plan should I subscribe to? To make your choice easy, we've updated our Office 365 website to help you quickly select the right plan for your organization. Now, from a single page, you can compare all the subscription plans side-by-side, including the specific features and prices of each. You can see which plans come with a free, 30-day trial, and find the plan best suited for your organization's specific size and needs. To make our subscription plans easy to navigate, we've also grouped them into four categories: email, small business, midsize businesses and enterprises E1& E3: Email (Online Exchange): This plan is suitable for organizations of any size that want to move their email, but not their productivity applications, to the cloud. Subscribers receive our web-based email service Exchange Online, along with shared calendars, anti-virus and anti-spam filtering, and Active Directory integration. Cost: $5 per user/month. Small Business (P1): This plan is ideal for organizations with 50 or fewer employees. In addition to web-based email complete with anti-virus and anti-spam filtering, it offers instant messaging, voice and video conferencing, and web-based viewing and editing of Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote files. It also includes a team site for sharing files, an external website, and Microsoft community support. Cost: $6 per user/month. Midsize Businesses & Enterprises (E1): The basic plan is appropriate for medium and large enterprises that want to move email, communications, and collaboration to the cloud, while keeping their productivity applications on-premises. It offers web-based email, shared calendars, instant messaging, and video conferencing. Plus it includes a SharePoint intranet supporting up to 300 sub-sites, Active Directory integration, configurable anti-spam filtering, and 24x7 customer support. Cost: $10 per user/month. Midsize Businesses & Enterprises (E3): The premier plan is suitable for medium and large enterprises that are taking a hybrid approach to the cloud and want to combine their cloud-based and on-premises versions of Office into a single plan. It includes everything in the basic plan plus web-based viewing and editing of Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and OneNote files. It also comes with a desktop version subscription of Office Professional Plus 2010 for up to five devices per user. And it offers unlimited email storing and archiving, and hosted voicemail support. Cost: $24 per user/month. You can subscribe to a plan right from our website, or sign up a for a 30-day free trial. You can also watch demos of Office 365, and view answers to frequently asked questions. Please check it out, and tell us what you think. We welcome your questions and comments.
Perhaps you've heard about the advantages of Microsoft Office 365, and want to give it a try. Or maybe you've already completed a 30-day trial and are ready to subscribe on an ongoing basis. The question is: Which plan should I subscribe to?
To make your choice easy, we've updated our Office 365 website to help you quickly select the right plan for your organization. Now, from a single page, you can compare all the subscription plans side-by-side, including the specific features and prices of each. You can see which plans come with a free, 30-day trial, and find the plan best suited for your organization's specific size and needs.
To make our subscription plans easy to navigate, we've also grouped them into four categories: email, small business, midsize businesses and enterprises E1& E3:
You can subscribe to a plan right from our website, or sign up a for a 30-day free trial. You can also watch demos of Office 365, and view answers to frequently asked questions. Please check it out, and tell us what you think. We welcome your questions and comments.
A restaurant can become a workplace using Windows Phone. With a built-in version of Office, communications software (Lync), and a way to access your files stored Microsoft's free cloud service (SkyDrive), you can see how to attend a meeting and even handle an emergency while eating your lunch.
As a boys' basketball coach, I always tell my sons that if you want to be a star, you've got to learn teamwork. If you hog the ball and constantly try to score yourself, both you and your team are going to get creamed. But if you know where your teammates are on the court, if you're constantly watching to see who's open and frequently pass the ball, you're going to find opportunities to score.
The same is true for business. From The Wisdom of Crowds to Teamwork makes the Dreamwork, numerous books have pointed to the incredible benefits organizations can reap by getting their staff to work effectively as a team. Often, however, the problem is structuring the work environment to make it possible for teams to thrive. Without an underlying infrastructure that makes it easy to share information and collaborate, teamwork can be as difficult as a lone basketball player squaring off against a team of Kobe Bryants.
One of the benefits of Microsoft Office 365 is that it provides the infrastructure for collaboration and information sharing. With Microsoft SharePoint Online, a component of Office 365, organizations can create sites that let them easily share information and collaborate with colleagues and customers. With Microsoft Lync Online, they can connect seamlessly with others through instant messaging, video conferences, and online meetings.
Collaborating effectively couldn't be more critical for SKARF, a medical research and treatment center in Denmark. The organization networks with researchers across the globe to discover, share, and advance knowledge around effective cardiovascular medicine and treatments. "In order for research to be accurate and thorough, it's important that a lot of stakeholders contribute to it," says Kristian Wachtell, a cardiologist at SKARF. "We need easy, fast ways to share knowledge and ideas across borders so we can improve productivity."
The organization had been exchanging drafts and comments with other researchers via email. However, it was cumbersome to manage and consolidate the information it received. Based on a recommendation from its IT support firm, ProActive, SKARF decided to try Office 365 for its collaboration features.
Rather than emailing documents back and forth for feedback, researchers now use the co-authoring feature in Microsoft Word 2010 hosted by SharePoint Online to make edits simultaneously. "SharePoint Online is exactly what we need to quickly and easily share data and files," Wachtell says. "We're definitely more productive. We're probably cutting down document creation time by 25 percent."
The organization also uses Lync Online to hold web conferences, reducing the need for researchers to travel to universities and other research centers to share information about the latest research. "Being able to share what's on our desktops and talk about it in real time expands our horizons," Wachtell says. "We can cut travel time in half and save the company $50,000 annually-that's a significant savings."
Being able to collaborate more productively has made it possible for the researchers to work together better in teams. They're also completing projects faster, which means they can take on more work. "This kind of collaboration is vital to us," Wachtell says. "Office 365 helps us perform better, work more productively, and increase our workload capacity." (Click here to check out the full SKARF case study.)
Has Office 365 improved teamwork in your organization? Feel free to leave a comment.
Today Guy Kawasaki shares his final blog post in a series about making your entrepreneurial dreams come true. His witty wrap up offers up what not to say and what not to believe that investors tell you. These tongue-in-cheek lists serve a purpose: they run down everything he taught you about creating a business pitch and plan, and developing a financial forecast. Reading all the posts should give you everything you need to launch that business! No more excuses! And don’t forget – Office Web Apps are great tools for sharing and collaborating – perfect for entrepreneurs and their business partners when they set out.
Now get crackin!
(You can read or download the whole series on Guy's SkyDrive.)
15 Spreadsheet Formatting Tips
For the last couple years I’ve been meaning to pull together some of the tips that I’ve learned working on the Excel team about how to make nice looking spreadsheets. Well, last week, Rob Collie (a previous Excel Program Manager, and now CTO at Pivotstream and author of PowerPivotPro.com) beat me to it with his post “In the Browser, Aesthetics Yield a Greater Return.”
If you wake up in the middle of nowhere--or have to work regardless of the weather--you can get a lot done with a Windows Phone. That's because it gives you lots of ways to reach people. In this video I show you some of them --including how Windows Phone lets you text by voice, send group emails, and stay completely connected to Facebook. Watch:
In case you want to know more about the features of a Windows Phone, click these links:
We’re moving!
This marks our last post to the Office 365 Product Marketing blog in this location. We have moved the blog to the Office Blogs located at:
http://blogs.office.com/b/microsoft_office_365_blog/
Please bookmark the new location and look for continued coverage on Office 365 product news, customer stories, events, insider looks and helpful tips for getting the most of Office 365.
We hope you’ll follow us.
You can also follow the Office 365 conversation on these social networks:
LinkedIn – http://www.linkedin.com/groups/Microsoft-Office-365-3724282
Twitter – http://www.twitter.com/Office365
Facebook – http://facebook.com/Office365
For all of your questions on getting started, performing advanced tasks or troubleshooting common issues, be sure to visit the comprehensive content on the Office 365 Community across blogs, forums and wikis.
See you on the new Office 365 Blog.
Which takes longer? Typing Ctrl +C, or using your mouse to point and then click Copy. Obvioulsy, that's a rhetorical question. Many people know about the keyboard shortcuts for copying, cutting and saving (Ctrl+C, Ctrl+X, Ctrl+S), but probably not about the dozens of other time-saving shortcuts in Office 2010.
Sometimes not knowing them can get you in trouble. In this short video, the Office 911 team rescues a harried Office user by teaching him a few.
Recently, we released a small update to the software that connects the Outlook Social Connector to Facebook. If you already use the Outlook Social Connector to connect to Facebook, you can get the software update in our download center. If you don't use Outlook Social Connector, you should try it out. It integrates your contacts and email messages in Outlook with status updates from social networks in one single place for you to view. The really good thing about the update is that it lets you connect...(read more)
The Word 2010 gallery makes adding a basic table of contents quick: Click the References tab, click Table of Contents, and then click the gallery table of contents you want.
But what if you want more? What if your table of contents needs to provide different information--more levels, or fewer levels? What if you want a table of contents at the beginning of each chapter? What if you want to change the font?
Here are some of the ways you can customize your table of contents.
Have you ever used Microsoft Office to keep working when stranded, snowed in or stuck during the winter season. Interested in getting more tips? Do you want a chance to win a copy Microsoft Office 2010, a Windows Phone, and an Xbox 360 with Kinect? Follow us on Twitter (@Office) and simply retweet any tweets containing the hashtag #snowductivity. between February 4th and - March 31st. We'll randomly choose new winners each week.
UPDATE: Office 365 is certainly not alone in seeing great momentum. Last week we announced that Office 2010 has sold nearly 200m licenses in the 18 months since launch. The customer reaction to both products has been phenomenal, and we'd like to thank you for making both such successes.
We always feel terrific when new customers join the Office 365 family, and today we are thrilled to announce that JetBlue, the American Heart Association, and Patagonia have picked Office 365 as their productivity service of the future. These companies are now part of an illustrious group as over 40% of the Interbrand Top 100 global brands use Microsoft's cloud productivity services.
These new Office 365 customers are some of the latest companies to join the likes of Campbell Soup Company, Marie Claire, Roush Enterprises, Hersing Corp, UL (formerly Underwriters Labs), and Wunderman in recently choosing Office 365 to power collaboration for their workers. With customers like these, it's no wonder Office 365 is on track to be one of the fastest growing offers in Microsoft's history.
This news highlights the diversity of customers using Office 365 - from leading airlines to global consumer companies, not to mention the small businesses we've talked about before. Global brands are not the only ones choosing Office 365-more than 90% of our customers have less than 50 employees, making it clear that Office 365 is right for businesses of all sizes.
Each customer is unique, different in size, mission, and industry, yet all have a common technology mission-to foster greater collaboration and communication, enhance productivity, and realize the efficiencies associated with the cloud.
For example, Patagonia, a leading provider of outdoor gear, is using Office 365 to drive real-time communications and decision making throughout its organization. Patagonia expects to save $300,000 in future upgrades and infrastructure improvements, and $15,000 a year in savings by moving to the cloud-based e-mail system that is part of Office 365. Additionally, Office 365 supports the company's "drive-less" program, providing the flexibility for more employees to work from home, so they can reduce their carbon footprint. Each customer typically has their own goals around efficiency and productivity when they select Office 365. Companies like Campbell Soup and Group Marie Claire have chosen Office 365 to better connect mobile employees and to foster better teamwork across the company, and we look forward to hearing and sharing their success stories in the future.
We want to thank our customers and the thousands of others who have helped make the last six months a great start for Office 365. Has your business joined the Office 365 family? If so, we'd love to hear your story and welcome your feedback on how to make Office 365 even better. If you're interested in trying Office 365, you might look into our free trial to decide if it's right for you.
It's habitual. You send out a document for feedback, and get back umpteen copies of the thing, each with a different set of comments. And, what if you want to share it with someone who doesn't have the same Office program as you? How will they open that Word, Excel, PowerPoint, or OneNote file?
If you find yourself clinging to the old way of attaching documents to email, don't be embarrassed. Just start storing your documents on SkyDrive. When you send a link, people can read your document in their web browser--just like reading a web page. It doesn't matter what version of Office they have, or whether they have it at all.
You can even skip email altogether and post the link on your Facebook or LinkedIn page. Here are all the details for sharing documents on SkyDrive.
If you give people permission, they can edit the document in their Office app, such as Word, or in their web browser. When they're done, all the changes will be in one tidy place on SkyDrive. Then you can access it from just about anywhere: your computer, a friend's computer, your smartphone, or an Internet kiosk.
Start now, while the year is young: save documents directly to SkyDrive in Office 2010, or upload them. Let 2012 be the year you broke free of past encumbrances.
You've finished your business plan and polished the pitch for investors. As an entrepreneur you know what comes next: number-crunching. To clinch funding, you need a financial projection that shows investors the path to profitability. We worked with @Guy Kawasaki to guide you through creating a financial forecast that will wow funders.
Last Thursday marked the 10 year milestone of Trustworthy Computing. Two years ago when Steve Ballmer said about Cloud Computing that “We’re all in” - that signaled almost as big a change at Microsoft for security as the original Bill Gates memo launching Trustworthy Computing. For the first time, we would not only need to design and maintain products and software with the right security, but we would be responsible for actually hosting our business customers’ data in a trustworthy way.
In Cloud Computing, it’s not enough to build security into services. We have to run them in a secure way, and have external auditors verify we are doing so, while meeting our customers’ requirements to adhere to privacy and security regulations around the world. Many of us had been working on security, privacy, and compliance for several years already with the launch of Office 365. Right now, over 50 people work full time on security, privacy, and compliance on Office 365 alone. In addition to ensuring a set of security best practices in service design and operations, we also meet the requirements of independent audits and regulatory requirements of tough standards like ISO 27001, SSAE-16, the EU Model Clauses, HIPAA, and FISMA. Our challenge is not just good security, but doing so for the broadest set of customers in the world, with all of their varying expectations and needs. For more information about security, privacy, and compliance in Office 365, please see the Office 365 Trust Center—not only will you find out a lot about security in Office 365, you’ll get to meet some of us in our videos as well: http://trust.office365.com/.
A blog post can take on a life of its own. Something we wrote yesterday can disappear as the blog rolls on. Something written a few years ago can live on as search engines find it and customers click on it. Here are the 10 most popular posts at the Office Blog in 2011 and the reason you might want to catch-up with them.
1. Maybe I shouldn't have sent that email
You forgot to put some important information in an email you just sent to a gigantic list. You accidently sent that obscenity-laden email to your boss instead of your ex. No matter the reason, recalling an email in Outlook can be helpful. And perhaps save your job. Quick! Recall that email message as published April 5, 2011.
2. You want your Excel Chart to show lots of data
Data is key and visual data-telling a story without a lot of numbers-is desirable in this information-overloaded age. Here's how to stick two sets of data in an Excel chart without cluttering up the chart. Combining Chart Types, Adding a Second Axis was published on August 24, 2007.
3. Storing and sending things in the cloud got easier
An update last November to Office Web Apps...
Designed by J. Paul Costello.