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Blog posts tagged Microsoft Office
Three ways Office 365 makes your business more connected
August 12, 2014
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Copyright: Radu Bercan |
Office 365 is Microsoft's cloud-based version of the classic Microsoft Office. It includes all the core software you're used to, like Word, Outlook, Excel and PowerPoint. And it adds some nifty online features to make it easier to work together.
The subscription-based software costs from £3.30 a month, per person. Microsoft claims Office 365 is its fastest growing business, ever.
Although Office 365 shares elements of previous versions, there's a learning curve with any new software. Office 365 is no different.
In particular, you might miss some of the features designed to make your business more connected — like these three:
1. Save Word documents to your blog
Microsoft Word was conceived to create documents to be printed out. But increasingly, we write text that people will read online.
As part of a drive to make digital tasks easier, you can now publish blog posts from Microsoft Word.
In word, just go to the File menu and choose Publish as blog post. If you've not published to your blog before, Word will walk you through the process of connecting your blog to the software.
This function works with most popular content management systems (CMS), including WordPress.
2. Edit spreadsheets together
Historically, sharing Excel spreadsheets has been tricky. With a spreadsheet saved on a central server, usually only one person could edit it at a time. Other users had to make do with viewing a read-only version.
But in Office 365, several people can edit a spreadsheet at the same time, via their web browser.
This is achieved via SharePoint, the Office 365 tool that can help you create an intranet. You can save your Excel file in SharePoint, then email a link to the people you're working with.
They just have to follow the link and then choose Edit in browser to edit the spreadsheet. And everyone can see everyone else's changes in real time.
3. Connect social networks to Outlook
It's common for people's contact lists to transcend their address books. These days, you may have contacts on LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook and other social networks.
With Office 365, Outlook includes what Microsoft call the Outlook Social Connector. This acts as a centralised social networking feed. When you select one of your contacts, you can see all their recent updates from different networks.
To connect your social media accounts, open Outlook. Go to View > People Pane > Account Settings. Choose which social networks you want to link and select Connect. Then choose Finish.
Do you use Office 365? Has it connected your business more effectively?
- Will Office 365 change how we use software?
- Microsoft Office 2013 arrives quietly
- Essential cloud computing services
This post is from Cobweb Solutions, Europe's biggest independent Hosted Exchange provider.
Microsoft Office 2013 arrives quietly
February 04, 2013
Like death, taxes and your train being late when you're in a hurry, having to use Microsoft Office is one of life's certainties.
Competitors have come and gone over the years. There's even an excellent free alternative available. Yet nobody has made an impact on the Microsoft juggernaut, which is responsible for about a third of the company's total revenue and has 90% market share.
Microsoft Office: ingrained and ever-present
Microsoft Office has become so ingrained in the world of work that we never give it a second thought. It's an ever-present piece of software that we take for granted - both the good bits and the bad.
Some of its capabilities are genuinely impressive, and yet it can also be incredibly frustrating. Most of us just get on with it when Word keeps messing our bullets up or PowerPoint keeps reformatting a crucial presentation.
Introducing Office 2013
It was against this background of indifference that Microsoft last week launched Office 2013, the new version of its ubiquitous software.
It has the usual smattering of new features, and a refreshed look and feel. Here are a few of the key changes:
- As with Windows 8, Office 2013 has been redesigned to work better on computers with touch screens. Some buttons are bigger and it's possible to pinch-and-zoom documents.
- Several people can now work on the same Word or PowerPoint document at once, if it's saved to Microsoft's SkyDrive cloud storage. However, early reviews suggest this function is a bit clunky.
- Microsoft has opened Office 2013 up to app developers, who can build their own apps and make them a part of Office. You can downloads apps via an app store - there aren't many available yet, but there's huge potential.
There are many other improvements and tweaks too. PC Pro has an excellent review examining some of the new capabilities in detail.
Rent or buy Office 2013
Although the home version of Office 2013 is available to buy now, the business packages won't be on sale until 27 February. Touch screen users will find it worth upgrading immediately.
It will be possible to rent Office 2013 from Microsoft too. As with many cloud services, you'll pay by the month. Stop paying, and Office will stop working. This version is called Office 365.
Over the long term, paying monthly is unlikely to work out much cheaper than buying the software outright. But renting will be more flexible, because you'll be able to cancel any time after the first 30 days - and you'll receive updates to new versions of Office as they're released.
Microsoft also promises some useful extra features for Office 365, like Office on Demand, a special copy of the software you can temporarily use on any PC.
Business package pricing and options should become clearer in the next week or two, but going by prices currently shown on the Microsoft website, you could be looking at anything up to £15 per person per month for a fully-featured version of Microsoft Office.
Four reasons to mourn the death of the typewriter
November 22, 2012
A really old typewriter (Image: Flickr user jetheriot)
From a glance at the title of this blog post, you could be forgiven for thinking we're a little late with it. Typewriters? Didn't they die off years ago?
And you'd have a point. When was the last time you saw one in the wild? Most businesses replaced them with PCs years ago, swapping fading ink ribbons and copious Tippex for the ubiquitous Microsoft Word.
But typewriters have hung on in there for far longer than you might have imagined. As the BBC reported on Tuesday, manufacturer Brother has just closed its UK assembly line, which operated from 1985.
According to the report, Brother still sees demand for around 30 typewriters a day - mainly from the legal profession (perhaps this sector has an aversion to Microsoft Word's red squiggly lines).
Indeed, the firm will continue to make typewriters in the Far East, to meet demand in the US and other countries. But it's the end of the line for UK-manufactured typewriters, and the very last one to roll off the production line is destined for the Science Museum. (You can, if you wish, still buy one online for around £100.)
Sure, modern word processing software is more versatile than old-fashioned typewriters. But even years after we all stopped using them, the typewriter still trumps the PC in certain ways. Here are four things we miss about the typewriter:
- Their distinctive sound. These days, your average open-plan office is filled with the faint clatter of cushioned keys and mouse clicks. But back in the day, typewriters were LOUD, making a distinctive clacking noise that evokes the drama of Mad Men.
- They make you think before acting. When every keypress commits a letter to paper indelibly, you stop and think about exactly what you want to say. In this world of instant emails, perhaps we need a little more consideration before we type.
- They don't think for you. In my opinion, the very lowest point of human computer interaction is probably Clippy, Microsoft's much-maligned virtual assistant which interfered whenever you tried to do anything. Typewriters don't randomly change your bullet points, mess up your titles or ask if you need help writing a letter.
- They never lose your work. They don't freeze, crash, unexpectedly quit or suffer from malware infections. They just make letters appear on paper, as you type. There's something to be said for that.
Have you ever used typewriters in your business? Do you still use them for some specialised work? Leave a comment and let us know if you miss this classic piece of office technology.
PowerPoint is not the right tool for the job
July 17, 2012
If you've ever had the misfortune to suffer death by PowerPoint, you'll know how unpleasant this thoroughly modern ailment can be.
Sitting through a presentation that consists of 60+ slides of dense text is not a pleasant experience. It's made worse when the person giving the presentation insists on reading through every block of text, in full. Using a slow, monotone voice.
And that's not even the most inappropriate use of PowerPoint I can think of. Not by a long way. At least it's being used to give a presentation, no matter how mind-numbingly tedious.
Probably because it comes as part of Microsoft Office - which almost every business uses - PowerPoint seems to be the tool people reach for when they're not quite sure what they need. More than any other piece of software I can think of, it gets treated it as some sort of Swiss Army Knife, as if it's perfect for all sorts of tasks.
Well, it's not. Here are three things it's not designed for, and why you really shouldn't use it for them:
- Website wireframes. PowerPoint is singularly bad as a tool for designing the layout of your website, unless you want it to consist of identically rectangular pages with badly aligned sections and garish text. Try Balsamiq mockups or mockingbird, or go old skool and sit down with a bunch of markers and some A3 paper.
- Saving screenshots. Need to send someone a snap of your screen? Don't save it as a PowerPoint file. It takes up much more space than it needs to and the person on the other end might not even be able to open it. There are better ways, like just pasting the screenshot straight into an email.
- Creating posters and leaflets. PowerPoint slides are designed to be displayed on screen, not printed. It's tricky to line up elements precisely and when you add fonts and images, your slides tend to change in other ways too. Do yourself - and your printer - a favour and use a package that's meant for the job, like Microsoft Publisher (around £80 from Amazon or PC World Business).
Using software to do things it's not meant for isn't usually a good idea. There's almost always a good, cheap or free tool that you can use to do a better job. So next time you're tempted to use PowerPoint for anything other than a presentation, stop and think about whether you could find something better.
- How to deliver a great PowerPoint presentation
- Three essential keyboard shortcuts
- How open source software help your business
Image: Flickr user erix! under Creative Commons.
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