Microsoft 365 Is The Best Thing For Staff Productivity

March 31, 2021

Thomas Fox is president of Tech Experts, southeast Michigan’s leading small business computer support company.

Pandemic + Work From Home = relying on technology more than ever before.

The tools available in Microsoft 365 have developed to help us stay productive wherever we’re working.

If you’ve been using Microsoft’s software for years, now’s a good time to discover new features.

If you haven’t started exploring yet, you’re missing out on loads of ways to boost productivity and make your life easier. Here are some of the main things to explore.

Microsoft Teams
Teams has made communication and collaboration even more effective than traditional ways of working face-to-face. [Read more…]

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What Are The Advantages Of Office 2019?

December 20, 2019

Thomas Fox is president of Tech Experts, southeast Michigan’s leading small business computer support company.

As an IT service company, we get asked this question almost every day. Now that it’s available, everyone wants to know what Office 2019 is all about. Office 2019 provides a subset of features that Microsoft has been adding to Office 365 over the past three years.

Office 2019 is a local version of Office software, rather than cloud-based. It’s a perpetual release, meaning that you purchase the product once and own it forever instead of paying for a subscription or subscriptions to use it.

Who Will Benefit From Using Office 2019?

Although anyone can purchase Office 2019, this version has been designed for business users. It comes with volume licensing and is best for companies that don’t want to use the cloud-based version of Office. You can also install the Office 2019 app on all your mobile devices, where you’ll have access to its basic features. [Read more…]

Filed Under: MS Office Tagged With: ,

Time-Saving Tricks for Microsoft Outlook 2016

June 26, 2018

Thomas Fox is president of Tech Experts, southeast Michigan’s leading small business computer support company.

Microsoft Office 365 offers a number of useful tools for today’s busy professionals including some new shortcuts for Outlook 2016. With so many companies now using Outlook as their major email program, Microsoft works to improve its operation with each annual update.

A number of the great features in this program are also found in other MS Office programs. For instance, if you’re familiar with Word, then learning how to use Outlook will be much simpler.

New Changes for Outlook 2016
Using Outlook 2016, you can do a lot more than send and receive emails. You can also manage your calendar, set appointments, schedule meetings, and create/ manage groups.

In addition to being able to set up various types of groups, you can set up groups in Yammer. Yammer has become a central place where teams can exchange files, get updates and have conversations with others. [Read more…]

Filed Under: MS Office, Tips Tagged With: , ,

The Latest Expansions To Office 365 Will WOW You!

May 23, 2018

Thomas Fox is president of Tech Experts, southeast Michigan’s leading small business computer support company.

The availability of productivity apps is astounding. Basic word processors that were the desktop staple haven’t been replaced, but have evolved from requiring installation from a CD-ROM to not even requiring a downloaded program file anymore!

Yes, Microsoft Word, the workplace word processing darling, is accessible online through subscription-based Microsoft Office 365, which has a multitude of integrated apps designed for the flexible workforce.

Create documents in Microsoft Word or spreadsheets in Microsoft Excel and save them to SharePoint or OneDrive, send emails through Microsoft Outlook, design innovative presentations with PowerPoint, and the list goes on.

The list of apps that integrate with Office 365 expands every day! Considering Microsoft Office 365 now includes Microsoft Teams and Microsoft Flow, the possibilities are incredible. If you’ve not yet experienced either of these apps, you’re truly missing out. [Read more…]

Filed Under: MS Office Tagged With: ,

Office 365 Or Office 2013: Which Is Right For You?

May 17, 2013

by Jeremy Miller, Technician
You’ve probably heard a lot of things in the news about Microsoft’s Office 365.

Let’s explain the difference between Office 365, and the traditional version of Microsoft Office you’re used to using on your computer.

Standard versions of Office 2013 are licensed or boxed product. You can purchase a license to this product from any local or online retailer.

Office 365 is a subscription based product. You purchase this license either monthly or annually. You can also use this product on more than one computer and it is transferrable to other computers. This license is not transferrable to another user.

You should know right away both versions of Office will not run on any Windows Operating system prior to Windows 7.

The Office 2013 license is very straight forward: You simply install Office like you always have. However, unlike previous Office versions, you cannot remove it and install it on another computer.

The Office 365 license is much more malleable, and is licensed and sold by version. Office 365 comes in four versions: Home Premium, Small Business, Midsize Business, and Enterprise. Office 365 is licensed per user.

Office 365 Home Premium comes with Word, Excel, Power Point, One Note, Outlook, Publisher, Access, 20 GB of Skydrive cloud storage, and 60 minutes of calling if you have a Skype account. This version is not available to businesses.

Office 365 Small Business includes everything Home Premium has plus Microsoft Lync and business email which will offer 25 GB per month, and many other features.

Office 365 Midsize Business requires an annual commitment. This version will allow you to have up to 300 users. This has everything Small Business has plus Microsoft InfoPath.

Office 365 Enterprise also requires an annual commitment, but there are no limits as to the number of users you can have.

This version has everything that Midsize Business has plus Unified Discovery, Data Loss Prevention, and Role-based access.

Unified Discovery will allow you to search across Exchange, SharePoint, and Lync.

With Role-Based access you can control access and assign it to different groups.

You can create data loss prevention polices and templates for protecting sensitive information. These features will aid in keeping your business compliant with various regulatory requirements.

Choosing your version of Office is pretty straightforward. If you’re a light Office user, or only use a few features of Office then Office 2013 is best for you. You can choose which version you need based on the Office tools that you use.

If your company uses many features of Office, and you want to avoid large upfront software costs, then Office 365 is your best bet.

You will still be able to use Office 365 with no Internet connection. It does require an Internet connection to install and sync, however, and of course for email access.

You can access Office from anywhere using Office on Demand, which is not full-featured, but will allow you to read and edit documents.

Office 365 is the best bet for small and growing companies. You can add and remove new users and computers.

When you upgrade computers you will be able to remove Office from the old computer to install on a new computer.

You will also get more features like business email and calendars, a public website, team sites, web conferencing, and instant messaging.

If your company needs any help making a decision about which version of Office would best suit you, or if you would like help installing and configuring Office, please give us a call. We’d be happy to help.

Filed Under: MS Office, Upgrading Tagged With: , ,

Microsoft Office 365: Work Anywhere, Anytime?

June 27, 2011

Microsoft is coming out with a new product called “Microsoft Office 365.”

This product is being pushed more for the business market and not towards home users as much as their popular “Microsoft Office Suite.”

Microsoft Office 365 is a subscription based web application that essentially gives you your copy of Microsoft Office anywhere you are and at any time, using Internet Explorer and a web connection.

This software is powered by Microsoft’s already popular “SharePoint” collaboration application.

Office 365 doesn’t give you access to all of the applications available in the traditional Office suite – for instance, Outlook isn’t included in the package – yet.

Microsoft Office 365 includes Microsoft Word, Microsoft Excel, Microsoft PowerPoint, Microsoft OneNote, and something Microsoft is calling Microsoft Outlook integration.

Outlook integration links a local copy of Outlook that is installed on your PC to the Office 365 suite in the cloud.

One of the best features in Office 365 is the ability to share files and documents on the go through a web interface that acts like a centralized server for your company.

This connection is 100% secure with encrypted data transfers and is password protected allowing only those who know the password to access to your company’s data and files.

This gives you access to the documents that you were working on in the office while you are on the road. And, anyone else in your organization that needs access to your files can use them anytime, anywhere.

Another advantage of using a web based application like this one is that, since it is a web hosted application, you don’t need to install any software.

You can access your documents from any computer with and Internet connection using just your password. The ability to store and work on your documents anywhere doesn’t come without some caveats.

Although Microsoft guarantees 99.9 percent uptime, most Internet service providers don’t. If your entire organization was deployed on the Office 365 platform and your company’s Internet connection went down, you could very well experience a bout of low productivity until everything came back online.

Office 365 and other cloud services are undoubtedly the wave of the future.

If you’d like to explore some cloud solutions for your organization, please give the office a call at 734- 457-5000.

 

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