Office 365 User Guide

A comprehensive guide to increase collaboration and productivity with Microsoft Office 365

Nikkia Carter

• Publisher: Packt Publishing
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN:
  9781789809312
• eBook ISBN:
  9781789803921
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Commerce
• Subtopic: Business Intelligence

Work with the powerful subscription software, Office 365 to increase your organization's efficiency by managing file sharing, email exchange and much more.

Key Features

• Become well versed with Office 365 and leverage its capabilities for your business
• Speed up your workflow and effectively collaborate using Office Web Apps
• Learn to set audio and web conferences and seamlessly access your workspace

Book Description

Microsoft Office 365 combines the popular Office suite with next-generation cloud computing capabilities. With this user guide, you'll be able to implement its software features for effective business communication and collaboration.

This book begins by providing you with a quick introduction to the user interface (UI) and the most commonly used features of Office 365. After covering the core aspects of this suite, you'll learn how to perform various email functions via Exchange. Next, you will learn how to communicate using Skype for Business and Microsoft Teams. To boost your productivity, this book will help you learn everything from using instant messaging to conducting audio and web conferences, and even accessing business information from any location. In the final chapters, you will learn to work in a systematic style using file management and collaboration with OneDrive for Business using SharePoint.

By the end of this book, you'll be equipped with the knowledge you need to take full advantage of Office 365 and level up your organization's productivity.

What you will learn

• Understand the UI of Office 365
• Perform a variety of email functions through Exchange
• Communicate using Skype for Business and Microsoft Teams
• Explore file management using OneDrive for Business
• Collaborate using SharePoint
• Understand how to leverage Office 365 in your daily tasks

Who this book is for

If you are an IT professional who wants to upgrade your traditional Office suite, this book is for you. Users looking to learn, configure, manage, and maintain an Office 365 environment in their organization will also find this book useful. Some understanding of Microsoft Office Suite and cloud computing basics will be beneficial.

Section 1: Understanding Office 365

In this section, readers will learn about Office 365 in general and will be given some information on how to make it more useful.

The following chapters will be covered:

• Chapter 1, Exploring Office 365
• Chapter 2, Understanding More about Office 365

Exploring Office 365

Office 365 is one of the many Microsoft cloud solutions, and it seems to be the most popular. Since its general release in June 2011 as the successor to Business Productivity Online Suite (BPOS), Office 365 has grown to have over 120,000,000 active monthly commercial users and 28,000,000 active consumer users.

Since the start of Office 365, there has been a lot of confusion about what the difference is between Microsoft Office 365 and Microsoft Office. To add to the confusion, there are the Office 365 Commercial and Office 365 Consumer versions, and the Commercial version has many versions. Many business owners purchase the Consumer version and believe they have services available in the Commercial version. Because of this confusion, I believe it is imperative that you understand the different versions and what comes with each.

For starters, Office 365 has only been around since being beta-tested in 2010 and released in 2011, while Office had been announced in 1988 and was released in 1990.

In this chapter, you will learn about Microsoft Office, along with its different versions and the services provided by it. You will get a brief overview of all these services. You will also learn how to log into your Microsoft account.

In this chapter, the following topics will be covered:

• Microsoft Office and its versions
• Overview of the services of Office 365
• A word about supported browsers

Technical requirements

To follow along with the lessons in this book, you will need an Office 365 Business Premium, E3, or E5 subscription..

Microsoft Office and its versions

Microsoft provides different versions of its Office suite, which differ in the applications they include and are designed so that customers can buy only the applications that they need. Office has a few versions of its suite:

• Office Home & Student
• Office Home & Business
• Office Standard
• Office Professional
• Office Professional Plus
• Office Professional Academic

Each version of Office includes the following programs, products, and features:

Programs, products, and features	Office Home & Student	Office Home & Business	Office Standard	Office Professional	Office Professional Plus	Office Professional Academic
Excel	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
OneNote	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
PowerPoint	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Word	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Outlook	No	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Publisher	No	No	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Access	No	No	No	Yes	Yes	Yes
Lync/Skype for Business	No	No	No	No	Yes	No
InfoPath *	No	No	No	No	Yes	No
SharePoint Workspace	No	No	No	No	Yes	No

The previous table is referencing Office 2010 since it is the last version of the Office suite, before the cloud versions complicated things. Office, the non-cloud version, is purchased via a one-time fee of between $60 to ~$400 retail. When I say one-time, I mean one-time until you need to upgrade.

Conversely, Office 365 comes in a lot more versions than Office and, rather than paying a one-time price at retail or volume cost, you lease the software by paying a small sum monthly or annually. Office 365 can be Office only, Office with other products, or no Office included whatsoever.

The main versions of Office 365 are as follows:

• Consumer versions:
  • Home
  • Personal
  • Home & Student
• Commercial/business versions:
  • Business
  • Business Essentials
  • Business Premium
  • Pro Plus
  • Enterprise E1
  • Enterprise E3
  • Enterprise E5

Those are the core ones, but there are more versions for government, non-profit, and academic use, but they are very similar to the Business through E3 versions, aside from the cost and a few other particulars.

In Chapter 2, Understanding More about Office 365, we will discuss licensing in more detail. Just note that in this book, we will cover the Business version of Office 365.

Overview of the services of Office 365

Office 365 subscriptions vary, but the following are the services in Office 365 for most plans. There are more services than what I have listed here, and each of these services can be assigned to users individually with some exceptions. For more details, see the Business plans at https://products.office.com/en-us/compare-all-microsoft-office-products?tab=2 and the Enterprise plans at https://products.office.com/en-us/business/compare-more-office-365-for-business-plans.

Exchange

This is the engine behind Outlook. It supplies you with email, calendar, contacts, tasks, journaling, and notes capabilities. This portion of Office 365 gives an enterprise-grade, professional email with 50 GB of space using your company's custom domain. You also get the ability to share calendars with others in your organization. Exchange is included with the Business Essentials, Business Premium, E1, E3, and E5 plans. If you have an E3 or E5 plan, you will get a 100 GB mailbox with unlimited archiving.

Skype for Business

This application started as Lync in the first rel...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Copyright and Credits
• About Packt
• Contributors
• Preface
• Section 1: Understanding Office 365
• Exploring Office 365
• Understanding More about Office 365
• Section 2: Managing Microsoft Exchange
• Understanding Exchange
• Sending and Receiving Email
• Using the Exchange Calendar
• Using Contacts in Exchange
• Getting Familiar with Other Exchange Settings
• Section 3: Skype for Business and Microsoft Teams
• Understanding Skype for Business and Microsoft Teams
• Using Skype for Business
• Using Microsoft Teams
• Section 4: OneDrive for Business
• Understanding OneDrive For Business
• Working with Files in Your OneDrive for Business
• Section 5: Collaboration Using SharePoint
• Understanding SharePoint
• Working with SharePoint Lists
• Performing Different File Operations on SharePoint
• More on Using SharePoint
• Other Books You May Enjoy