Top 10 tips and tricks to know for Microsoft Office 365

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Microsoft 365 (Office 365) is a widely used cloud-based package with over a million companies worldwide using its production capabilities. By 2020, over 700,000 companies in the United States alone were using Office suite software.

In today’s COVID-19 era, more and more workers are working from home, and the chances of returning to the office soon are minimal, if any. Organizations and businesses are now working extra hard to fully equip their employees with the right tools to enable them to stay productive and deliver even while working remotely.

One of the most sought-after productivity tools is Microsoft Office 365. Below are some handy, easy-to-follow tips and tricks to help you get the most out of Microsoft Office 365.

Stay in sync with Office 365

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By using Office 365, it seems that we are unable to share and sync mail, calendar, and contact items among numerous laptops, desktops, tablets, or phones, as we are allowed to install it on up to five different devices.

On the other hand, it should only take seconds to sync an Office 365 calendar with Outlook. With this, you can view SharePoint and Outlook calendars combined in a single place.

When you have employees operating from different locations, you are likely to experience other document formats. These multiple versions can lead to performance inefficiencies.

No matter if it is an individual project or a group work, different versions of the document can lead to stress and confusion.

Streamline your email

Did you know that at least 300 billion emails are sent every day? The truth is that despite advances in mobile technology and social media, email marketing remains a leading B2B and B2C communication strategy.

Nowadays, it is almost impossible not to use email as a communication tool because few other communication media offer the same speed, efficiency, security, and economy.

But it is also easy to get stuck in email. When your inbox is constantly full, it’s easier to lose track of important messages or respond too slowly to pressing problems.

Smart searching with Smart Lookup

Microsoft Office 365

If you are working on a document and want to get a template or some information about something, use Smart Lookup to add that extra dimension.

In Word, you can locate Smart Search on the Reference Ribbon in the research group. If you are using Office 365 on a Mac, you can also utilize this feature from Smart Lookup, just like the Windows users.

With Office 365, you do not have to open another tab and search for the story’s meaning.

You can select the word, right-click on it and use the intelligent search feature to find the word’s meaning without leaving the document. This is just another one of the many features that aim to improve the productivity of Office 365.

Increase security

The new Microsoft 365 has specialized features designed to meet growing security requirements. Some of these features will include security factors like multi-factor authentication (MRI).

This feature adds more security layers to your data, e.g., password, along with something like biometrics or a retina scan and password.

From the centralized dashboard, you can monitor and improve the security of your identities, data, applications, devices, and Microsoft 365 infrastructure. You are given points for setting appropriate security features and performing security-related tasks such as viewing reports.

You may even need to address the recommendations when working with a third-party application or software.

Seamless collaboration

Collaboration has always been the basis for organizational growth and efficiency. Simply put, when we share ideas, knowledge, passion, and skills, the result is better than if we did it alone.

Organizations with employees who believe that they are connected to their team members and the workplace also appear to have increased engagement and retention rates, leading to greater productivity and profits.

Office 365 offers a variety of collaboration tools. For example, when you save your document to OneDrive, you automatically save it to the cloud, where your colleagues have access to the latest version.

On the other hand, the auto-save feature allows the software to save any changes you make to the document in real-time. The sharing option helps you share the form with whomever you want.

Master the keyboard shortcuts

Accuracy is speed. This seems too serious when talking about something you might find boring, such as shortcuts to use in Office 365 versions of Microsoft Word, Excel, Outlook, PowerPoint, and Access.

Office 365 has several shortcuts that you can use to make your job easier. For example, when working in Excel, you can use keyboard shortcuts to facilitate spreadsheet navigation.

You can try shortcuts from one Office 365 application to another, and it can work there as well. There are hundreds of shortcuts available in the suite.

Use the Calendar feature

Microsoft Calendar is changing. Once upon a time, Office 365 was a corporate behemoth that guided all aspects of your working life, and you had no choice but to schedule all your appointments through Outlook.

Microsoft now offers free versions of its core products over the Internet. They are focused on branding both these free versions and their subscriber version for business. At the same time, Microsoft added functionalities that particularly appeal to administrators and business leaders.

Many of us are victims of missed reminders or tasks on the to-do list that have disappeared among a sea of other tasks. Office 365 Calendar is a great feature to make sure this never happens again.

Chat with co-workers

Microsoft Teams is cloud-based collaboration software for teamwork that is part of the Office 365 suite of applications. Teams’ core competencies include business messaging, calling, video conferencing, and file sharing.

Teams allow you to quickly team up with people inside and outside your organization, chat with others to drive fast and inclusive conversations, share document co-authors safely, and repeat projects.

With Microsoft Teams, you can chat with co-workers 1-on-1 or in a group chat.

Office 365 integrates with Microsoft’s team applications. Teams are a godsend for telecommuters because it comes with the ability to chat, audio or video chat and share screens with your colleagues.

Reply to emails faster and easier

Did you know that with Office 365, you can reply to emails without opening them? Outlook Reading allows you to view email and send your reply in the Outlook window.

People like to procrastinate. And any time a long email will hit our inboxes, that’s another excuse for procrastination.

It is difficult to send a quick reply to a long email because it requires time to read, digest, and reply. Besides, most long emails include multiple questions or topics, making it difficult for the reader to identify what is important in the message. This confusion often leads to long delays.

Be effective and send your replies ASAP. It is professional and fundamental to any conversation striving to become a business-related conversation for mutual benefit.

Backup your Office 365 data

Microsoft does not guarantee complete and fast recovery of deleted or damaged Office 365 data. In short, Microsoft guarantees that it will not lose your data. Anyway, the company does not provide any return guarantees for you.

This is why third-party Office 365 backup is the best way to protect yourself against accidental or malicious file deletion, other user errors, ransomware, and data corruption.

These solutions store backups independently of Microsoft servers and allow granular recovery of Office 365 files, folders, and applications. They ensure that you can quickly restore and meet Office 365 data retention requirements.

To clarify, Office 365 data is crucial for any business, so you should consider having a third-party vendor for Microsoft Office 365 backup since Microsoft is not providing the proper backup. Backup Office 365 software is the right choice for any business.

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