Should Your Company Move to Office 2019? Here’s What you Need to Know

should your company move to office 2019 here what you need to know
Should Your Company Move to Office 2019

Microsoft recently launched their cloud-based suite of office products, aptly named Office 2019, a successor to their Office 2016 suite. The successor, offered for both Mac and Windows users, contains new versions of all of Microsoft’s popular office software applications. Namely, Microsoft Word, their Excel spreadsheet software, PowerPoint, Outlook, Access, Publisher, Visio and Project. As always, it’s important for organizations to research new applications in order to determine the impact upon their organizations, as well as determine their upgrade readiness if they decide to move ahead with the new suite.

Getting Ready for the Cloud

Microsoft’s Office 2019 is cloud-based software. For those organizations who have already made the transition and are ready for cloud-based products, the transition to Office 2019 should be fairly seamless. But what about organizations who for one reason or another, are lagging behind transitioning to the cloud? According to Microsoft’s own support page, although they certainly encourage everyone to make their way to the cloud, they understand that organizations are in varying stages of transition. Therefore, Microsoft remains committed to providing additional releases post Office 2019 to their on-premise users.

Is Upgrading Required? 

Up until fairly recently, Office 2016 users thought they would be required to upgrade either to Office 2019 or Office 365 ProPlus if they wanted to connect to Office 365. Microsoft has reversed this position and is now stating that Office 2016 users will be able to connect to their Office 365 services through at least October 2023. This is good news for Office 365 users since it gives them a little more breathing room before upgrading.

Why Office 2019?

Some organizations may decide they want to move to Office 2019 in order to take advantage of the some of the new features within the suite. The new version of Word will offer features such as text-to-speech and learning capabilities and Excel will offer new functions, 2D maps, and enhancements to both PowerQuery and PowerPivot. The new PowerPoint will have 3D image management, enhanced zoom and will incorporate roaming pencil case capabilities.

If you would like to know more about the new features found in Office 2019, or if you have questions about upgrading, please contact us.

5 Handy Tips To Keep In Mind When Using Microsoft Word

office 365 business plans

Microsoft Word is one of the most common software suits in the world and is likely to be the leading name recognized around the world. However, the software is so well known that it’s hard to call anyone who uses such basic software something of a “power user”.

However, for our weekly tips we are going to dive a bit deeper into the true capabilities of Microsoft Word and show you how you can up your game a bit to get the most out of the software.

The following are 5 handy tips to keep in mind when using Microsoft Word:

  1. Faster Backspacing: It’s very frustrating to use a word processor such as Microsoft Word when you realize that you have messed up typing a word or sentence for the first (or tenth) time, especially when you are trying to get a document written up by a certain deadline or within an allotted time frame. However, the good news is that there is a shortcut to backspacing more quickly than constantly hitting the “Backspace” key again and again or holding it down to watch a sentence disappear. Consolidate the process by hitting the “Ctrl” key and Backspace key. This will delete an entire word rather than just a letter at a time.
  2. Side-By-Side Documents: If you need to compare two documents while looking at them both at the same time. Whether comparing documents or editing them simultaneously Word does allow you to open two documents side-by-side and even scroll through them simultaneously. Once both documents are opened, click “View” and select the “View Side By Side” option to see your documents appear side-by-side on the same screen.
  3. Spike Text: Cut and paste is probably one of the most often-used and most useful features that Word has to offer. Microsoft has now also added another function that can make the feature even more useful as this feature is more condensed. It is called Spike. If you are looking to move a section of information that you have already typed needs to be moved, however, the text that you want to pull out is spread throughout the rest of the text. Rather than doing multiple copy and pastes while also deleting it from that section to compile in another section, you can Spike it. You can select each section you need and remove it from the text by pressing “Ctrl” and F3. This will appear to cut the content but if you simply select “Ctrl”, “Shift”, & F3 you will be able to empty the clipboard into the new section or even into a new document to move text more effectively.
  4. Finding Your Location: Every word processor, including Microsoft Word, trains its users to save the content before they close the document when they are finished working on the document (at least for that section). However, it can be quite irritating when you reopen the document and the cursor is at the top of the page when that is not where you need the cursor to be to continue writing. It can be hard to remember where you left off, especially if you are editing a section of text or are looking to work on a certain section of the document. To help put your cursor where you want it Microsoft Word lets you press “Shift” + F5 to take you to the last place where you left off.
  5. Easy Hyperlinks: Hyperlinking in your text can give something you are writing more credit or help take a reader to another website with more related, pertinent information. This also applies to many business documents or when you want to cite other sources in your work. To do it in a quick and easy manner, highlight the text you want to link and press “Ctrl” + K and a new window will come up. Then add the URL that you are linking to the address bar and press “Enter” to complete hyperlinking the text.

These are just 5 of the great tools that Microsoft Word offers to help make working on their Word Processor easier. Give these tools a try the next time you are using Microsoft Word and enjoy the time it saves you and the increase of productivity you can gain from these shortcuts.

While millions of people worldwide use Microsoft Word, few know of these secret shortcuts that can make the platform more functional for your needs. These are our “weekly tips” that are here to teach you 5 ways to make Microsoft Word work better for you.

For more information on Microsoft Word and how to get this word processing platform to meet your personal needs or those of your company or business, please feel free to contact us at the AE Technology group for further assistance.

Microsoft Increases Protection From Junk Email in Office 365

junk email

Considering the extent to which many businesses rely on email, it is not surprising that the growing number of phishing and spoofing emails making it into people’s inboxes has become more of a problem than a nuisance.

Considering Microsoft is one of the largest email providers for commercial users, with over 120 million business users subscribing to Office 365, Microsoft saw an opportunity to provide an additional service to its customer base by enhancing email screening for its Office 365 users.

Here is a quick overview of what users need to know about this latest update.    

The Phishing Dilemma

In a recent blog post, Microsoft explained that phishing scammers who try to obtain sensitive information through email falsification has become a rampant problem.

They claim that businesses are particularly vulnerable to these types of attacks as only 9% of companies in the Fortune 500 have strong email authentication policies, which can leave the majority of businesses vulnerable to having their sensitive information hacked by phishers.

Unless a company’s email filter is able to detect scam email, phishing emails will be delivered to the end user potentially deceiving them.

Microsoft’s Solution

Considering the severity of the threat that phishing attacks can pose to commercial users of Office 365, Microsoft decided that it was time to improve Office 365’s email authentication as they determined that the risk of allowing dangerous emails through was greater than the risk of potentially losing legitimate emails to spam filters.

Previously, this anti-spoofing technology was only available to those organizations that had an Office 365 Enterprise E5 subscription or to those who had purchased an Advanced Threat Protection (ATP) add-on for their Office 365 subscription.

However, as of October 2018, Microsoft has extended this protection to a wider range of Office 365 subscribers who can now benefit from more secure email screenings.

Contact us to learn more about this change to Office 365 as well as to find out about additional steps your business can take to protect itself from phishing attacks.

Tip of the Week: Edit PDFs in Microsoft Word

tip of the week edit pdfs in microsoft word
PDF in Word

To open the .pdf simply open Microsoft Word and select Open Other Documents in the left hand menu.

This will bring up the Open menu, click on browse.

A message will pop up stating that Word will now convert your PDF to an editable Word document. Click on OK.

The PDF will open in Word, but there will be a yellow bar across the top that indicates that this is a PROTECTED VIEW, this is a security measure that wards against infected files from the Internet being opened. If you trust the document and just want to edit it, select the Enable Editing button that is located inside the yellow bar.

After you push the button there will be another pop up stating that Word will now convert your PDF to an editable Word document. If you’d like to get rid of this message, you can select the checkbox below the text. If you haven’t, click OK.

You can now edit your PDF.

To save the once-PDF, now-Word file back into a PDF, select File > Save As and set the file type to PDF from the drop down menu under the name. In order to save the file, you will have to alter the name of the document slightly.

You’re all set when you see your edited PDF open in Microsoft Edge (or your default PDF viewer).

Microsoft Word is much more than just a word processor. What Word features do you use that could be helpful? Leave your tips in the comments and return to our blog regularly for more useful technology information.

Three New Things Microsoft SharePoint Has to Offer

three new things microsoft sharepoint has to offer
SharePoint Logo

Microsoft SharePoint is still the most used platform for intranets, portals, and digital collaboration. There are challenges and limited updates, but that hasn’t done much to alter the success rate of SharePoint. Microsoft has made some changes to the collaborative platform, but knowing what they are won’t explain how it will help business.

Here are three things that should be known:

Usability

When using products, ease of use is a huge part of what makes it successful. Microsoft has made great changes to improve the user-friendliness of SharePoint. One new feature, the App Launcher, is an extension that allows you to access Microsoft owned applications, like OneDrive for Business, as well as navigation between on-premises and the cloud. The App Launcher also allows the addition of favorite sites for ready access. Other features include support for increased file sizes, removal of character stipulations of file names, images and videos are more easily viewed, and folder creation. Of course, these are just a few changes to the interface.

Searching

Finding documents after adding them to SharePoint is an essential feature to any document sharing product. Utilizing SharePoint for business allows members of that network to add, view, share, and download documents. Like a large filing cabinet, it needs some kind of organizational tool to assist with locating a file quickly and efficiently. The search engine can be used to pinpoint files with certain keywords as well as the title.

Hybrid with Office 365

SharePoint can be used in conjunction with Office 365. Many features require that both applications are functioning in order for them to work properly. OneDrive redirection allows you to use the Office 365 subscription to be redirected to the online version of the application and no longer On-Premises. Sites can be saved via Office 365 and On-Premises to the App Launcher; searching is unified — meaning that searching for one document will allow it to be located either in Office 365 or On-Premises SharePoint.

To become more informed about how SharePoint can improve your business or any other technical questions, please send us a message here at AE Technology Group.