It’s here, Office 2016! With the each new deployment of Microsoft Office there are great new features. Sometimes we lose a feature we love (Status Bar Sum Total Disappears 2010 to 2013 Upgrade, not fixed in 2016), but more times than not, we gain better features, and more collaboration options. The new collaborative workflow reflects how people do things. If you want to work even more collaboratively with your team, you'll love Office 2016. It’s all about the collaboration. Learn how to easily solicit feedback on your documents and leverage the new “Tell me” box.

Microsoft Office 365 provides fantastic collaboration options.  If your company is using Office 365, no matter your role, you’re likely using Microsoft Outlook or Outlook for the Web. Using Outlook effectively can enable you to work more productively and efficiently, both individually and in a team environment.

You may ask yourself, “Should I get Office 365 or Office 2013?” “Are Office 365 and Office 2013 different?” “Can I get both Office 365 and Office 2013?” These are great questions to consider and I’d like to clear up a few things, including terminology.

Well not exactly. Microsoft is offering a free download of Office 2016 preview. Just to be clear, Office 2016 is still in beta testing and Microsoft is looking for Office enthusiasts to test and share their experiences to help develop the final version of Office 2016. Microsoft expects to release Office 2016 sometime late in 2015.

In an article he contributed to Fast Company entitled "4 Reasons Your Company Needs A Collaboration Upgrade, Stat" Jacob Morgan writes: "An organization is no longer limited to a physical structure or proximity; an organization is now limited only by its ability to connect employees and information together." So, what if that problem—among others—could be alleviated with one simple solution?

As described in CMS Wire, in November 2014 the Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program gave the Department of Health and Human Services its "Authority to Operate" stamp of approval for Office 365. According to Microsoft, this was the first cloud-based email and collaboration service to obtain a FedRAMP authorization. For those who aren't as familiar with the government edition of Office 365, it's a cloud-based email and collaboration suite that "offers U.S. public-sector customers a cordoned-off data center infrastructure just for them," writes Juan Carlos Perez in a contribution to PC World.

You can add attachments to include one or more files with any email message you send, however, you have more choices with Office 365. When you add an attachment you can choose a file from your computer hard drive, but how do you send an attachment as a link using OneDrive? Well, this awesome feature is very easy to do. Is it possible to collaborate on email attachments? Yes, it is! If you choose a file that you have in OneDrive for Business, you can send it as a link. When you send a link, not only will you prevent clogging up other people’s inbox, but the recipients can automatically given permission to edit the file which is perfect for collaboration. When we collaborate in the cloud, there is only one file to keep track of which is perfect for version control.
Check out how easy it is:

As many of us already know, migrating to Microsoft SharePoint presents the risk of low user adoption. In our experience, we’ve seen resistance and a big mind shift with the concept of using metadata in SharePoint instead of the traditional folder structure. Most end users are comfortable with folders. After all, “that’s the way we’ve always done it.”  This cultural shift doesn’t come easy and requires continuous education and training.

This is a step-by-step guide that will assist with migrating AutoText specifically from Microsoft Word 2003 to Word 2010. Migrating AutoText will save you, or more specifically, your users a considerable amount of time because they will not need to reenter their AutoText entries.

Occasionally, dates or names won’t merge correctly into a spreadsheet. There are extra spaces, for example, and you may want to get rid of them. How do you clean up your spreadsheets quickly? Use the TRIM and SUBSTITUTE functions. Trim blank spaces and substitute text or blanks with something different and clean up hidden characters!

Working with a touch-screen device can present a challenge when working with the Ribbon in Microsoft Office Applications. You may wonder how to enable Touch Mode in Excel, for example. Can you make the buttons bigger? Absolutely. You can create more open space on the Ribbon so commands are easier to tap.

Can you customize the branding of the Office 365 Web based sign in experience? Yes you can with Microsoft’s release of Azure Active Directory (AD)!

Can you add Apps to the App Launcher in Office 365? With the continuous adding of new innovations and features by Microsoft, it is very easy to add single sign on apps to improve the user experience. For example, if you want to add a specific HR app to help users access tools without having to go to the external website, you can! Can you add a Twitter app to Office 365 for single sign on to your organization's Twitter account? Yes, you can! There are hundreds of apps to choose from.

With the rollout of Office 365 Government, there are some interesting decisions to make when upgrading potentially old and expensive servers. There is an increasing need to find a long-term solution to meet governmental needs for compliance, modern mobility, collaboration, archiving and, of course, security. Office 365 meets all federal information security and privacy requirements. So why migrate to Office 365 Government? It is an opportunity to modernize, boost productivity, be more efficient and reduce cost.