Chapter 1

Getting Your Bearings

IN THIS CHAPTER

Getting comfy with Office 365

Introducing the Office 365 applications

Exploring the Office 365 terrain

Opening, saving, and closing Office 365 files

When I arrive in a new town - especially one that's distant enough that jet lag could be an issue - I like to drop off my bags at the hotel and then spend a few hours walking around the neighborhood. This not only keeps me awake so that tomorrow's jet lag will be less of an issue, but it also gives me the lay of the land so it's easier for me to find my way around my temporary home.

If you think of Office 365 as a kind of digital city, then the same idea applies. No, you're unlikely to experience jet lag when you start using Office 365, but the place will be unfamiliar, so a quick tour is in order so that you know where the more important landmarks can be found and what you need them for.

Let this chapter serve as your initial ramble around the Office 365 neighborhood. I introduce you to Office 365 and its applications; give you a tour of the interface; and show you the basics of saving, opening, and closing files. There's nothing complicated here, but everything you learn will provide you with a good foundation for the rest of the book.

Saying "Hello" to Office 365

Office 365 is a subscription service from Microsoft that enables you to install a suite of applications. Wait, what? A suite? Yep. My dictionary defines a suite as "a connected series of rooms to be used together." While you may be thinking of a hotel suite, you're not too far off. Office 365 is a kind of software suite. You can, in fact, define Office 365 as "a connected series of Microsoft apps to be used together." Now don't get me wrong. The Office 365 apps are all awesome when used by themselves, but when they're connected, they make your work life easier, more efficient, and more productive.

Meeting the Office 365 applications

Okay, so what are these apps that I've been going on and on about? Table 1-1 provides a list of the major apps, with pointers to where you can find more info about them later in this book.

You need to be running Windows 10 or later on your computer to run Office 365 applications. The applications don't run on computers running earlier versions of Windows. What if you have a Mac? Yep, sure, you can run Office 365, but you won't have access to certain applications, such as Access. The Mac versions of the Office 365 apps are a little different than their Windows counterparts, so I don't cover the Mac apps in this book.

If you're new to Office 365, don't be daunted by the prospect of having to learn so many different applications. The Office 365 programs have a ton of common elements, including many of the same toolbar elements and shortcut keys. These common features mean that once you learn them in one Office 365 program, you don't have to re-learn them in the next app you tackle.

"OFFICE 365" OR "MICROSOFT 365"?

March 2020 will go down in infamy as the month the Great Pandemic began in earnest and most of the world shut down to ride out the storm at home. That same month, Microsoft made the bizarre decision to "rebrand" their insanely popular and widely known suite of applications from the familiar "Office 365" to the head-scratching "Microsoft 365." Maybe it's because the pandemic had everyone otherwise preoccupied, or maybe it's because the name "Microsoft 365" is inherently meaningless, but you'd be hard-pressed to find anyone outside of Microsoft who refers to the suite with that new moniker. That's why I use good, old Office 365 throughout this book. However, just remember that if you hear anyone speaking of "Microsoft 365," they're just using a new name for Office 365.

TABLE 1-1 The Main Office 365 Applications

App

What You Can Do with It

Where to Find More Info

Word 365

Create, edit, and collaborate on word-processing documents. You can change the layout, add bulleted and numbered lists, work with headers and footers, format text, paragraphs, and pages, and more.

Book 2

Excel 365

Create, edit, and collaborate on spreadsheets. You can build formulas, sort and filter data, analyze data, and more.

Book 3

PowerPoint 365

Create, edit, and collaborate on presentations. You can change the theme, show your presentation, create slides that include text, images, shapes, and more.

Book 4

Outlook 365

Send and receive email messages. You can also share files as attachments, organize messages, control email conversations, and more. Outlook also lets you maintain a calendar of appointments and an address book of contacts.

Book 5

Access 365

Create, maintain, and organize databases of information.

Book 6

Microsoft Teams

Set up and join online meetings. You can invite people to a meeting, share resources, record and live stream a meeting, and more.

Book 7

Getting to know the Office 365 cloud services

Besides the applications listed in Table 1-1, an Office 365 subscription entitles you to these goodies from the cloud:

• Storing and sharing files online with OneDrive. Besides storing your Office 365 files on your computer, you can also save them to OneDrive, Microsoft's online file storage service. Why would you do such a thing? Having your Office 365 files online means that you can access them using any device that has internet access, so your documents are available no matter where your travels take you. Most Office 365 subscriptions offer a generous 1TB (that's one terabyte, or a thousand gigabytes) of storage space on OneDrive. You can also invite others to work on files you store on OneDrive. (Book 8 explains how to store and share files with OneDrive.)
• The opportunity to use the web (online) versions of Word, Excel, Outlook, and PowerPoint. What if you're away from your computer and the device you're using doesn't have Office 365 installed? Think nothing of it! Your Office 365 subscription entitles you to use the web versions of Word, Excel, Outlook, and PowerPoint. These web versions are nearly identical to their desktop cousins, but they live online so you access them using your favorite web browser. Yep, you're right: That is cool.

WHAT'S ALL THIS ABOUT A CLOUD?

I mentioned the term cloud a couple of times now, so let me take a few minutes of your precious time to explain what I'm talking about. In many network diagrams (schematics that show the overall layout of a network's infrastructure), the designer is most interested in the devices that connect to the network, not in the network itself. After all, the details of what happens inside the network to shunt signals from source to destination are often extremely complex and convoluted, so all that minutiae would serve only to detract from the network diagram's larger message of showing which devices can connect to the network, how they connect, and their network entry and exit points.

When the designers of a network diagram want to show the network but not any of its details, they almost always abstract the network by displaying it as a cloud symbol. (It is, if you will, the yadda-yadda-yadda of network diagrams.) At first, the cloud symbol represented the workings of a single network, but in recent years it has come to represent the internet (the network of networks).

So far, so good. Earlier in this millennium, some folks had the bright idea that, rather than store files on local computers, you could store them on a server connected to the internet, which meant that anyone with the proper credentials could access the files from anywhere in the world. Eventually, folks started storing programs on internet servers, too, and started telling anyone who'd listen that these files and applications resided "in the cloud" (meaning on a server - or, more typically, a large collection of servers that reside in a special building called a data center - accessible via the internet).

All the online Office 365 components (the web versions of Word, Excel, Outlook, and so on) are examples of such apps - in the rarefied world of cloud computing geeks, these apps are described as software as a service, or SaaS - and they all reside inside Microsoft's cloud service called, almost poetically, Microsoft Azure. These apps, as well as any data you store in OneDrive, live "in the cloud." That's also why you need an internet connection to use the Office 365 cloud services: They require that connection to access all that cloud stuff.

Finding out what software and Office 365 version you have

Follow these steps to...