What is Office 365?
Whether you’re a student, executive, or an entrepreneur, Office 365 gives you the tools to create content, communicate and collaborate on any device, anywhere. Here’s all you need to know about Office 365.
Available as a subscription service, Office 365 helps you run your business more easily because it offers email, 1 terabyte of OneDrive storage, Office applications like Word, PowerPoint and Excel, and other collaboration tools you can use on your phone, tablet or PC – devices like the Lumia 640 XL, Microsoft Surface 3 or Surface Pro 3.
It comes with a range of subscription options that range from $5 per month to $12.50 per month depending on your needs. For home, there’s Office 365 Home and Office 365 Personal. In fact, the Lumia 640 and Lumia 640 XL come with a one-year subscription to Office 365 Personal–more on that, here.
For work, your options start with Office 365 Business Essentials, Office 365 Business, and Office 365 Business Premium. And you can always use Office apps for free via the web with Office Online.
Here are 10 reasons why you need Microsoft Office 365.
- The Office you know and love, plus more
Office 365 is a cloud-based service that includes the traditional Office apps you know and love such as Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, OneNote, Publisher and Access. But it’s also much more, including cloud storage with OneDrive and OneDrive for Business; meeting capabilities, voice and video calling and IM with Skype; and collaboration tools such as Yammer, depending on the subscription plan you choose. And because your content and apps are in the cloud, you can access them anywhere, across your devices. And all your applications always stay up-to-date.
- Apps that work together to make your work easier
These apps are integrated with one another within Office 365, so it’s easy to create a Word document, automatically save it to the cloud, then share it with others, and work on it with multiple people simultaneously.
The experience will become even smoother when Windows 10 launches later this year–that’s when Office will integrate even further and scale seamlessly from Lumia and other smartphones to PCs and other devices, thanks to new universal Windows applications.
- Work across devices
With many Office 365 plans, you can install Office on up to five of your PCs/Macs and five tablets (iPad, Windows, or Android), and transfer installation to new devices.
- Mobile productivity
Create, open, edit and save files in the cloud. The Office Mobile app provides the same consistent Office experience (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook and OneNote) that you’ve come to depend on. Moreover, with a Lumia in your hand, you don’t need to be tied to your desk!
- Work on your schedule
Sign in to Office wherever and whenever you need to work. Your documents, preferences and settings follow you across your devices and the Web so you can pick up right where you left off. You can also download documents for offline use.
- Stay connected with friends and family with Skype
Many plans such as Office 365 Home and Office 365 Personal offer free Skype calls to mobile phones in eight countries and landlines in more than 60 countries.
Find out more here.
- 1 TB of OneDrive storage: Built-in security
Get 1 terabyte of storage capacity per user on OneDrive–accessible via your Lumia, tablet or PC. You can access as many photos and documents, and videos as you like on your Lumia and share or edit them from anywhere.
The built-in security and privacy controls keep your data safe. Learn more about safety and security by reading our previous stories here and here.
- Entrepreneurial needs
Set up your business e-mail address with your Office 365 account and access a host of features to better help you run your business.
With the Office 365 Business plans, connect with customers and colleagues with tools such as IM, social networking, video conferencing, and SharePoint team sites and OneDrive for Business for storing and sharing files.
Check our recent story about setting up business email address with Office 365 here.
- Easy set-up and management
Office 365 always stays up to date so you’ll have the latest version of your favorite Office-based applications. For setting up Office 365 Business account, see the how-to here.
- Office support and free training
Get up to speed with all the features of Office 365 and get online support from here and here.