Office 365 All-in-One For Dummies book cover

Office 365 All-in-One For Dummies

Authors:
Peter Weverka ,
Matt Wade
Buy on Amazon

Overview

Multiply your productivity with the world's most straightforward guide to the world's most popular office software

Microsoft Office 365 contains straightforward tools for virtually every office task you could possibly think of. And learning how to use this powerful software is much easier than you might expect! With the latest edition of Office 365 All-in-One For Dummies, you'll get a grip on some of the most popular and effective office software on the planet, including Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, Access, Publisher, and Teams.

This expanded handbook walks you through the ins and outs of reviewing and composing documents with Word, hosting and joining meetings with Teams, crunching numbers with Excel, and answering emails with Outlook. And it's ideal for anyone who's brand new to Office and those who just need a quick refresher on the latest useful updates from Microsoft.

In this one-stop reference, you'll find:

  • Step-by-step instructions on the installation, maintenance, and navigation of all the critical components of Office 365
  • Guidance for using Office 365's built-in online and cloud functionality
  • Complete explanations of what every part of Office 365 is used for and how to apply them to your life

Office 365 All-in-One For Dummies is the last handbook you'll ever need to apply Microsoft's world-famous software suite to countless everyday tasks.

Multiply your productivity with the world's most straightforward guide to the world's most popular office software

Microsoft Office 365 contains straightforward tools for virtually every office task you could possibly think of. And learning how to use this powerful software is much easier than you might expect! With the latest edition of Office 365 All-in-One For Dummies, you'll get a grip on some of the most popular and effective office software on the planet, including Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, Access, Publisher, and Teams.

This expanded handbook walks you through the ins and outs of reviewing and composing documents with Word, hosting and joining meetings with Teams, crunching numbers

with Excel, and answering emails with Outlook. And it's ideal for anyone who's brand new to Office and those who just need a quick refresher on the latest useful updates from Microsoft.

In this one-stop reference, you'll find:

  • Step-by-step instructions on the installation, maintenance, and navigation of all the critical components of Office 365
  • Guidance for using Office 365's built-in online and cloud functionality
  • Complete explanations of what every part of Office 365 is used for and how to apply them to your life

Office 365 All-in-One For Dummies is the last handbook you'll ever need to apply Microsoft's world-famous software suite to countless everyday tasks.

Office 365 All-in-One For Dummies Cheat Sheet

Here are some useful Office 365 features worth knowing about. Two of these cheat sheets explain how Office 365 lets you turn one thing into another — how to turn a Word document into a PowerPoint presentation and how to turn an Office 365 file into a PDF so that people who don’t have Office can read it. For people who get mountains of email, here are instructions for moving your Office 365 email messages as they arrive into a specific Outlook folder.

About The Authors

Peter Weverka is a veteran tech writer who has written dozens of Dummies titles, including the first edition of Office 365 All-in-One For Dummies. He has also authored books on PowerPoint, OneNote, Word, and Quicken.

Articles From The Book

7 results

General Microsoft Articles

How to Create Charts in Office 365

Fans of charts and graphs will be glad to know that putting a chart in a Word document, Excel worksheet, or PowerPoint slide—all available as part of Microsoft Office 365—is fairly easy. Before going into details, here are the basic steps that everyone needs to know to create a chart in Word, Excel, and PowerPoint:

  1. Go to the Insert tab.
  2. If you’re working in Microsoft Excel, select the data you’ll use to generate the chart (in Word and PowerPoint, skip to Step 3). In Excel, you select the data on a worksheet before creating the chart, but in Word and PowerPoint, you enter the data for the chart after you create the chart.
  3. Select the kind of chart you want. How you select a chart type depends on which program you’re working in:
    • Excel: On the Insert tab, open the drop-down list on one of the buttons in the Charts group (Column, Bar, and so on) and select a chart type; or click the Recommended Charts button or Charts group button to open the Insert Chart dialog box and select a chart there. As shown, the Insert Chart dialog box shows all the kinds of charts you can create. Go to the Recommended Charts tab to see which charts Excel recommends.
    • Word and PowerPoint: Click the Chart button. You see the Insert Chart dialog box shown. Select a chart type, select a variation, and click OK. A data grid opens on your screen. (In PowerPoint, you can also click the Chart icon on a placeholder frame to open the Insert Chart dialog box.)
  4. In Word and PowerPoint, replace the sample data in the data grid with the data you need for generating your chart. After you finish entering the data, click the Close button in the data grid.
  5. Modify your chart, if you desire. The Chart Tools tabs and buttons to the right of the chart offer commands for making a chart look just-so.

Click the Recent button in the Insert Chart dialog box to see all the charts you examined in your search for the right chart.

And if you decide to delete the chart you created? Click its perimeter to select it and then press the Delete key.

How to choose the right chart

If you’re a fan of charts, the huge selection of charts can make you feel like a kid in a candy store, but if charts aren’t your forté, the wealth of charts you can choose from can be daunting. You can choose among charts in 17 categories. Which chart is best? The golden rule for choosing a chart type is to choose the one that presents information in the brightest possible light. The purpose of a chart is to compare information across different categories. Select a chart that draws out the comparison so that others can clearly make comparisons. The table describes the 17 chart types and explains in brief when to use each type of chart.

How to provide the raw data for your chart

Every chart is constructed from raw data — the numbers and labels you select in an Excel worksheet (in Excel) or enter in the data grid (in Word and PowerPoint). If you’re operating in Word or PowerPoint, you see, in the data grid, sample data in a data range, as shown. The information inside the data range is used to generate the chart. You can tell where the data range begins and ends because it is enclosed in a blue border. Your job is to replace the sample data in the data range with data of your own. As you enter your data, the chart on your slide or page takes shape. As you enter numbers and labels in the data grid, watch your chart take shape. Here are the basics of entering data in the data grid:
  • Entering the data in a cell: A cell is the box in a data grid where a column and row intersect; each cell can contain one data item. To enter data in a cell, click the cell and start typing. When you’re finished, press Enter, press Tab, or click a different cell.
  • Deleting the data in a cell: To delete the data in a cell, including the sample data, click the cell and press Delete.
  • Displaying the numbers: When a number is too large to fit in a cell, the number is displayed in scientific notation (you can double-click the number to enlarge the cell in which it is located). Don’t worry — the number is still recorded and is used to generate your chart. You can display large numbers by widening the columns in which the numbers are found. Move the pointer between column letters (A, B, and so on at the top of the worksheet) and when you see the double-headed arrow, click and drag to the right.
  • Changing the size of the data range: To enclose more or fewer cells in the data range, move the pointer to the lower-right corner of the data range, and when the pointer changes into a two-headed arrow, click and drag so that the blue box encloses only the data you want for your chart.

The data grid offers the Edit Data in Microsoft Excel button in case you want to enter data for your chart in Excel. Click this button and enter data in Excel if you’re comfortable working there.

In Word and PowerPoint, click the Edit Data button on the (Chart Tools) Design tab at any time to open the data grid and fiddle with the numbers and data from which your chart is generated.

How to position your chart in a workbook, page, or slide

To change the position of a chart, click to select it, click its perimeter, and when you see the four-headed arrow, start dragging. Otherwise, follow these instructions to land your chart where you want it to be:
  • Excel: To move your chart to a different worksheet or create a new worksheet to hold your chart, go to the (Chart Tools) Design tab and click the Move Chart button. You see the Move Chart dialog box.
    • To move your chart to a different worksheet, click the Object In option button, choose the worksheet in the drop-down list, and click OK.
    • To create a new worksheet for a chart, click the New Sheet option button, enter a name for the new worksheet, and click OK.
  • Word: Starting in Print Layout view, select your chart, and in the Layout or (Chart Tools) Format tab, click the Position button (you may have to click the Arrange button first, depending on the size of your screen). You see a drop-down list with text-wrapping options. Choose the option that describes how you want surrounding text to behave when it crashes into your chart.

You can also position a chart by selecting it, clicking the Layout Options button, and choosing an option on the Layout Options drop-down menu. The Layout Options button appears to the right of a chart after you select a chart.

  • PowerPoint: Select the chart and drag it on the slide to the right position.

General Microsoft Articles

How to Change a Chart's Appearance in Office 365

Office presents many different ways to refine a chart. As shown, you can click one of the three buttons — Chart Elements, Chart Styles, or Chart Filters — that appear beside a chart when you select it. You can also go to (Chart Tools) Design tab and the (Chart Tools) Format tab. Your opportunities for tinkering with a chart are many. These pages explain how to change a chart’s appearance and layout in Microsoft Off 365 programs, starting with the biggest change you can make — exchanging one type of chart for another.

How to change the chart type

The biggest way to overhaul a chart is to ditch it in favor of a different chart type. Luckily for you, Office makes this task simple in Microsoft Excel, Word, and PowerPoint. Follow these steps to change a pumpkin into a carriage or an existing chart into a different kind of chart:
  1. Click your chart to select it.
  2. On the (Chart Tools) Design tab, click the Change Chart Type button, or right-click your chart and choose Change Chart Type on the shortcut menu. The Change Chart Type dialog box appears. Does it look familiar? This is the same dialog box you used to create your chart in the first place.
  3. Select a new chart type and click OK. Not all chart types can be converted successfully to other chart types. You may well have created a monster, in which case go back to Step 1 and start all over or click the Undo button.

How to change the size and shape of a chart

To make a chart taller or wider, follow these instructions:
  • Click the perimeter of the chart to select it and then drag a handle on the side to make it wider, or a handle on the top or bottom to make it taller.
  • Go to the (Chart Tools) Format tab and enter measurements in the Height and Width boxes. You can find these boxes in the Size group (you may have to click the Size button to see them, depending on the size of your screen).

How to choose a new look for your chart

Select your chart and experiment with these different ways to change its look:
  • Select a chart style: On the (Chart Tools) Design tab, choose an option in the Chart Styles gallery. Or click the Chart Styles button and select a style on the drop-down menu. These gallery options are quite sophisticated. You would have a hard time fashioning these charts on your own.
  • Change the color scheme: On the (Chart Tools) Design tab, click the Change Colors button and select a color on the drop-down list. Or click the Chart Styles button and select a color on the drop-down menu.

If your file includes more than one chart, make the charts consistent with one another. Give them a similar appearance so that your file doesn’t turn into a chart fashion show. You can make charts consistent with one another by choosing similar options for charts in the Chart Styles gallery.

How to change the layout of a chart

Charts are composed of different elements — the legend, the labels, and the titles. The following figure identifies chart elements. Where these elements appear is up to you. Whether to include them is up to you as well. You can, for example, place the legend on the right side of your chart or go without a legend. By choosing which elements to include and where to put elements, you fashion a layout for your chart. Select your chart and experiment with these techniques to decide on a layout:
  • On the (Chart Tools) Design tab, click the Quick Layout button and select an option in the gallery.
  • On the (Chart Tools) Design tab, click the Add Chart Element button. Then choose an element on the drop-down list, and on the submenu, choose whether to place the element (the None option) or where to place it.
  • Click the Chart Elements button, choose an element on the drop-down menu, and choose whether to place it (the None option) or where to place it. The following figure, for example, shows how to choose where to place the legend.

Hover the pointer over the options on the Chart Elements menus and glance at your chart. You can see right away what each option does to your chart.

To remove series or category names from a chart, click the Chart Filters button and, on the drop-down menu, deselect a column or row option button.

How to handle the gridlines

Gridlines are lines that cross a chart and indicate value measurements. Most charts include major gridlines to show where bars or columns meet or surpass a major unit of measurement, and you can also include fainter, minor gridlines that mark less significant measurements. Use these techniques to handle gridlines:
  • On the (Chart Tools) Design tab, click the Add Chart Element button, choose Gridlines on the drop-down list, and select or deselect an option on the submenu.
  • Click the Chart Elements button, choose Gridlines, and select or deselect a check box on the submenu, as shown.
Deselecting all the gridline options removes the gridlines from a chart. Choose More Options on the submenu to open the Format Major Gridlines task pane, where you can change the color of gridlines, make gridlines semitransparent, and make gridlines wider or narrower.

Gridlines are essential for helping read charts, but be very, very careful about displaying minor gridlines on charts. These lines can make your chart unreadable. They can turn a perfectly good chart into a gaudy pinstripe suit.

How to change a chart element’s color, font, or other particular

The (Chart Tools) Format tab is the place to go to change the color, line width, font, or font size of a chart element. Go to the (Chart Tools) Format tab, for example, to change the color of the bars in a bar chart, the color of text, or the chart background color. Follow these basic steps to change a color, line width, font, or font size in part of a chart:
  1. Go to the (Chart Tools) Format tab.
  2. In the Chart Elements drop-down list, select the chart element that needs a facelift. You can find this list in the upper-left corner of the screen, as shown.
  3. Click the Format Selection button. The Format task pane opens.
  4. Format the chart element you selected. In the Format task pane, you can find all the tools you need to change the color, outline, and size of a chart element.

If your experiments with retouching a chart go awry and you want to start over, click the Reset to Match Style button on the (Chart Tools) Format tab.

General Microsoft Articles

How to Collaborate in SharePoint from Office 365

SharePoint is Microsoft's web-based team collaboration platform. Businesses employ SharePoint Online to store documents, manage projects, and permit coworkers to collaborate with one another. SharePoint Online isn’t necessarily ubiquitous (present or found everywhere), but it tries to be. SharePoint Online sites are designed to be accessible from everywhere — from a desktop computer, a laptop, a tablet device, or a smartphone. No matter the device you use, the content is supposed to be accessible and user friendly. This article introduces SharePoint Online, tells you how to find your way around a team site, upload and work with files in document libraries, share files with coworkers, sync files, and update your Office 365 profile.

Introducing team sites

A SharePoint team site is a collaborative workspace where colleagues can work on the same files, track projects, and interact with one another. The figure shows a typical SharePoint Online team site in the Office 365 window. These sites can look different depending on how site administrators set them up, but they have the same tools in common. A team site provides the means to open Office 365 applications, upload and download files, and collaborate with coworkers. These pages explain how to log in to a team site and find your way around the screen.

Logging in to a team site

You need a password and network address to log in to a SharePoint team site. You’re likely to get these items from your friendly neighborhood system administrator. Follow these steps to log in to a SharePoint team site:
  1. Open a web browser and navigate to your organization's team site. What your team site's web address looks like depends on whether your company uses its own domain name (such as company.com) or the Office 365 default naming format (which looks something like yourcompany.sharepoint.com).
  2. If you are prompted for credentials, enter your username, enter your password, and click OK. What happens next depends on what your local (on-premises) environment looks like and how the administrator configured SharePoint. You may land in the team site without having to enter your username and password.

Finding your way around a SharePoint Online team site

Refer to the preceding figure as you tour a typical Sharepoint team site:
  • App Launcher: For launching Office 365 Web applications. Because of its appearance, it is sometimes called the waffle menu.
  • Notifications: For receiving administrative and user-defined alerts.
  • Settings: For changing user settings. Which options you get depends on your privilege level.
  • User menu: For signing in, signing out, and viewing your profile.
  • Site search: For finding content on the site.
  • Navigation pane: For accessing popular content on the team site. Usually a site administrator determines what appears on the Navigation pane.
  • Lists: For listing tasks that need doing, including project work items and general-purpose "to do" items. SharePoint offers prebuilt templates for different kinds of lists, many of which allow you to assign list items to specific SharePoint users.
  • Document libraries: For hosting files that you and other team members can open and work on.

A SharePoint site is a website like any other. You can create bookmarks in your browser to the places in SharePoint that you visit often.

How to work with document libraries

The document library is the fundamental data repository in a SharePoint site. Don’t let the word document fool you. You can store any type of file in a document library. Use the document library to store files for the purpose of collaboration. These pages explain how to open files in the document library, upload files, co-edit files, and share files.

Opening a file in a document library

Follow these steps to locate and open a file:
  1. Use the Navigation bar to find and select the file you want to open. The administrator may have placed a shortcut to the document library on the Team site home page or elsewhere on the site.
  2. Click the Open button (the three dots) next to the name of the file you want to open. A pop-up window appears, as shown. It shows you a preview of the file so that you can make sure you open the right one.
  3. Click the More Actions button (three dots, again). The figure shows where the More Actions button is located. A pop-up menu appears with all possible actions you can take with the file, as shown.
  4. Open the file. You can open the file in an Office desktop application or an Office Web App:
    • Office desktop application: Choose the first option on the pop-up menu. For example, if you’re dealing with a Word document, choose Open in Word. The file is downloaded to your computer so that you can work on it there. Changes you make to the file on your computer are uploaded automatically to the copy stored on SharePoint.
    • Office Web App: Choose the second option on the pop-up menu, the option with the word online in its name. A Web App opens so that you can edit the file.

Here’s a shortcut: To open a file in an Office Web App, simply click its name in a document library.

How to work with coworkers on the same file

Sometimes when you try to open a file, you can’t do it because someone got there first. Administrators decide whether more than one person can edit a file at the same time. If a file permits more than one editor, follow these steps to open a file that is currently being edited and make your own contributions:
  1. Open a file in the document library. The previous topic in this chapter explains how to open a file. The following figure shows a Word file open in the Word Web App.
  2. Look for indications that the file is currently being edited by a colleague. As shown, the Word Web App tells you the name (or names) of others working on the file. If you look carefully, you can also see the cursor location of other editors. SharePoint is perfectly fine letting multiple people collaborate on the same file.
  3. Make your editorial changes to the file.
  4. When you finish editing, click the web browser's Back button or the Office 365 App Launcher to return to the team site.

    Don't worry about saving changes to a file. Office 365 saves your changes automatically.

How to upload files to a document library

Follow these steps to upload a file from your computer to a SharePoint Online document library:
  1. In SharePoint, go to the document library where you want to upload the file.
  2. Click Upload. As shown in the following figure, the Add a Document dialog box appears. If you don't see the Upload button in a document library, speak to your administrator. You might not have permission to upload files.
  3. In the Add a Document dialog box, click the Choose Files button.
  4. In the Open dialog box, select the file you want to upload and click Open. You can upload more than one file by selecting more than one in the Open dialog box.
  5. In the Add a Document dialog box, enter version comments, if necessary. SharePoint can be configured to store multiple versions of the same document. Your administrator may require you to enter comments to describe the file you upload.
  6. Click OK. While you’re at it, have a look to see whether the file you uploaded appears in the document library.

To upload files, you can drag one or more files from a File Explorer window on your computer and drop them into a document library. How convenient!

How to share files with coworkers

In SharePoint terminology, sharing means to make coworkers aware of a file they can edit. After you share a file, you can alert co-workers by email that the file has been shared. Sometimes administrators don’t allow someone to share a file, but if you can share files, follow these steps to share a file with a coworker:
  1. Locate the file you want to share and click its Open button. Look for the three dots next to the file’s name to find the Open button. A pop-up window appears.
  2. Click Share at the bottom of the pop-up window. You see the Share dialog box, as shown. office-inviting-collaboration Inviting a co-worker to collaborate on a file.
  3. Enter the name of the person with whom you want to share the file. SharePoint opens a drop-down list as soon as you begin typing. You can choose a name from the list.
  4. Enter a descriptive message. You might explain what the file is and why you want to share it.
  5. Select or deselect the Require Sign-In option. Deselect the Require Sign-In option if you want to share the file with people outside your organization. For ordinary business use, select this option to make sure that only team site members can view the file.
  6. Select the Send an Email Invitation option.
  7. Click the Share button.
The following figure shows what a share message looks like to the person who receives it. The recipient can click the Open button to open the file and get to work on it. An invitation to share a file.

How to view files offline

At times, your computer can’t access the SharePoint Online portal. For example, imagine you’re on an airplane and need to update some work files but you’re not connected to SharePoint. To solve this problem of offline document access, Office 365 gives us the opportunity to sync files. Syncing enables you to access SharePoint-based files on your local computer and not have to worry about having an Internet connection. After you reconnect to the Internet (after the airplane lands), OneDrive syncs the files with their online counterparts. It's important to understand that OneDrive synchronizes two copies of each file, one copy stored in a SharePoint Online document library and the other copy stored locally on your computer. Follow these steps to sync SharePoint files with files of the same name on OneDrive:
  1. In SharePoint, locate the document library you want to synchronize with your computer. You don’t have to synchronize every team-site document library. Synchronize only the files that you want to be able to access offline.
  2. From the document library menu, click Sync. The following figure shows where the Sync button is located. A pop-up notification tells you that SharePoint is downloading the document library content and synchronizing it with your OneDrive for Business client.
  3. From the notification area of the Windows 10 taskbar, click the OneDrive icon. As shown, this icon looks like a cloud. A list of recently synchronized files appears, in this case files from the document library.
  4. From the OneDrive window, click Open folder to view your local file copies. From now on, you can work on these files either locally or directly from SharePoint. OneDrive will keep all changes in sync automatically.

Delving deeper into Office 365

Office 365 offers the Delve screen to update your profile and communicate better with team members. Depending on the size of your organization, making sure that your Office 365 profile is up to date can be enormously helpful. Coworkers can look at your Office 365 profile to see whether you are the right fit for a project. They can look at your profile to discover how to find you. The Delve screen is a bit like a social media portal in that it offers a convenient way to communicate with your team. Follow these steps to delve deeper into Office 365:
  1. In SharePoint Online, open the User menu and click My Profile. The user menu is located in the upper-right corner of the Office 365 screen. The Delve screen opens, as shown.
  2. Use the controls in the Delve screen to update your profile and interact with colleagues. You can customize this screen to make yourself more presentable to your coworkers.
  3. Click Update Profile when you finish making your changes.

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