Are you looking for ways to upgrade and optimise your Microsoft 365 experience? Here are some of the best ways to do just that.
Use the ‘Tell Me’ Feature
At the top of nearly all of your Microsoft 365 apps you will find a search bar that says “Tell me what you want to do…”
Microsoft has invested a lot of time into this feature; with natural language recognition built-in, you can search for and find information on how to do nearly anything in Microsoft 365 – you can phrase your search however you want, and ‘Tell Me’ will likely provide you with exactly what you need. Even if you already know how to perform a specific task, it may be useful to search for it in ‘Tell Me’ anyway – Microsoft may have some recommendations on the best way to perform it.
Consolidate All Your Notes
These days there are so many different ways of taking notes. There is always the low-fi approach, with notepads, sticky notes, or a planner; but as well as this, nearly all phones come with a built-in notes app; Windows even has the legacy Notepad app, and there are countless web-based to-do list apps that you might use.
With Microsoft 365, you can make all your note-taking in one place, with Microsoft OneNote – this is the dedicated notes app that comes as part of your Microsoft 365 subscription. Within OneNote, you can create different notebooks – perhaps you want a personal notebook, a work notebook, or multiple notebooks for different work projects. You can easily create sections within each notebook, and even pages within each section. OneNote also makes it easy to create To-Do lists, Checklists, and many other useful functions.
Bonus Tip…
Another handy tool is Office Lens. This allows you to use your smartphone’s camera to take a picture of a note, or a whiteboard, and Office Lens will turn it into a digital note.
Save Hard Drive Space & Make Sharing Easier
For a long time, people were relegated to saving all of their important files on their computer’s internal hard drive, or else investing in external hard drives (or even floppy discs if you go far back enough). Many London IT Support Companies recommend making use of online storage capabilities. These days, it is known that storing all your files locally can wear out your PC’s hard drive, slow it down, and inhibit performance considerably.
Fortunately, with Microsoft 365, you can keep your PC running in optimal condition by using OneDrive and SharePoint – Microsoft’s two Cloud storage services – to store all of your files and important resources. OneDrive and SharePoint both have excellent security built-in, and can be accessed on any device with an internet connection – you just need to login to your account and open one of the apps in the online portal.
The other great thing about using OneDrive and SharePoint, is that it means you can easily email documents and other files to colleagues – when you save a document to OneDrive, it will appear under ‘Recent Items’ when you go to add an attachment in an email. You can even share files directly from OneDrive and SharePoint – simply click on the file and then click ‘Share’ at the top of the page.
Bonus Tip…
When you use OneDrive and SharePoint to store all your documents, it makes it very easy to collaborate with colleagues. Once you have shared a document to a colleague, the pair of you can open the document and co-author it at the same time.
Stay Connected With Your Colleagues
These days, many businesses have chosen to no longer use their offices, and have all their colleagues work from home. The disadvantage of working from home is that it is harder to connect with your co-workers, compared to when you all sat in the same office. There are lots of services available to help workers stay in contact – some of the most popular are Zoom and Slack.
However, Microsoft 365 offers perhaps the best communication app on the market, Microsoft Teams. With Microsoft Teams, you can chat, video-meet, and call your colleagues all within one window on your desktop. Staying in contact with people is never easier than when using Teams, and it also has a range of other great features – such as the ability to create digital teams so that you and your colleagues can chat, share and upload files, and collaborate within a dedicated digital workspace.
Consider Upgrading to Windows 11
Near the end of 2021, Microsoft released Windows 11. For all users that have a Microsoft 365 license, they can easily upgrade to Windows 11, as long as they have a device that meets the system requirements. Windows 10 was Microsoft’s longest running operating system, and it received lots of great updates over the years.
Now, Microsoft have made even more developments with Windows 11, and it is packed with great productivity features that makes using Microsoft 365 easy and intuitive. If you are using Microsoft 365 for business, upgrading to Windows 11 is a great idea.
Also read: How to Reset Chromebook to Factory Settings?
