What is Microsoft Office 365?

Microsoft Office 365 is the subscription cloud-based version of Microsoft Office. For those of us who have worked for several years, you would have almost certainly used Microsoft Office in its Desktop version. This means that Microsoft Office will have been installed on your computer, and you can access all the required programs. The core programs of Microsoft Office include Excel, Word, PowerPoint, Outlook and Microsoft Access. These are now available on Microsoft Office 365 to access Microsoft’s popular programs online on the cloud.

Why is Office 365 important for businesses?

Following the pandemic, it became increasingly common to have your employees working from home. This means that they will need to be able to access your files and programs from their home office naturally. To facilitate this, IT providers, including Microsoft, have offered cloud versions of their software, which enable online remote working. Therefore, using Office 365 is seen as a standard now, especially for people who are working from home.

Should I learn how to use Office 365?

Anybody looking to update their IT skills should be aiming to learn how to use Office 365. This especially applies to people who have taken breaks from working over the past few years. Many of you may be thinking to yourself that I have already learned how to use Microsoft programs, and I could do so without having to learn a whole load of programs all over again. However, for an experienced user, the amount of learning required to use Microsoft Office 365 is not that much. Programs like Excel still have the same fundamentals, but they interact with the cloud slightly differently. The differences are quite small in general.

What do I need to learn to master Office 365?

The good news is anybody with experience using Excel, Word, or other Microsoft Office programs does not need to learn the programs again. Microsoft has not developed a new version of the programs. However, there are certain idiosyncrasies that you need to understand about using the cloud versions of these programs. The way that they save files and the way that other functions work can often be different. Therefore, to avoid any issues using the programs you already know, it would be ideal to learn what is different about using the Office 365 environment. Our Office 365 Courses details how these changes could affect your experience inside Excel Word, Outlook, PowerPoint and Microsoft Access. You can see more on our Office 365 Courses page.

This means people new to using Office 365 and the cloud version of Microsoft programs should be thinking about the new cloud-based programs. One of these programs is SharePoint. Now SharePoint is a vital skill for people using Office 365 or working from home. Additionally, you should also be thinking about how I can use Microsoft Teams and make sure that I can use it in a more advanced manner. Anyone with knowledge of Microsoft Project, Visio, and other Microsoft programs should also think about learning the online versions which are now being published in those programs.

You can learn more about SharePoint with our Accredited SharePoint Courses. You can also learn how to use Teams with our Microsoft Teams Course.