Microsoft took the beta label off of Office 365 last week, and many consider the cloud-based productivity suite a potshot at Google and Google Apps. Office 365 may offer cloud-based document, storage, and collaboration services that look like Google Apps, but the user experience and price tag are very different. Here’s a look at the major differences between them.

User Experience

The way the user interacts with the application suite may be the biggest difference between Google Apps and Office 365. When you use Google Apps, you live in your Web browser. You edit documents and spreadsheets in Google Docs through your browser, you get your email through Gmail, and you chat with colleagues using Google Talk – all in your browser.

Conversely, Office 365 requires you download a plug-in that will link your desktop with the cloud-based service. You’ll need Microsoft Office installed on your desktop already (to make use of offline and cloud-based features as opposed to webapps,) and you’ll need the .NET framework installed. You’ll also need Lync installed on your system as well if your organization will leverage instant messaging and chat. It’s a hefty list of system requirements you’ll need just to get started, especially compared to Google Apps’ requirements: a supported browser.

Document Collaboration

Microsoft Office documents are the de-facto standard in office environments, so it shouldn’t surprise anyone that Office 365 has an easier time with advanced formatting in Microsoft Word documents and Excel spreadsheets than Google Apps does. Microsoft has put a lot of time and effort into making sure the polish in Microsoft Office made it to Office 365. Office 365 users get the same templates, formatting features, and tools that desktop users get, and since the two services connect, you can create a slideshow in PowerPoint and upload it to Office 365 for editing later without worrying you’ll lose the formatting or images.

If your organization already makes heavy use of Microsoft Exchange for mail and Microsoft Office for productivity, Office 365 will appeal to those who want a familiar, robust tool. Google Apps, and specifically Google Docs, feels barren and plain by comparison, even if it’s more accessible and open.

Google Docs, on the other hand, does a solid job of importing most Microsoft Office documents, auto-saving them, and giving groups a way to all work in and on the same documents and files at the same time without stepping on each other. It’s definitely more bare-bones than Office 365, but it works seamlessly and without the need for desktop software.

Microsoft rolls in Sharepoint to handle document sharing and management, and depending on your opinion, it can be a good or a bad thing. Sharepoint adds a layer of complexity where Google allows more openness. While you do get the benefit of revision history, check-in/check-out, integration with Microsoft Office on the desktop, and integration with Sharepoint Web services with Office 365, Google Docs offers much of the same and lets you and others work in the same document at the same time and see who’s viewing and who edited last, all without the need for another platform.

Chat and Communication

Office 365’s presence tools, including Lync (formerly known as Office Communication Server) integrates with other Microsoft Office and Office 365 products so you can always see if someone is available for chat or a VoIP call, or who’s editing your document or viewing the same files that you are.

Google, on the other hand, already offers this with Google Talk and Google Voice. They’re not as tightly integrated with Google Docs as Lync is with Office 365, but they’re all there.

The only area where Office 365 and Lync outshine Google Talk and Google Voice is in screen-sharing and white-boarding, which Lync has natively but Google Talk does not. Again, Microsoft has more polish and shine on their applications, but feature-for-feature, they’re largely matched. Google Talk and Google Voice may be more Spartan, but they do have broader reach, especially for users who already have large contact lists.

Price

Google Apps Standard for your domain is free. Google Apps for Business offers two pricing plans: a flexible $5/user per month where you can add or remove users at will and pay the difference, and a $50/user per year plan where you commit for a year to get a discounted rate.

Office 365 requires the initial investment in Microsoft Office on your user desktops (as noted above: for use with some enterprise-level features,) some Microsoft Office Servers and services in your environment (like Active Directory if you plan to use those features,) but after that you’ll pay $6/user per month for the small business plan. If you don’t have Microsoft Office on your users’ desktops, you can pay another $12/user per month to get each one of them a copy of Microsoft Office Professional Plus.

Larger enterprises can choose tiered pricing plans that run from $10/user per month up to $27/user per month depending on how many services that want hosted in the cloud versus in their own environments. There’s no two ways about it: Office 365 will be more expensive for almost every business, but Microsoft thinks they have the feature depth to justify the price.

Which One’s Better?

The jury is still out, and even though Office 365 has been in beta for months, Microsoft has a lot of catching up to do if they want to win back enterprises that are looking for affordable cloud-based collaboration products. The familiarity that almost every business has with Microsoft Office may play a big role going forward, but the price tag will be something else they’ll have to overcome.

Feature-for-feature though, the two services offer the same basic functionality, although it can be said that Office 365 shines with polish and flare where Google Apps offers affordability and accessibility.

Takeaway: Searching for ways to increase your Word productivity may get in the way of your productivity. So here are a few tricks you don’t need to go looking for. Efficient, simple to use, easy to remember.

Most of us don’t have time to discover all the ins and outs of the software we use on a daily basis. We learn on the fly, we occasionally pick up a tip or shortcut, and we grudgingly plow through the Help system when we absolutely have to.

But sometimes, just a few little tricks can make a big difference. Turning off an annoying feature, learning a keyboard trick that bypasses three dialog boxes, or taking advantage of an obscure option can save you a few headaches and a lot of time. Will they really change your life? Well that might be a stretch. But they could. Try these tips on for size and let me know.

1: Make vertical text selections

Usually, we select text horizontally — a word, a series of words, a paragraph — from left to right or vice versa. But sometimes the selection has to be vertical. For instance, suppose you wanted to delete the leading characters in Figure A.

Figure A

To make a vertical selection, hold down [Alt] as you drag down through the text you want to highlight. Figure B shows the column of unwanted characters selected using this technique. Hit [Delete] and bam, they’re gone.

Figure B

Although we selected text at the beginning of the lines in this example, you can make vertical selections anywhere on the page.

Note: Some users have reported that the Research pane appears when they try this selection technique. Here’s the secret: Release the [Alt] key before you let up on the mouse button. Word should retain the selection. If you hold down [Alt] but release the mouse button, Word may think “[Alt]-click” and open the Research pane in response.

2: Undo automatic changes you don’t want

By default, Word imposes lots of changes on the text you enter in a document. For example, it might convert a Web address to a hyperlink, replace straight apostrophes and quotation marks with their curly counterparts, or turn a pair of hyphens into an em dash. If that’s a welcome convenience, you’re in good shape. If you want to suppress those types of changes, you can disable them. See 10 annoying Word features (and how to turn them off) for details. But if you want to prevent those changes only from time to time, reach for the Undo command — [Ctrl]Z. Undo isn’t just for reversing something you’ve done; it also undoes some of the actions Word takes. Don’t want that em dash? When Word inserts it, hit [Ctrl]Z and change it back to the hyphens you intended to enter.

3: Get rid of a persistent border

This forehead-smacking solution earned considerable gratitude from stymied TechRepublic readers when Susan Harkins first provided it. Word offers a sometimes-handy option that lets you insert a border automatically. Type three hyphens on a blank line and press [Enter]. If the option is enabled, Word will replace the hyphens with a horizontal line. You can get rid of it if you press [Ctrl]Z after Word inserts it (see above). But if you try to select the border and delete it, you’re out of luck. You’re not dealing with a line object here. Word has applied the Bottom Border format to the paragraph.

To remove that format in Word 2003, click in the paragraph and choose No Border from the Borders drop-down list on the Formatting menu. In Word 2007/2010, click in the paragraph and then click the Border button in the Paragraph group of the Home tab. Just select No Border from the drop-down list (Figure C).

Figure C

If you like the automatic border feature, here’s a bonus tip: In addition to typing three hyphens to apply a bottom border (3/4-point), you can trigger different border styles. Typing:

• Three tilde characters (~) will create a wavy line.
• Three underscore characters (_) will create a 1.5-point line.
• Three asterisks (*) will create a dotted line.
• Three equal signs (=) will create a double line.
• Three pound signs (#) will produce a “thin thick thin” line.

4: Move selected text up or down

This tip is probably most useful when you’re working in a table, although you can use it to reorder paragraphs outside a table, too. Let’s say you decide you want the third row of a table to be the top row. Just click within the third row, hold down [Alt][Shift] and press the up arrow key twice. Each time you press the arrow key, Word will move the row up one. You can select multiple contiguous rows to move them as a block, and you can use the down arrow key if you want to move text down instead of up.

Using this shortcut gets a little tricky if you’re moving big pieces of text outside a table. It’s easy to lose track of what’s being relocated where, and you might find it easier to take a standard cut-and-paste approach in those situations. But when the text is small and manageable, the shortcut is great. For example, if you need to move an item up or down within a bulleted or numbered list, you can just click in the item’s paragraph and use the [Alt][Shift] and arrow key combo to move the item to the desired spot.

5: Save changes to all open Word documents at one time

This simple technique comes in handy when you’re working in multiple documents and want to make sure you’ve saved your changes to all of them. I actually use it most often when I’ve made a change to a template and want a quick way to save that change on the fly (before I’ve had a chance to forget I made a change I want to keep).

In Word 2003 and earlier, just press the [Shift] key and pull down the File menu. Word will display the Save All command on the menu, above the Save As command. Choose Save All and Word will prompt you to save each document (or template) that has any unsaved changes. This is more efficient than having to navigate to each document individually and click Save.

If you use Word 2007/2010, this won’t work. But you can add the Save All command to your Quick Access Toolbar:

1. Click the Office button (File in 2010) and click Word Options (Options in 2010).
2. Click Customize in the left-hand column (Quick Access Toolbar in 2010).
3. Select Commands Not In The Ribbon from the Choose Commands From drop-down list.
4. Scroll down and select Save All.
5. Click the Add button and then click OK.

You can prevail in the seemingly endless battle against email chaos — it’s just a matter of knowing which Outlook tools to use and how to set them up to fit your needs.
When oh when oh when will we ever feel that we are back in control of our Inboxes? It seems that the faster technology moves, the more mail pours in on us from all sides. We get messages from colleagues and peers, from family and friends, from causes and social media sites. Much of this stuff we need to know, of course. But it doesn’t need to take up permanent residence in our Inboxes. Here are some practical ways to use Outlook 2010 features to bring your Inbox back under control.
1: Use Conversation view
Conversation view is a new feature in Outlook 2010 that threads together all e-mail messages in a particular conversation among two or more people. The conversation includes sent and received messages so that you can easily see the whole conversation at a glance. Turn on Conversation view by clicking the View tab and clicking Conversations. Choose Show Messages In Conversations to get started. You can also set other options, such as Always Expand Conversations, in the Conversations list to set up the conversation display the way you want it.
2: Ignore threads that annoy you
Have you ever been cc’d on a conversation that made your eyes roll up in your head? Or perhaps two team members are debating the use of the serial comma and you really have other things you need to focus on today. You can ignore a conversation and remove yourself from receiving further posts in that particular thread. Click the last message in the thread you want to ignore. Then, in the Home tab, click Ignore in the Delete group. A message box appears telling you what to expect. Click Ignore Conversation to complete the job.
You can opt out of future messages in conversations that leave you cold.
3: Automate message management with Quick Steps
Quick Steps are a new feature in Outlook 2010 that enables you to automate mail management tasks with a single click of the mouse. You can use the Quick Steps that come with the program — Add To Calendar, To Manager, Done, Team E-mail, and Reply & Delete — to instantly send messages where they need to go. You can also create your own Quick Steps by clicking the More button in the Quick Steps gallery and choosing Create New.
4: Build your junk mail file
This may seem like a no-brainer, but it is important to right-click any junk message you receive, point to Junk, and click Block Sender. Over time, this creates quite a file of spammers and other unwanted senders you can immediately cut right out of your Inbox real estate. Nice.
5: Make your peace with AutoArchive
Those of us who like to have quick access to important messages may not be too comfortable letting Outlook wrap old messages up in a bundle and tuck them away in an archive file on our computers or the company server. But if you’re game, AutoArchive can help you keep your Inbox uncluttered. By default, AutoArchive is turned off. You can enable the feature and tailor your settings by clicking the Folder tab and clicking AutoArchive Settings in the Properties group. In the AutoArchive tab, select the Archive This Folder Using These Settings option and enter the age of items you want to archive, where you want the older items stored, and whether you want the removed items to be deleted from your Inbox. After you make your choices, click OK to save the changes.
Out with the old and in with the new with AutoArchive.
6: Who makes the rules around here?
Sometimes rules aren’t such a bad idea, especially if you manage huge volumes of email and you need to organize what you receive by client, project, or contact. You can easily create rules that file your messages for you so that you can read them in detail when you get a chance or put your fingers on the one you need quickly when you go searching for it. Start by clicking the message from the sender you want to create a rule to manage. Then, click Rules in the Move group of the Home tab and choose Create Rule. Enter the desired conditions (Who is the message from? What’s in the subject line?) and choose what you want Outlook to do with it. Click OK to create the rule, and Outlook will start carrying out your wishes with the very next email message you receive.
7: Get rid of those invitations
Outlook includes a number of options that make it easy for you to tailor how mail behaves after you receive it. Some messages you really don’t need to leave in your Inbox forever. Case in point: meeting invitations. You can tell Outlook to automatically delete any message you respond to by displaying the Outlook Options dialog box (click File, click Options, and click the Mail tab). Scroll down to the Send Messages area and click the Delete Meeting Requests and Notifications From Inbox After Receiving check box. Click OK to save the change.
8: Clean everything up
So do you have a clean Inbox? One where you can go directly to a message you’re looking for without a lot of searching and scrolling? Do you organize your messages by folder and discard the ones you don’t need right away? I thought so. Me neither.
Outlook includes a few cleanup features that can help you create some breathing room in your Inbox once again. The tool gives you three choices for the item you want to clean up. You can clean up the selected conversation, clean up the current folder, or clean up folders and subfolders (which means everything). When you click the tool, Outlook lets you know that it’s going to delete redundant messages and put them in your Deleted Items folder. You can change that by clicking Settings and entering the settings you’re most comfortable with. Click OK to clean up your selection and gain a little more room for incoming mail.
9: Search smart using filters
People shy away from Outlook filters because they think they are too much trouble to use properly. But actually, the opposite is true. If you consider the time you spend pushing PgDn and scanning the various messages looking for that one you need, you know that any tool that helps you cut to the chase is a good thing. The filters in Outlook help you find messages that meet specific criteria. For example, you can instantly display only messages that have attachments, messages you sent to a specific person, messages with the word “petunia” in the body of the message, and so on. Once you create this focused subset of messages, you can do what you like with them — delete them, put them in a folder that won’t clog up your Inbox, or print them and hang them on your cubicle wall (but why?). You’ll find the filters in the Filter E-mail tool in the Find group of the Home tab. You can click More Filters to display the Search Tools contextual tab so that you can see all the filters together in convenient spot.
10: Combine and conquer
Okay so it may seem counterintuitive, but it actually saves you time to bring all your different Web-based email accounts into Outlook 2010. You can easily set up your accounts by clicking the File tab and choosing Add Account in the top of the center column in the Info tab of Backstage view. Follow the prompts to get the email working properly. This will create a new email folder for your Web-based account. So anytime you check email (or Outlook does it automatically), all accounts are checked and you never have to go out to the various sites, enter your email address and password, and do the checking yourself. Yes, it could give you more messages to deal with. But after reading through the other nine tips in this article, you have a handle on how to do that, right?