The deadline for a free Windows 10 upgrade is right around the corner. Find out what happens after the offer expires.

Don’t look now, but July 29, 2016, is coming up fast. That is the one-year anniversary of the release of Windows 10, which means the ability to upgrade to the new operating system for FREE will soon expire. (If you are interested, you can take a look at the official countdown here.)

In a January 21, 2015, Windows Experience blog post titled The next generation of Windows: Windows 10, we learned that Windows 10 would be a free upgrade. Author Terry Myerson said:

Today was a monumental day for us on the Windows team because we shared our desire to redefine the relationship we have with you—our customers. We announced that a free upgrade for Windows 10 will be made available to customers running Windows 7, Windows 8.1, and Windows Phone 8.1 who upgrade in the first year after launch.

A little over six months later, on July 28, 2015, Myerson penned another Windows Experience blog post, titled Windows 10 Free Upgrade Available in 190 Countries Today, in which he reiterated the free upgrade policy:

From the beginning, Windows 10 has been unique—built with feedback from five million Windows Insiders, delivered as a service with ongoing innovations and security updates, and offered as a free upgrade to genuine Windows 7, Windows 8.1 and Windows Phone 8.1 customers.

If you’ve been reading articles by Woody Leonhard or Paul Thurrott in recent months, you know that Microsoft has been upping its game with the Get Windows 10, or GWX, program it built into Windows 7 and Windows 8.1. It really wants every Windows user everywhere to be running Windows 10.

Any holdouts—Windows 7 or Windows 8.1 users who have been sticking to their guns so far—have only a few more weeks to go before losing their chance to get Windows 10 for free.

In a recent Windows Experience blog post titled Windows 10 Now on 300 Million Active Devices – Free Upgrade Offer to End Soon, Yusuf Mehdi, the corporate vice president of Microsoft’s Windows and Devices Group, said:

…we want to remind you that if you haven’t taken advantage of the free upgrade offer, now is the time. The free upgrade offer to Windows 10 was a first for Microsoft, helping people upgrade faster than ever before. And time is running out. The free upgrade offer will end on July 29 and we want to make sure you don’t miss out. After July 29th, you’ll be able to continue to get Windows 10 on a new device, or purchase a full version of Windows 10 Home for $119.

What will Windows 10 cost after July 29?

As Mehdi pointed out in his post, you will be able to purchase a full version of Windows 10 Home for $119.

But how much will Windows 10 Pro cost?

Well, if you head over to the Microsoft Store right now, you’ll find that you can purchase both Windows 10 Home and Windows 10 Pro as a download or on a USB flash drive. Windows 10 Pro will cost you $199.99. And moving past the July 29 deadline for the free upgrade, it’s a pretty safe bet that prices will remain the same—especially since they’re the same price points that the full versions of Windows 8.1 Home and Pro sold for when that operating system was new.

Will there be upgrade versions of Windows 10 after July 29?

Since Microsoft provided free upgrades for a full year, I wonder if there will be upgrade packages for Windows 7 and Windows 8.1 users who decide to upgrade to Windows 10 after July 29. I suppose that it’s possible, but then again, maybe not. When Microsoft introduced Windows 8.1 packages, it offered only the full versions—there were no upgrade versions of Windows 8.1. With that in mind, it’s easy to speculate that this may also be the case with Windows 10.

Have questions?

Get answers from Microsofts Cloud Solutions Partner!
Call us at: 856-745-9990 or visit: https://southjerseytechies.net/

South Jersey Techies, LL C is a full Managed Web and Technology Services Company providing IT Services, Website Design Services, Server Support, Network Consulting, Internet Phones, Cloud Solutions Provider and much more. Contact for More Information.

It’s now possible for your computer to be updated to Windows 10 without your explicit content.

Microsoft’s putting away the carrots and breaking out the sticks in its quest to migrate 1 billion users to Windows 10 over the next couple of years.

After pushing out the free upgrade as a Recommended update to Windows 7 and 8 users earlier this year—which means that you downloaded the initial installation bits if you use the default Windows Update, like most people should—Microsoft changed its nagging pop-up prompt in an insidious way over the past week. For the past six months, the “Get Windows 10” pop-up asked permission to start an update, but lacked a “No thanks” option, so the only way to avoid it was to close the window by pressing the X in the upper-right hand corner. Now, the pop-up says “We will upgrade you at this time,” and pressing the X counts as consent. You need to click a small, easily missed link in the pop-up to cancel the upgrade, instead.

It’s a nasty bait-and-switch after months of using an incessant pop-up—which can’t be disabled without the help of registry hacks and other advanced tricks—that wore down users, encouraging them to simply X out of the irritant when it appeared each and every time they opened their computer. Worse, it’s now possible for your computer to be updated to Windows 10 without your explicit content.

Judging by the hundreds of comments on Reddit, Twitter,PCWorld, my inbox, and other places across the web in response to the situation, a lot of people are finding themselves upgrading unintentionally. And, well, a lot of them are pissed.

Fortunately, it’s easy to roll your PC back to Windows 7 or 8 after installing Windows 10.

How to reverse a Windows 10 upgrade

The easiest time to say “No” is during the initial setup process. If you decline Windows 10’s end user license agreement, it’ll bring you back to your older operating system.

But what if it’s too late for that?

You’re allowed to roll back to your previous Windows version for 30 days after upgrading to Windows 10. Simply open the Start menu and head to Settings > Update & Security > Recovery. If you’re eligible to downgrade, you’ll see an option that says “Go back to Windows 7” or “Go back to Windows 8.1,” depending on which operating system you upgraded from. Simply click the Get started button and go along for the ride.

Once you’ve returned to your previous version of Windows, you need to tinker with it to perfect your setup once again. In particular, you may need to reinstall some programs, and don’t forget to use your Windows 7 password rather than your Windows 10 password if you created a Microsoft Account for the new operating system during the set-up process.

Stop it from happening again

Once you’ve upgraded a PC to Windows 10, you’ll always be able to do so again in the future. But if you aren’t enticed by Windows 10’s best features and more subtle awesome tweaks—a feeling I completely understand after a non-consensual upgrade—you can turn to a pair of helpful tools to disable the Windows 10 upgrade prompts from returning.

GWX Control Panel was the first anti-Windows 10 pop-up tool on the block, and it works marvelously, though its complicated user interface is full of granular options and may turn off some people. Never10 by noted security researcher performs the same basic task in a much simpler way. Either program does the trick.

GWX Control Panel and Never10 will also prevent your computer from being upgraded to Windows 10 if it hasn’t yet. Installing one of those is a much better option than disabling Windows Updates completely to avoid Microsoft’s pestering, as disabling patches can leave you vulnerable to new security flaws.

Now for the good news: Microsoft says it plans to phase out the GWX pop-up once it starts charging for the Windows 10 upgrade in July. Fingers crossed.

Have questions?

Get answers from Microsofts Cloud Solutions Partner!
Call us at: 856-745-9990 or visit: https://southjerseytechies.net/

South Jersey Techies, LL C is a full Managed Web and Technology Services Company providing IT Services, Website Design Services, Server Support, Network Consulting, Internet Phones, Cloud Solutions Provider and much more. Contact for More Information.

To read this article in its entirety click here.

The technology giant releases a bundle of updates for the seven-year-old operating system in the latest move designed to appeal to businesses in no rush to move to Windows 10.

Microsoft has taken another decision that should make it easier for businesses to continue running Windows 7.

The technology giant announced the release of the Windows 7 SP1 convenience rollup, a collection of security and other updates for the seven-year-old operating system. The release includes core Windows fixes, security fixes and hot fixes that have been issued since Service Pack 1 was released in 2011 and is designed to simplify the updating process.

Microsoft’s decision to release the bundle is a departure from the firm’s stance earlier this year, when it said it had no news on the promised convenience rollup of fixes for Windows 7, stressing instead “the success our customers are experiencing upgrading to Windows 10”.

The release follows another recent choice by Microsoft to dial back pressure on businesses to move to Windows 10. At the beginning of the year, Microsoft announced it would phase out support for Windows 7 and 8 on new PC hardware. The move seemed designed to encourage businesses not to downgrade new Windows 10 machines to an earlier OS, as has been common in the past in order to standardize corporate hardware. However, Microsoft later watered down the plans, pushing back the point at which it will end full extended support for Windows 7 and 8.1 machines running on Intel’s Skylake CPUs.

Richard Edwards, principal analyst for Enterprise ICT at Ovum, said Microsoft’s recent decisions are an acknowledgement of how many businesses still run Windows 7 and how long it will likely take them to switch.

“Most organizations are still in the early planning stage when it comes to Windows 10. This means that most of the PCs running Windows 10 today are in the consumer segment of the market, and thus Windows 7 is probably running on 80 percent-plus business Windows PCs,” he said.

Inside enterprises, Windows 7 is “going to be around for many years to come,” he said. “Microsoft has to find ways to please and delight these enterprise customers, and easing the burden on IT departments is one way to do this.”

While Edwards believes the release of the Anniversary Edition update to Windows 10 will drive upgrades by early adopters, he predicted that mass adoption is still some way off, forecasting that the bulk of firms will migrate from mid-2017 through to 2020.

“Organizations will only upgrade to Windows 10 if they have a clear insight into its business value,” said Edwards, adding that key business features such as Enterprise Data Protection were still not in place.

Microsoft’s focus on driving customers to Windows 10 has earned it criticism from small businesses, which recently complained about the decision to push the aggressive Get Windows icons and pop-ups to domain-joined PCs.

Analyst house Gartner had predicted that adoption of Windows 10 by business would be “significantly more rapid” than that of Windows 7 but this year was more cautious, claiming that flat IT budgets are pushing the start of enterprise migrations back to 2017.

“It’s to do with current budget restrictions as much as anything. They [budgets] are not being made available,” said Gartner research director Ranjit Antwal at the time.

There is little third-party data on the rate of adoption of Windows 10 by business, although Microsoft claims enterprises are switching more rapidly than they did to Windows 7.

Have questions?

Get answers from Microsofts Cloud Solutions Partner!
Call us at: 856-745-9990 or visit: https://southjerseytechies.net/

South Jersey Techies, LL C is a full Managed Web and Technology Services Company providing IT Services, Website Design Services, Server Support, Network Consulting, Internet Phones, Cloud Solutions Provider and much more. Contact for More Information.

To read this article in its entirety click here.

The Windows 10 jump lists feature offers a convenient way to start your apps–but there’s no easy way to increase the size of the list. Here’s a hack for that.

Microsoft Windows 10 gives users several choices when it comes to how and where to start their applications. Some people use the desktop exclusively and some swear by the Start Menu, while others, prefer the pinned lists that hang off the icons on the Taskbar.

However, there is one small problem with the Taskbar pinned list in Windows 10—by default, there is a 12-slot limit.

Windows 7 allowed users to extend that number with a simple change to a configuration setting. But that feature is currently missing in Windows 10 for reasons no one has been able to explain. The workaround involves editing the Windows Registry file.

Standard disclaimer: Incorrectly editing the Windows Registry file could break your computer. Create a Restore Point before making any changes.

Jump listItems

Figure A shows an example of the default jump list hanging off the Word icon in a typical Windows 10 Taskbar. Note that there are 26 copies of the example file, but only 12 are listed in the pinned section. This is despite the fact that I have actually pinned them all, which is why the Recent section is fully populated.

Figure A

To increase the number of pinned items displayed, we’ll have to change the maximum number of jump list items associated with a particular key in the Windows Registry file.

Press Windows key + R or right-click the Start Menu icon and navigate to the Run command to open the Run prompt (Figure B). Type regedit into the box and click OK.

Figure B

Navigate to this set of keys in the Windows Registry:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Advanced

Look through the list in the right-hand pane until you find this DWORD: JumpListItems_Maximum

In case, the JumpListItems_Maximum DWORD is not there, create it.

Right-click the JumpListItems_Maximum DWORD and select Modify. Click the Decimal radio button and change the number to a value that works for you. As you can see in (Figure C).

Figure C

To complete the change, you may need to restart your computer. You should now be able to see the number of pinned items you specified (Figure D).

Figure D

Have questions?

Get answers from Microsofts Cloud Solutions Partner!
Call us at: 856-745-9990 or visit: https://southjerseytechies.net/

South Jersey Techies, LL C is a full Managed Web and Technology Services Company providing IT Services, Website Design Services, Server Support, Network Consulting, Internet Phones, Cloud Solutions Provider and much more. Contact for More Information.

To read this article in its entirety click here.

Microsoft has changed the look of the Start menu in Windows 10.

The revamped Start menu is due to be added to Windows 10 this summer, as part of a major update coined the ‘Windows 10 Anniversary Edition’.

Microsoft revealed the updated appearance in an early build of the OS, which it released to testers in the Windows 10 Insider program on Friday.

The new look Start menu makes the ‘All Apps’ list visible by default on the left-hand side. In another new addition, a selection of the user’s ‘Most-used’ apps are shown at the top of this permanently visible ‘All Apps’ list. Microsoft says the change should reduce the clicking and scrolling needed to access apps.

The Power, Settings and File Explorer icons are also always visible in the left rail of the Start menu and the ‘Recently added’ section will display three entries, instead of one. Any folders that users have added to the Start menu are now immediately accessible without having to click the hamburger icon.

The old look start menu

The new look start menu

The look of the Start menu in tablet mode has also been overhauled, turning the ‘All Apps’ list into a fullscreen menu, reminiscent of the Windows 8.1 Start screen. Gabe Aul, VP for Microsoft’s engineering systems team, says the switch to fullscreen was a ‘top request from Windows Insiders’, adding that ‘the grid-like implementation of the full-screen ‘All Apps’ list aims to provide efficiency while taking advantage of the additional real estate on the Start screen on a tablet’.

The old look ‘All Apps’ list in tablet mode.

The new look ‘All Apps’ list in tablet mode.

The final Start menu change is designed to make it easier to toggle between pinned tiles and the ‘All Apps’ list, by providing the option to do so in the menu’s left rail.

More helpful Cortana and other changes

The latest Windows Insider build, 14328, also includes a raft of features that will be available to all users following the Anniversary Update.

These new components include Windows Ink, which allows users to more easily write notes on touchscreen PCs and tablets using a digital pen. The addition of Windows Ink to Windows 10 allows users to write on digital sticky notes, draw on digital whiteboards and annotate content in a variety of apps, including Maps, Microsoft Edge, and Office. Microsoft wants support for drawing and writing using a digital pen to be present in many Windows 10 apps and says that adding support for Windows Ink only requires developers to write two lines of code.

Windows 10’s digital assistant Cortana has also been tweaked. Users will no longer have to log into Windows to use Cortana and instead will be able to use voice commands to get Cortana to make notes, play music or set a reminder from the lock screen.

Cortana can now also be used to set photo reminders, for example the user could take a picture of a cheese they want to buy next time they’re in a store, and add reminders based on content from another Windows 10 app, for example telling a user to read an article they flagged as interesting in the Edge browser. Cortana is now also accessible to all users, with Windows 10 no longer requiring users to sign-in before they can ask simple questions of the digital assistant.

Other changes include the ability to search files on OneDrive cloud storage that aren’t synced locally, tweaks to the look of and what is displayed in the Action Center and via notifications, various changes to the Taskbar — including easier access to the calendar and the removal of the File Explorer icon, as well as updates to the Settings app and lock screen.

As this is an early build of Windows 10, some of these features may change before reaching the general public, based on feedback from testers in the Windows Insider program.

Have questions?

Get answers from Microsofts Cloud Solutions Partner!
Call us at: 856-745-9990 or visit: https://southjerseytechies.net/

South Jersey Techies, LL C is a full Managed Web and Technology Services Company providing IT Services, Website Design Services, Server Support, Network Consulting, Internet Phones, Cloud Solutions Provider and much more. Contact for More Information.

Apple is giving up on QuickTime for Windows.

Yet another program is joining Java 6 and Windows XP as big-name software you do not want running on your PC. Security firmTrend Micro and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security are advising all Windows users to uninstall Apple’s QuickTime as soon as possible. (The advisory does not affect Mac users.)

The reason for getting rid of QuickTime for Windows is twofold. First, Apple told Trend Micro it is deprecating the software and will no longer deliver security updates for it. Second, there are two known critical vulnerabilities that could allow an attacker to take control of a system running QuickTime.

That’s a hellacious combo.

Apple was unavailable for comment at this writing, but a quick look at QuickTime’s download page shows the software is still publicly available. It hasn’t been updated since at least January, however.

Trend Micro says it does not yet know of any instances where the two potential security threats are being used in the wild but that could change. Trend Micro’s Zero Day Initiative recently published some technical details about the vulnerabilities. ZDI did this because its disclosure policy requires it to publish threat information when a “vendor indicates that the product is deprecated,” and thus won’t be patched.

If you’re a longtime user of iTunes you may be running QuickTime. To dump the program, open the Control Panel on your PC and then from the “category” view go to Programs > Uninstall a program. Once the list of installed programs populates, scroll down until you find QuickTime. Select it with your mouse, and then click Uninstall towards the top of the window. A pop-up window will then appear asking to confirm that you want to uninstall the program. Click Yes and you’ll be QuickTime-free in no time.

A survey published by Secunia Research in late 2015 found that Apple software is among the programs that are updated the least often by Windows users.

Why this matters: Whenever software is about to be abandoned it’s always a good idea to move away from it—or at least start planning to. That goes double for software with known flaws that allow the bad guys to execute code on your machine. QuickTime used to be an important piece of software for Windows users. But these days you don’t need it to watch movie trailers on Apple’s site and it’s no longer used by iTunes to play media on Windows. There’s little reason for the vast majority of Windows users to keep QuickTime on their PCs.

Have questions?

Get answers from Microsofts Cloud Solutions Partner!
Call us at: 856-745-9990 or visit: https://southjerseytechies.net/

South Jersey Techies, LL C is a full Managed Web and Technology Services Company providing IT Services, Website Design Services, Server Support, Network Consulting, Internet Phones, Cloud Solutions Provider and much more. Contact for More Information.

To read this article in its entirety click here.

Microsoft continues to build out Windows 10 – with a bumper crop of new features announced at its Build conference last week.

These enhancements will be pushed to to Windows 10 users over the coming months, with many arriving in summer when the OS will get a major upgrade dubbed the Windows 10 Anniversary Edition.

Here are the key upgrades heading to Windows 10.

The write stuff

Using a digital pen to write and scribble on the screen of Windows 10 PCs and tablets will get easier.

In a boost to devices that support such pens, such as the Microsoft’s Surface tablet, the OS’ new Windows Ink feature will allow users to jot down notes on the screen without unlocking the device.

Windows Ink will also allow users to write messages on sticky notes and, if appropriate, have them automatically translated into calendar appointments and reminders.

Support for Windows Ink in Microsoft Office, Maps, the Edge browser and other apps will allow users to draw, write and annotate using their pen. Windows Ink will make using the pen in Office more satisfying than it currently is, for example tidying up highlighted marks on documents so they neatly align with text.

Windows 10 will also gain the Ink Workspace, a hub for launching apps that support writing and sketching using the Surface Pen.

Ink everywhere

Support for drawing, writing and annotating using digital pens will likely come to many apps.

Microsoft says that support for Microsoft Ink will be easily added to Universal Windows Platform apps, requiring just two lines of XAML code.

Digital ruler

It sounds simple, but the new on-screen ruler should prove to be a useful addition for those who want to draw straight lines using a digital pen.

Smarter Cortana

The attraction of a virtual assistant is the simplicity with which they allow you to carry out tasks.

To ease the process of using Windows 10’s Cortana, the voice-controlled assistant will no longer require you to log into Windows, with users able to make a note, play music or set a reminder from the lock screen.

Cortana will also become more proactive and make suggestions based on a user’s past behaviour – offering to order lunch or to arrange transportation.

More apps will also be able to use Cortana to automatically complete tasks for users or to carry out actions based on context, such as the user’s current location or time of day.

Windows Hello comes to apps and the web

Windows 10 already lets you log into the OS using your face.

The anniversary edition will extend this biometric log-in to Windows apps and websites via Microsoft Edge. As with the OS, users will be able to authenticate their identity using a facial, iris or fingerprint scan.

Another new feature will allow users to unlock a PC running Windows 10 Enterprise Edition by tapping a Windows Hello-enabled phone, although Microsoft has said the feature will only be available on “select premium phones”.

Android app notifications on Windows 10

In future, notifications on Android devices will be able to show on Windows 10 PCs.

Any notification popping up on the Android notification panel can, via the Cortana Android app, also appear as a notification on a linked Windows 10 desktop.

Microsoft demoed the ability at its recent Build conference for developers.

Browser extensions

Microsoft’s Edge browser will soon gain support for extensions.

Extensions are small programs that can be downloaded to add new functionality to a browser, and are already found in Chrome, Firefox and other browsers today.

Support for extensions has already been added to Edge for those testing pre-release builds of Windows 10 under the Insider program.

The first extensions to be supported by Edge are Microsoft Translator, an extension that automatically translates pages in over 50 different languages, an extension to augment mouse gestures support, and a preview version of the Reddit Enhancement Suite.

Microsoft promises more extensions will be added later this year, including AdBlock, LastPass and Evernote.

Pinned browser tabs

Microsoft is also adding to Edge the ability to pin your favorite sites and web apps so they always have a tab open in the browser.

Updated Maps app

The Maps app has several new features, as well as UI and performance improvements.

Additions include one-tap access to search and directions, the ability to view multiple searches and directions at the same time, labels for search results on the map and turn-by-turn directions read by Cortana.

The improved app is available now to those testing Windows 10 under the Insider program.

Access Linux command-line tools in Windows

More one for developers, Microsoft is also bringing the ability to run the Bash shell to Windows.

The Bash shell is a command line interpreter that is available on many different Linux distributions, as well as Mac OS X.

The shell includes a host of tools that allow power users to carry out and orchestrate complex chains of commands.

Bash will be available via a Universal Windows Platform app, which will provide an image of the Linux distribution Ubuntu and run on the Windows 10 desktop.

Users will be able to use the Bash shell to download and install programs from the command line, as they do from inside Ubuntu. Microsoft says Ubuntu software will run as fast in the Windows app as it does natively, thanks to a software subsystem for handling Linux system calls.

Microsoft has described the app as offering a developer toolset. While it has access to the files on the Windows PC, the app only provides access to a command line — not a graphical desktop — and reportedly has limits on what it can be used for, such as not being able to run a server.

Have questions?

Get answers from Microsofts Cloud Solutions Partner!
Call us at: 856-745-9990 or visit: https://southjerseytechies.net/

South Jersey Techies, LL C is a full Managed Web and Technology Services Company providing IT Services, Website Design Services, Server Support, Network Consulting, Internet Phones, Cloud Solutions Provider and much more. Contact for More Information.

To read this article in its entirety click here.

Tracking and reporting activity in Office 365 using the built-in admin tools is about to get much better. Here’s what the revamped admin center has to offer.

Gathering usage information about Microsoft Office 365 in an enterprise is limited by the available admin tools. To make matters worse, as Microsoft adds new applications to Office 365, the ability to track if, and how, users were consuming the new features has been even more difficult. But with the rollout of the new Office 365 admin center in March 2016, those limitations are quickly disappearing.

Reporting

At first glance, you may think the main activity for any Office 365 admin is adding and subtracting employees from the active roster. But a good admin should be doing much more.

As the number of applications in Office 365 has grown substantially in recent years, the need to track all Office 365 activity has also grown. This need to track activity is especially important in larger enterprises where mishandled resources can raise overall costs significantly.

For example, knowing how many employees actually use Yammer on a weekly basis, and when, could help admins predict when resources will be taxed the most. Or tracking how users are actually using collaboration tools like Skype and Delve may lead an admin to conclude that more training on those applications is needed because the apps are underutilized. These are the sort of questions the new Office 365 admin center is looking to answer.

By simplifying the interface and creating ready-to-use dashboards, Microsoft is trying to streamline the reporting process. Tracking email activity and other peak usage data is just a few clicks away. And as the new Office 365 admin center is rolled out, there will also be tools admins can use to create custom reports.

Speaking from personal experience, the new admin dashboard interface is a welcome improvement. Navigation in the new admin center closely matches the familiar navigation system of other Office 365 apps. The previous admin center, with its heavy use of linked text, looked almost tacked on as an afterthought.

Rollout

The new Office 365 admin center is rolling out in the United States right now and will be the default reporting experience very soon. The new center will roll out to other parts of the world in April 2016.

If you’re not ready for the change, you can roll back to the old admin system during this introductory phase. On the other hand, if you’re anxious for a change, you can click the Get A Sneak Peek link at the top of the old Office 365 admin center to force the installation of the new system.

Bottom line

For most users, administering Office 365 is someone else’s responsibility, but that does not diminish its importance to an enterprise.

A good admin should be able to track what activity is taking place within Office 365 and, more important, what activity is not taking place. Knowing who uses what applications for how long, and when, is essential information. Armed with that knowledge, administrators can determine how to better allocate resources and where new training for users may be required.

With the rollout of the new Office 365 admin center, Microsoft is using feedback received from its customers to create tools and dashboards that it hopes will make the tracking of vital activity data in Office 365 an easily achieved reality.

Have questions?

Get answers from Microsofts Cloud Solutions Partner!
Call us at: 856-745-9990 or visit: https://southjerseytechies.net/

South Jersey Techies, LL C is a full Managed Web and Technology Services Company providing IT Services, Website Design Services, Server Support, Network Consulting, Internet Phones, Cloud Solutions Provider and much more. Contact for More Information.

To read this article in its entirety click here.

Office 365 provides the productivity tools required by a modern enterprise workforce. This guide covers key details, including available applications, system requirements, and subscription options.

For just about any enterprise of any size, the productivity of its modern workforce revolves around the basic office suite of email, calendar, word processor, and spreadsheet. But as the enterprise workforce has become more mobile, the basic productivity toolset has had to adapt and change to match new requirements. This is why Microsoft updated Office 365 to be a mobile collaborative platform ready to get work done wherever and whenever it happens.

Microsoft Office 365 is the de facto productivity suite for many enterprises and it is the suite all the other competitors are measured against. So as a leader in information technology for your enterprise, it’s in your best interest to know everything there is to know about Office 365. To help you achieve that goal, TechRepublic compiled the most important details and related resources on Microsoft Office 365 into this “living” guide, which we’ll periodically update as new information becomes available.

Executive summary

What is it? Microsoft Office 365 provides users with the basic productivity applications necessary to get work done in the modern enterprise. It includes applications like Word, Excel, Outlook, PowerPoint, OneNote, and OneDrive, just to name a few.

Why does it matter? As the standard for productivity suites, competing products are generally measured against applications from the Office 365 suite.

Who does it affect? In the modern mobile-centric enterprise, Office 365 provides the tools used to get work done. This makes Office 365 important to just about every working individual.

When is it available? The latest version of Microsoft Office 365 is available right now. The current subscription includes Office 2016 applications.

How do you get it? Enterprises can purchase a subscription to Office 365 via the Microsoft website. Subscriptions range from $8/user/month to $35/user/month.

What is it?

Microsoft Office 365 is a subscription service that provides users with the basic productivity applications necessary to get work done in the modern enterprise. Productivity applications include, but are not limited to, a word processor, a spreadsheet, an email client, a calendar, and a presentation application.

As an example, a Business Premium subscription to Office 365 ($12.50 per person per month) includes these applications:

Word: This app sets the standard for word processors and is available with Office 365 for both Business and Premium. If users in your enterprise need to create documents, this is the tool they will use.

Excel: The spreadsheet has been the workhorse for basic data analysis since its invention back in the previous century. Excel is the current standard-bearer and comes with Office 365 for Business and Premium.

Outlook: Office 365’s solution for managing email and an appointment calendar is called Outlook. The app has been around for many years and its busy interface tends to be either loved or hated by users. It’s available with both the Business and Premium subscriptions.

PowerPoint: Communicating information to a group of individuals at a meeting often involves a presentation. Office 365’s PowerPoint allows users to create, display, and disseminate information in formats ranging from the basic slide to animation to video.

Publisher: Sometimes communicating information to a broader audience requires something more permanent and more formal than a presentation at a meeting. The Publisher app in Office 365 provides users with the tools they need to publish professional-looking newsletters, brochures, and booklets.

OneNote: As the workforce has become more mobile, the need to capture information on the go has become increasingly important. Applications like OneNote allow users to take notes on any device and then retrieve those notes from any other device. It’s your basic productivity cloud app.

OneDrive: The other basic and fundamental cloud-based application is storage. With each Office 365 Business subscription, Microsoft provides users with up to 1TB of cloud storage in the form of an application called OneDrive for Business.

SharePoint: A subscription to Office 365 Business Premium also provides an enterprise with a few applications for backend infrastructure management. SharePoint, for example, can be used to host intranet websites for the enterprise. It also can be used to host smaller sites designed for smaller teams or divisions. The permissions for these sites can be designated by the users themselves or by appointed administrators.

Exchange: Each Office 365 for Business subscription includes an Exchange Server, which handles all the email management duties. By default, each user is granted 50GB of storage for email. Maintenance of the Exchange Server is generally handled at the administrator level.

Collaboration tools: Along with the typical productivity applications, Office 365 includes many collaboration tools—like Delve, Skype, Yammer, and Sway. These tools allow users to communicate, brainstorm ideas, share documents, and have video meetings while on the go.

Power BI: One of the most powerful tools any enterprise can have, regardless of size, is reliable business intelligence gathering applications. Office 365 for Business, through its Power BI application, provides enterprises with a set of tools for collecting, sorting, and presenting business intelligence data.

Infrastructure: All Office 365 subscriptions include a reliability guarantee of 99.9% uptime. In addition, permissions for internal access control are handled by administrators designated by the enterprise using tools supplied by Active Directory. Each Office 365 subscription includes five layers of security and proactive monitoring to help safeguard your data.

System requirements

• CPU: 1GHz or faster
• Memory: 2GB RAM
• Hard drive: 3GB of available space (6GB for Mac)
• Display: 1280 X 800 screen resolution
• Operating system: PC-Windows 7, 8, or 10. Mac-Mac OS X 10.10
• Connectivity: Internet connection

Why does it matter?

Collaboration and communication are the key components of productivity in the modern enterprise, and productivity is the lifeblood of the enterprise. Microsoft Office 365 provides the tools necessary to bring collaboration and communication—and by extension, productivity—to each individual in an enterprise.

For many companies, Office 365 is the de facto standard for productivity software. The performance of all competing products is generally measured against applications from the Office 365 suite.

Who does it affect?

Just about every knowledge worker in every enterprise is required to have an email account and a calendar application. Beyond that, most individuals in an enterprise will need to use, at least once in a while, a word processor. And a significant number of individuals in an enterprise will also find themselves needing to use presentation software or a spreadsheet at some point in their career.

These are the productivity tools of any enterprise. These are the tools used to get work done. That means Office 365 is important to just about every working individual.

When is it available?

Microsoft Office 365 is available right now. The current subscription includes applications updated to the Office 2016 versions. Of course, the key to the subscription model is that each user will always be using the most current and most secure version of each application because each application is continuously updated.

How do you get it?

Enterprises with fewer than 300 users can purchase a subscription to Office 365 and download the appropriate applications via the Microsoft website. The Premium version costs $12.50 per user per month ($150/year). There are also versions of Office 365 available for individuals ($69.99/year) and households ($99.99/year).

For large enterprises, unlimited user versions of Office 365 are available, ranging from $12 per person per month to $35 per person per month. Each subscription caters to a particular type of enterprise. More expensive enterprise versions of Office 365 add features like voicemail, compliance auditing, rights management, encryption, and Advanced Threat Protection.

Have questions?

Get answers from Microsofts Cloud Solutions Partner!
Call us at: 856-745-9990 or visit: https://southjerseytechies.net/

South Jersey Techies, LL C is a full Managed Web and Technology Services Company providing IT Services, Website Design Services, Server Support, Network Consulting, Internet Phones, Cloud Solutions Provider and much more. Contact for More Information.

To read this article in its entirety click here.

Microsoft made several new updates to Office 365 in February, including the addition of six useful functions for Excel.

When it comes to general updates to Microsoft Office 365, February 2016 was a fairly significant month. Microsoft rolled out numerous improvements to Office 365, like better pen annotation integration, the ability to pin documents to the Start menu, a new feature that allows images to be inserted into documents directly from the camera, and the best—adding more functions to Excel.

Six new functions

Using, combining, and creating formulas in Microsoft Excel is where true Excel gurus separate themselves from the pretenders and wannabes. For an Excel aficionado, the satisfaction of creating the perfect nested formula is second to none when it comes to Excel coding. So when Microsoft adds six new functions to Excel in one month it is a very big deal.

Of course, while there is great satisfaction when you figure out the perfect formula, a certain amount of despair also goes with it—because now you have to apply that complicated nested formula over and over again. This is where the six new functions are supposed to help.

The first updated functions are TEXTJOIN and CONCAT, and they are replacements for the old concatenate function, which gave the user the power to join strings of separate text into one cell. This comes up with addresses all the time—a common task for spreadsheets since they were invented.

In the past, the formula would look something like this:

=CONCATENATE(A3, “, “, B3, “, “, C3,”, “, D3, “, “, E3)

With the new TEXTJOIN formula, the same process would look something like this:

=TEXTJOIN(“, “, TRUE, A3:E3)

This is just one example of how these new functions are designed to simplify users’ lives when it comes to advanced Excel tasks.

The next two new functions are IFS and SWITCH, which provide an alternative to using the infamous series of nested IF functions. The old IF function was the mainstay for Excel coders looking to apply logic to sets of data. You know what I mean: If this is larger than this, than this; but if it is larger than this but less than that, then this, etc. The more nested IF functions the more complicated the formula and the more likely you are to make a mistake.

The last two new functions are MAXIFS and MINIFS. They are designed to supplement the MAX and MIN functions by allowing users to apply conditions to the maximum and minimum calculations and thereby filter results. In the past you may have had to use the IF function to create your filtered conditions. These new functions eliminate the need and make your life just that much simpler.

Bottom line

When Microsoft began trying to convince us that subscribing to Office 365 was a better idea than repurchasing new versions every few years, the ability to update the productivity suite regularly at no extra cost was one of the main selling points. As the new six functions illustrate, that was not a false promise.

These functions are just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to Office 365 improvements. However, the problem with continuous updates to the software is that users have to try to keep up.

Even though there are some users out there who will keep using nested IF functions no matter what improvements come along, for example. But for the rest of us, it would seem to be worthwhile to pay attention to whatever improvements Microsoft rolls out each month. Because for better or worse, changes to Office 365 are going to keep coming.

Have questions?

Get answers from Microsofts Cloud Solutions Partner!
Call us at: 856-745-9990 or visit: https://southjerseytechies.net/

South Jersey Techies, LL C is a full Managed Web and Technology Services Company providing IT Services, Website Design Services, Server Support, Network Consulting, Internet Phones, Cloud Solutions Provider and much more. Contact for More Information.