Category: Microsoft Office

Cloud Productivity, Collaboration, Document Collaboration, Microsoft 365, Microsoft Excel, Microsoft Office, Microsoft PowerPoint, Microsoft Word, Modern Workplace, Office 365, SharePoint Online, Tips & Tricks

Make your Office templates available to all users

Most companies and organizations have a good ambition that everyone should use the company’s standardized Office templates. The templates must follow the correct graphic profile and have the correct outline. Unfortunately, few companies and organizations succeed in this.

Wrong file types

A common misunderstanding is that an Office template is a “Reusable Office file” with the file extension .docx .xlsx or .pptx that you copy and change. Nothing could be more wrong.

“Real” Office templates have the following file extensions:

  • Word = .dotx
  • Excel = .xltx
  • PowerPoint = .potx

Stored in the wrong place

Sometimes the templates are on a file server, hopefully, the templates are at least stored somewhere on the company’s Microsoft 365 tenant (sometimes in a document library in SharePoint, sometimes they are even in a Team or spread across several Teams and channels.)

Sometimes you might even have your Office templates stored in an external solution that users have to log into and download the templates from. This often means that you miss when a new version has arrived and you continue, blissfully unaware, to work with your locally stored downloaded outdated templates.

Wrong Access rights

An interesting detail is that when you store these “Reusable Office files” (that are not valid template formats), in an area where most users have editor rights, it is guaranteed that sooner or later someone has been inside and changed one or more of these files.

A good way to avoid these problems is to create “real” Office templates and store them in an area where only a few people have editor rights while all employees have read rights.

But is there an easy way to make these templates available to all users directly from Word, Excel and PowerPoint? The answer is a resounding YES! Keep reading to find out how.

Continue reading “Make your Office templates available to all users” →
Cloud Productivity, Document Collaboration, Microsoft 365, Microsoft 365 Copilot, Microsoft Loop, Microsoft Office, Microsoft Teams, Modern Workplace

Microsoft Loop is here but what is it?

Yesterday, March 22, 2023, Microsoft announced that the Loop app is available in public preview. Launches are always fun and spark a lot of curiosity, but what exactly is the Microsoft Loop? Well in short it is as follows:

Microsoft Loop is a new productivity tool designed to help users organize their work and collaborate with others more effectively. One can say that it is a “cloud-based platform” that allows users to create, share, and collaborate on various types of content, including documents, notes, tasks, and more. It offers an intuitive and flexible workspace where users can organize their content into different sections, such as meetings, projects, and teams.

There are three key parts of Microsoft Loop:

  • Components
  • Workspaces
  • Pages

One of the key features of Microsoft Loop is its integration with other Microsoft applications, such as Teams, Outlook, and OneNote. This integration allows users to easily access and share their content across different platforms, making it easier to collaborate with colleagues and work more efficiently.

In addition, Loop also offers a range of customizable templates that can be used to create various types of content, such as agendas, meeting notes, and project plans. These templates can be customized to fit specific needs and workflows, making it easier for users to get started and stay organized.

Short summary

Microsoft Loop is a powerful productivity tool that offers a range of features designed to help users work more efficiently and collaborate more effectively with others. Whether you’re working on a project with a team or managing your own workload, Loop can help you stay organized, focused, and productive, and I guess that’s something that we all aspire to be. Therefore, this may be of interest to most of us.

As usual, the internet is flooded when news like this launches, so below I’ve compiled some useful and overview articles that can give you the information you need to get started:

Microsoft Loop – Think, plan, and create together like never before

New Microsoft Loop app is built for modern co-creation

The SharePoint storage platform supports the Loop app – Components, pages, and workspaces

Learn how to enable the Microsoft Loop app, now in Public Preview

Artificial Intelligence, Change, Cloud Productivity, Cognitive Services, Machine Learning, Microsoft 365, Microsoft 365 Autopilot, Microsoft Office, Microsoft Teams, Modern Workplace, Viva Engage

Today I allow myself to be impressed. Welcome Microsoft 365 Copilot

I am very sparing when it comes to the use of superlatives but this time I allow myself to use the word revolutionary! I’m not the easily impressed type either. In fact, I am almost never impressed by anyone or anything but Microsoft 365 Copilot really impresses me! We will hear- and see a lot more of this in the future.

Image by Niek Verlaan from Pixabay

Microsoft 365 Copilot will change the way we work using:

  • Copilot in Word
  • Copilot in Excel
  • Copilot in PowerPoint
  • Copilot in Outlook
  • Copilot in Teams
  • Copilot in Viva Engage
Continue reading “Today I allow myself to be impressed. Welcome Microsoft 365 Copilot” →
Document Collaboration, Microsoft 365, Microsoft Excel, Microsoft Office, Microsoft PowerPoint, Microsoft Teams, Microsoft Word, Modern Workplace, Problem Solving, SharePoint Online, Tips & Tricks

Easy use of Office Document templates in Microsoft Teams

I think most of us, at some point, have missed the opportunity to add and use document templates in Microsoft Teams. It would have been great if, in “Files”, you could just click “New” and then choose an Office template that you want to start from when creating a new document.

1

For those of you who lacked this functionality, I can inform you that there is a solution for this. Continue reading “Easy use of Office Document templates in Microsoft Teams” →

Microsoft 365 Governance, Microsoft Office, Microsoft Teams, Office 365 Governance, OneDrive for Business, Security, Security & Compliance, SharePoint Online

Sensitivity labels with protection in SharePoint, OneDrive and Microsoft Teams

“Take care of yourself and use protection!”

(If you didn’t hear it from your parents, you hear it from me now.)

Sensitivity labels with protection is now in “General availability” in SharePoint, OneDrive and Microsoft Teams.

Read the details here: Announcing general availability of sensitivity labels with protection in SharePoint and OneDrive

 

 

Document Collaboration, File Restore, File shares, Microsoft 365, Microsoft 365 Governance, Microsoft Office, Modern Workplace, Office 365, Office 365 Governance, OneDrive, OneDrive for Business, Security, SharePoint Online, Tips & Tricks, User Adoption

Oh no! What has happened to my files !!!

An accident happens so easily.

What if your files are deleted or overwritten? They may even become corrupt or in the worst case infected with malicious software. It starts to creep in the body and whizzes in the ears. The butterflies begin to flaunt in your stomach and the sweat rushes into your forehead. What in the world should you do now? Continue reading “Oh no! What has happened to my files !!!” →

Microsoft Office, Microsoft Teams, Outlook, Tips & Tricks, User Adoption

Forward an email from Outlook into a Channel in a Microsoft Team

To be able to forward an email from Outlook into a Channel in a Microsoft Team is a great feature. It can be used to inform the team members of the content of an email you have received from an external user. Once forwarded into a proper channel the team members can view it and start a chat about it.

However, before you start to use this functionality too frequently, you should be aware of that there are some limitations.
In the article “Send an email to a channel in Teams” you can see how it works and also the limitations.

Document Collaboration, Microsoft 365, Microsoft 365 Governance, Microsoft Office, Office 365 Governance, SharePoint Online, Tips & Tricks

Great news for those who work with document management solutions in modern libraries in Sharepoint Online

Content types with office templates in modern libraries in SharePoint Online.

Over the years, many of us have used content types to structure and keep track of the documents we work with in document libraries. We have often linked official templates to these content types, sometimes locally in the respective document libraries and sometimes in major centrally managed solutions through Content Type hub.

When modern team sites were launched, some of us found that these opportunities disappeared. Suddenly it became a little bit more difficult to build solutions with content types, document templates, and centrally managed content types and custom metadata, now we would suddenly just use our folders again.

On Saturday (September 1, 2018) Chris McNulty published an article that created great hope for those of us who want to use document library “out of the box” but also want to build structured solutions with custom content types, office templates and custom menus in document libraries. You can read this article here: “Announcing new file template management for document library content types“. You will now be able to tie office templates to your content types in a document library and you can also change the order in the menu that appears when you click “New”. You can actually upload the office templates directly through the “New menu”.

Small, but high value improvements, that start rolling out to “Targeted Release customers” already in early September 2018.

Did these news made you stand up on your desk and jump up and down in pure excitement (wearing your funniest party hat)? I am glad to inform you that there are more good news on my way, so there’s a lot of reason to celebrate further. The final “Frequently asked questions” of the same article also show the following:

“We will soon introduce the ability for a centrally managed content type, along with its custom metadata rules and templates, to be published to all locations, including locally defined templates, with full reporting visibility.”

Yes, you read correctly. We will soon be able to manage the office templates of the content types in one place. For those of you who have worked (and work) with document management solutions in SharePoint online, your excitement should now correspond to a child’s joy on Christmas Eve when Santa Claus is on the way.

Content Type fans, here we go!

(this article is also published on LinkedIn)

Microsoft 365, Microsoft Office, Microsoft Teams, Office 365 Governance

Office Roadmap Filter Improvements and new Microsoft 365 Roadmap

As soon as this “Roadmap upgrade” is released, you should customize your “Office 365 Governance Team” with new filtered impressions, thus creating even better order and gaining more control over news and changes in your services. Do not hesitate to contact me if You need help.

roadmap1

Keep Yourself updated by following the Office 365 Roadmap

Microsoft 365, Microsoft Office, Office 365 Other, Prepare for Change

Integrated PDF services to Office 365

Good progress is taking place within integrations between Adobe Sign and Office 365 products. Some of the goodies:

  • Rich previews of PDF documents right within OneDrive and your SharePoint sites.
  • Select several files and pull into one PDF with just a couple of clicks within SharePoint document libraries.
  • Available in the ribbon for online versions of Word, Excel, and PowerPoint

Read the full article here: “Updates to Adobe Document Cloud bring integrated PDF services to Office 365”

Adobe-Office-365-2

(Image from www.microsoft.com)