Office 365 on mobile: apps to help you move forward
Office 365 can be used for all kinds of purposes. The capabilities of the Office 365 mobile platform provide a way to manage your work and home life, especially if you are a creative. One Office 365 user with two pre-teens. He set up an Office 365 tenant for his family so he could manage all the devices his wife and kids were using, and to make sure they were using cloud apps safely and securely.
With the conveniences of his iPhone, he virtually runs his family’s computing environment just like the IT department of a Fortune 500. His children and wife log into their social media accounts from the Microsoft MyApps portal (also referred to as the access panel) where they Configure a single login. Everyone in the family just needs to sign in with their Office 365 credentials. If he receives an alert about anything suspicious, he can immediately lock an account or reset the password. Classy, isn’t it?
Suffice it to say, in today’s world it is no longer enough to work from one device. The good news is that in Office 365, you can seamlessly transition from desktop to laptop to mobile device when working on documents or interacting with collaboration tools like SharePoint Online or OneDrive for Business.
Install Office 365 mobile apps
You can find Office Mobile apps in the App Store (iOS) or Play Store (Android) by searching for “Microsoft Office”. On your Windows phone or Surface device (it works as a laptop and tablet), the apps are pre-installed. Another way to get a summary of the Office Mobile applications available for your device is as follows:
1. Go to the Office Portal.
2. From the left pane, click on Phone & Tablet.
3. Choose your device and click on the Get apps button.
You are taken to the Microsoft products page for your device.
4. Enter your email address and click Submit.
You will receive an email with a list of available mobile apps for your device.
5. Click on the download link to access the download instructions.
Make sure you have your Office 365 sign-in information handy during this process. During setup, you will be asked to sign in with your Office 365 account.
Collaborate on a Word document from iPhone
Office Mobile apps are a great way to pick up where you left off in a document while sitting on the bus, waiting for a doctor’s appointment, or cooling your heels between your kids’ soccer games. It is available for the following platforms: PC, Mac, iOS, Android, Windows Phone, and Windows Tablet. The apps are also a great way for workers without computers or Office desktop licenses to contribute and interact with documents stored in OneDrive for Business or SharePoint Online.
Here, you can review the experience of creating, editing, and collaborating on a document stored in OneDrive for Business using a real-life example of the author. Here are the steps she took to collaborate with her editors:
1. First, the author created a folder in OneDrive for Business and saved Word documents that she needed to share with others.
2. In OneDrive for Business, you select the folder you want to share. She could share each file individually, but she wanted to share the entire folder so editors and technical advisors could see all the documents being worked on at any time.
3. From the command bar, you clicked Share and entered the email addresses of the people you want to share the folder with. I’ve made sure that the permission level is set to “Only people you select will have access to edit”.
4. I clicked send and a notification appears with a link to the selected people.
5. The writer then opened a document from her laptop to begin editing it in her home office. Two hours later, she had to leave to go to the dentist’s appointment.
6. While at the dentist’s office, she remembered a key point she wanted to include in the document. The writer’s appointment was early, so she grabbed her iPhone and launched the Word app.
7. From the Word application, I clicked on the “Speak” button.
8. She clicked on the first item in the list, which was the last document she was working on (Chapter 01). The document app opened with Track Changes turned on – the same way she left it on her laptop!
9. You clicked on the Edit icon to start editing.
10. The application splits the screen to show the format commands available in the application. In this view, the app then started remembering where it was last and displaying a “Welcome back!” Attention.
11 The author clicks the notification and the screen moves to the section she was most recently editing. From there, it made its modifications. When she was about to close the app (there’s no need to save – the Office apps are automatically saved as you work), she noticed two people were currently editing the document, so I clicked on the share icon to see who was working on the document.
12. On the Shared With screen, she saw that she was editing the document from two devices: one from her laptop and one from her mobile device. She then proceeded to add the key point she wanted to add to the document to ensure that others who would view the document at a later date would see her updates.