Get to know Microsoft Office
Other than creating documents and spreadsheets, Microsoft Office packs many more powerful productive tools to make your work a breeze
Microsoft Office is a complete productivity package for your work. You would be already using Microsoft Word, Excel and PowerPoint. There are other software such as Access, Outlook, FrontPage, InfoPath, Groove, OneNote, and Visio, which are also part of Microsoft Office suite. Microsoft Office is sold in various versions, each of which packs different software to form a suite. Learn about each of these software so you can find the Office suite perfect for your work.
Microsoft Word : This is a word processor. You can use it for composing letters, essays, articles, reports etc. You can change the font types, sizes, colours and much more. It comes with various templates for developing some standard business communication documents. Word has several tools to make you look professional and become more productive. It has a spelling and grammar checker and a dictionary. It lets you write in various accepted forms of English language. It has tools which automatically correct your errors as you type. Mail Merge helps your streamline your mailing. The Track Changes feature lets you review work done by your colleagues. There are many more advanced features that you will learn once you start using it.
PowerPoint : PowerPoint is used to make presentations in which you can make many individual pages or ‘slides’. These slides can have text, graphics, audio and other objects, which you can arrange freely. Presentations can be printed and you can run a slide show on your computer. Also you can attach a projector to the system to display on a wide screen so you can give your presentation to a large number of people. PowerPoint gives you many ready-made templates to start off.
Excel : This is used to make spreadsheets for storing data that you can use for various types of analyses. For example, you can create your company’s balance sheet using Excel. You can perform functions like summing up numbers, listing words entered in cells in the alphabetical order and much more. You can use formulas and functions to make your calculations a breeze. As you start to explore Excel, you will be happily amazed to find out many functions that will make your work quick and easy.
Outlook : This is an email programme or client which acts as your complete organiser as well. You can compose, receive and send email using this. It also has a calendar, contact manager and a task manager which helps you get completely organised. You can schedule meetings and be reminded of them, you can create task lists and track which ones need your attention.
Access : This is a relational database management programme which allows you to import, export and work with data files. You can create a database from scratch with various fields to sort the data on. Most databases start in Excel and as they grow unwieldy as they grow bigger, you need a database program like Access to manage them. It can import data or link to data from Microsoft applications such as Excel, Outlook and SharePoint, and other sources such as text, HTML, XML, Lotus 1-2-3 files, as well as Microsoft SQL Server, Oracle databases.
Groove : Groove's basic concept is of sharing a workspace to collaborate as a group. Users of this application can create their workspaces, add documents to them, and also invite other members. It is basically a document collaboration desktop application.
InfoPath : This is an information gathering and management program that streamlines the process of collecting information. With InfoPath, a person does not have to enter the same data across many forms. The forms are saved in the XML (extensible markup language) format. You can make use of Infopath for data input forms, electronic checklists for step-by-step work, forms for coordinating work among several people in which one person can begin filling it and then pass to the next and so on.
FrontPage : This is used to create websites. Whether you are trying to create a personal web page or a corporate site, this application will help you. It has powerful features and controls for the design and management of websites.
Publisher : This is a desktop publishing application. It is like Word, but far advanced when it comes to page design and layout and use of graphics. It helps you create, customise and publish materials like brochures, newsletters, catalogues and websites easily.
Visio : Visio is a program for business and technical diagramming. It helps you transform business data and ideas into diagrams easily. Also, because of its well integration with other Microsoft Office applications, exchanging figures with PowerPoint and Word is quite easy.
OneNote : This is like a digital notebook where you can gather information and notes, and run searches easily and quickly. Your time spent in looking for information across paper notebooks, printouts, file folders and email messages will be reduced. It is best suited for pen-enabled tablet systems that don’t have an intensive use of the keyboard.
Microsoft Office has many powerful tools that most people do not even know of. Ask your software vendor to give you the suite with the applications that will best help with your work.