IN THIS CHAPTER

Discovering tips for using little-known features in your Office apps

Finding online resources for getting help with apps

Checking out other apps that Microsoft develops for Apple devices

As you know, Microsoft Office is a huge suite of apps and ancillary items, such as templates and clip art. The first five parts of this book do the heavy lifting and familiarize you with the four major programs. In this chapter, you look at items that aren’t covered elsewhere or are covered only briefly but perhaps deserve a closer look.

The Developer Ribbon Tab

Very briefly touched on in Chapter 16, the Developer tab in Word and Excel is a playground for Office uber-geeks (or anyone else who likes to dabble in the dark arts of macros, content controls, and the like).

You can add the Developer tab to Word and Excel by following these steps:

1. Open the Preferences dialog in your chosen app.
2. Click the View button in the Preferences dialog.
3. In the ribbon section of the View dialog, select the box for the Developer tab.
4. Close the Preferences dialog, and the Developer appears on the ribbon.

“What can I do with the Developer tab?” we hear you asking. Great question! We could answer by saying, “If you don’t already know, you probably don’t need to know,” which is probably accurate but not polite. So, here’s a bit of what you can do with it:

• Create, record, edit, and delete macros. Macros are tools to automate frequently used tasks, such as formatting you use throughout multiple documents.
• Open and work with the Visual Basic editor. Visual Basic for Applications (VBA) is the programming language used for Office apps. Although you can’t use it to make programming changes to the apps themselves, you can use it to create and customize very complex macros.
• Build forms that other users can fill out by using tools such as check boxes, combo boxes, text boxes, scroll bars, and more.

A Multitude of Fonts

You might not have noticed, but when you installed Office, your font collection grew by quite a lot. That’s right: One bonus feature in Office is that its installation includes a sweet little collection of fonts for all occasions.

The collection includes a number of useful typefaces, such as

• Gill Sans: If you’re tired of using Helvetica or Arial (yuck) as your headline font, try this one. It's available in five weights (Bold, Bold Italic, MT, MT Italic, and Ultra Bold).
• Edwardian Script: This elegant font replicates flowery calligraphic handwriting and is perfect for invitations, thank-you notes, and monograms.
• Stencil: This big, blocky font looks as though it were spray-painted on by using a (gasp) stencil.

The fonts are installed in a hidden folder in each app. You can view them by right-clicking the name of the app (such as Microsoft Word) in the Applications folder and selecting Show Package Contents. From there, go to Contents ⇒ Resources ⇒ DFonts and you’ll find your Office fonts hiding there.

Do not attempt to add or remove anything to the files when viewing the package contents of an app! Doing so could damage the installation and potentially cause you to have to reinstall the app.

You can preview these font files by clicking the Font menu on the ribbon’s Home tab of each app and perusing the list of fonts. Each font name is presented in the font itself. If a font name has a cloud icon next to it, the font isn’t currently installed. You can download and install the font by selecting it.

Icons Gallery

Although Office is well known as a suite of business productivity apps, it also includes a nice collection of clip art, which Microsoft now refers to as icons. And, even though much of this artwork is indeed business oriented, the Stock Images Icons pane also contains a good number of images you can use in documents that have nothing to do with business.

So the next time you’re looking for a way to spice up a document, pop open the Stock Images Icons pane and insert a bit of art. In Word, PowerPoint, or Excel, choose Insert ⇒ Icons to open the Stock Images Icons pane on the right side of the current window. In the search window, type the name or description of the art you’re looking for and prepare to be amazed by the plethora of options you’ll discover. Click to select the image you want, and then click the Insert button to place the image in your document, spreadsheet, or slide.

Here are a few tips for getting the maximum benefit from the Stock Images Icons pane:

• When you initially add an image to a slide in PowerPoint, a new pane called Design Ideas opens on the right. This pane offers help for those of us who are design-challenged. Check out the suggestions, and if you see one you like, simply click to use it.
• You’re not stuck with the initial colors and the look of the image you inserted. Right-click the image and select Format Graphic from the menu. The Format Graphic pane opens on the right, and you can change all sorts of characteristics.
• You can’t open the Stock Images Icons pane directly from Outlook. However, you can open the pane from another Office app, and then drag and drop an image from the pane to an email message you’re composing.

Import Outlook Archives

Let’s say you’ve used Outlook for years on a PC and want to move all your emails, contacts, tasks, notes, and calendar items to your newly installed Outlook for Mac. Or perhaps you’d like to do the same except you’re moving from an older Mac with an older version of Office. Microsoft’s got you covered!

The first thing you’ll need to do is export your content from Outlook on your PC or old Mac to an archive file. Outlook archive files are in the .pst format (Windows) or the .olm format (Mac). Both formats are supported by the newest version of Office for Mac.

Here’s how to import those archives into your new installation:

1. Open Outlook.

2. Choose File ⇒ Import.

   The Import dialog appears.

3. Select the type of archive you’re importing and click Continue.
4. In the Choose window, browse your computer to find and select the archive file, and then click the Import button.

5. Allow the process to complete and then click Finish.

   The imported content appears in the On My Computer section of the navigation pane on the left.

Microsoft Teams

Microsoft Teams is an all-in-one collaboration tool. You can use it to communicate via voice, text, or video conference. Teams is also a file- and app-sharing tool. All considered, it’s an excellent app for anything from one-on-one conversations to all-hands-on-deck departmental meetings.

Teams is available for all major platforms: Mac, PC, Linux, iOS, iPadOS, and Android. Visit www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-teams/ to learn more about Teams (including plans and pricing information) and to download it.

Teams can be acquired as a stand-alone app (for free or otherwise; more on that in a moment) or as part of a subscription if you sign up for the Microsoft 365 Personal or Family edition.

The basic version of Teams is free but limited in some functionality compared to other versions. You still get:

• Group calling for up to 1 hour and up to 100 participants
• Unlimited chat
• Access to tools such as tasks and polling for event planning
• 5 GB of OneDrive storage
• Secure data encryption

Sounds pretty good, especially for free! Frankly, the free version is about all most individual users need. But if you find that it won’t suit you, check out the Microsoft 365 Personal and Family plans. They include everything the free version offers, plus the following:

• Group calling for up to 30 hours and up to 300 participants
• The big three Office apps and more
• Technical support for the life of your subscription

There is still one more option for business users that doesn’t require purchasing a version of Microsoft 365 Business. Microsoft Teams Essentials gives you everything that comes with the free versions, plus:

• Group meetings for up to 30 hours
• Up to 300 participants per meeting
• 10 GB of OneDrive storage per user
• 24x7 phone and web support

Microsoft Teams Essentials is a good bundle but will set you back $4 per user per month. For just $1 more per user, you could go with Microsoft 365 Business Basic, which gives you the big three Office apps, Outlook, web versions of Office apps, and more. Something to think about.

Outlook Profile Manager

Outlook Profile Manager (previously known as Microsoft Database Utility) is a companion program that allows you to manage multiple profiles for Outlook. If you’re someone who uses Outlook in multiple capacities that you’d like to keep separate (for example, if you use it for both work and personal reasons), you can create a profile for each. Profiles store sets of emails, calendars, tasks, contacts, account settings, and more.

Your main profile is created automatically when you first launch Outlook. To manage your profiles:

1. Go to your Applications folder.
2. Right-click the Microsoft Outlook icon and select Show Package Contents.
3. Open the Contents folder and then the SharedSupport folder. Double-click Outlook Profile Manager to open the app.
4. Use the + and − buttons in the toolbar at the bottom of the Outlook Profile Manager dialog to add or delete selected profiles, respectively.
5. (Optional) Set a profile as the default by selecting it in the profiles list and clicking the three dot icon (set default profile button).
6. To quit Outlook Profile Manager, click the red dot in the upper-left corner of the dialog window.

Microsoft Remote Desktop

Let’s say you have a PC running Microsoft Windows (sorry, but the reality is that sometimes we Mac users have to swim in those murky waters) in your lab at work and there’s a document on it that you really need to review. However, you’re at home and don’t want to make that long trek to the office, and to make things even more interesting, you only have a Mac in your humble abode. That’s where the little gem that is Microsoft Remote Desktop demonstrates its quality.

Only the Pro and Enterprise versions of Windows have the Remote Desktop feature that enables the PC to accept incoming connections.

Remote Desktop is an app you can install on your Mac or iOS device (it’s free to download and use), but it’s not just any app. This app allows you to remotely connect to and control Windows PCs from anywhere in the world. You can

• Open and use any app installed on the remote PC
• Access network resources local to the remote PC
• Access files and folders
• Print documents to printers in the remote PC’s location
• Run apps from the remote PC that don’t support direct installation on your Mac or iOS device
• Do just about darned near anything else you could do if you were sitting right in front of the remote PC

For links to documentation for getting set up and started, visit https://aka.ms/rdclients and click the links for iOS or macOS under the Remote Desktop Clients section. Learn how to set up your PC for remote access at https://aka.ms/rdsetup.

Then, download and install the Microsoft Remote Desktop app for macOS or iOS by searching for it in the App Store on your device.

You can use Remote Desktop also to access virtual machines that your company or organization may use. Ask your IT department for assistance with setting these up for remote access.

Microsoft Edge

Microsoft Edge is Microsoft’s latest incarnation of a world-class web browser. It replaced Internet Explorer (thank goodness!) a few years back on Windows. These days, Edge has been retooled and made available for other platforms, including macOS, iOS, and iPadOS.

You already have a great web browser on your Mac and other Apple devices (Safari), so why bother with another one, right? Well, in our opinion, it’s a great idea to always have more than one browser installed just in case you run into hiccups with certain websites. Sometimes a website may be troublesome in one browser and completely trouble-free in another. Also, web-based apps — such as Microsoft’s Office 365 versions of Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Outlook — might work better or support more functionality when using a browser developed by the same company.

Edge is free, fast, secure, and reliable — using it is truly a next-level experience when compared to the days of Internet Explorer — and it will serve you well as an alternative browser or even as your (gasp!) default browser.

Learn more about and download Edge for Mac at www.microsoft.com/en-us/edge. You can check it out in the App Store to do the same for your iPhone or iPad.

Microsoft To Do

Most of us have a to-do list as long as our arms (we know some folks who literally write the list on their arms!), and we also have our computers or smart device screens in front of us constantly. Microsoft saw an opportunity to develop an app that would marry the to-do list with the computing device: Microsoft To Do. (Appropriate name, yes?)

To Do lets you create lists and reminders to keep you on track all day long, it’s beautifully designed, and it’s free to boot! We know some diehard Apple fans who prefer Microsoft’s To Do app over Apple’s own Reminders app, which is similar in functionality. We can’t honestly claim to be in that camp, but we have used To Do and heartily recommend it, especially if you’re someone who appreciates the Microsoft aesthetic.

You can find Microsoft To Do in the App Store for macOS, iOS, and iPadOS.

Microsoft OneNote

We've all had this experience: A great idea pops into your head but you lose it because you can’t jot it down in the moment or you think you’ll remember it later only to forget it the very next minute. Wouldn’t it be wonderful (and more prudent, frankly) if you had a notebook with you that you could instantly open and use to record that idea? Yep, Microsoft’s thought of that, too, and thankfully someone there had the foresight to write it down before the idea was lost in the ether. That’s how we got OneNote.

OneNote acts as a digital notebook for your Mac, iPhone, or iPad. You can write down your ideas, upload images, draw plans and other illustrations, share your ideas with others, and even capture audio recordings using OneNote.

OneNote is free to download in the App Store for macOS, iOS, and iPadOS. It may also have come with your Office installer, depending on the version of Office you’ve purchased or subscribed to.