Chapter 10
Introducing Office Online

Office Online (formerly Office Web Apps) is the cloud version of Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and OneNote. The apps allow users to create high-quality documents, simultaneously make changes to the documents with coauthors, share these documents from a browser without the need for the desktop application, and more. With Office Online, you’re no longer tethered to your office desk to be productive. As long as you have an internet connection, you can use any of the popular browsers from most common devices to access your documents, and even quickly pick up from where you left off in your last session.

You don’t have to give up beauty when you create documents on Office Online — your visual-rich documents look identical to documents created with the Office desktop application. Formatting styles, graphs, charts, and data are retained when you open and share documents from Office Online. Flat, boring documents have no place in Office Online.

In this chapter, we’ll show you the experience of using Office Online with several cloud storage services. We’ll also touch on recently added features and functions to enhance your productivity.

Experiencing Office Online

Office Online as a cloud service is a browser-based productivity solution that includes the core Office apps: Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and OneNote. It’s a free service, but it requires a cloud storage account for storing documents.

There are several options for cloud storage that integrate with Office Online:

OneDrive for Business and/or SharePoint Online through an Office 365 for business subscription

OneDrive.com consumer version through an Office 365 Home subscription or with the free Microsoft account (live.com, Hotmail, or outlook.com)

Dropbox

The Office 365 for Business experience

Office Online is included in all Office 365 for Business subscriptions. Whether in OneDrive for Business or in a SharePoint document library, opening a Word, Excel, PowerPoint, or OneNote document will start Office Online from the browser in reading view by default.

Storing documents created from Office Online in SharePoint is subject to the storage boundaries and limits for SharePoint. In OneDrive, each user has up to 1 TB of cloud storage.

To get the latest information on storage allocation in SharePoint Online, search for “SharePoint boundaries and limits” through this link:

When you open a document in Office Online, the browser will render your document exactly as you would expect to see from the desktop application (compare Figure 10-1 and Figure 10-2). You will notice, however, that there are fewer ribbon commands in the online version than the desktop version.

OneDrive.com experience

With either a Hotmail, outlook.com, or a live.com account, you can have up to 5 GB of free OneDrive cloud storage. If that isn’t enough, you can upgrade the free account to 50 GB for $1.99/month.

FIGURE 10-1: Presentation rendered in PowerPoint Online.

FIGURE 10-2: The same presentation in PowerPoint 2016 desktop application.

In the Office 365 Home subscription, you can have 1 TB of cloud storage for one user for $6.99/month on the Personal plan. On the Home plan, you can have 1 TB of cloud storage per user for up to five users for $9.99/month.

There is a slight difference in the Office Online apps that display when you click on the app launcher in Office 365 and OneDrive.com (see Figure 10-3) because the Office 365 version is geared for the work environment; the OneDrive.com version is geared for personal use.

FIGURE 10-3: Office Online apps in Office 365 E3 plan vs. OneDrive.com.

Opening an Office document from OneDrive is pretty much the same as in Share-Point Online or OneDrive for Business. The high-fidelity rendering of the document in the browser is as expected. There is, however, one bonus in the OneDrive. com experience: a Skype button on the top navigation. It allows you to quickly connect with your Skype contacts (see Figure 10-4). As of the time of publication, this feature doesn’t appear in the Office 365 business subscriptions; an enterprise version of that button may be available when you read this.

FIGURE 10-4: PowerPoint Online from OneDrive.com.

Dropbox experience

Integrating Office Online with Dropbox is pretty straightforward. There are a few steps to complete when you integrate the two technologies for the first time, but nothing complicated. Here’s how to view or edit a document in Dropbox with Office Online:

1. Log in to your Dropbox.com account.

2. Click an Office document (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, or OneNote).

When the document opens with the Dropbox native app, you might notice some formatting issues (see Figure 10-5).

3. Click the ellipses on the top right, then select Microsoft PowerPoint Online (refer to Figure 10-5).

FIGURE 10-5: Office document with formatting issues in Dropbox.

4. If you’ve never integrated Dropbox with Office Online before, simply follow prompts to allow Microsoft Office Online to access your Dropbox documents. Click Allow (see Figure 10-6).

Your document will now open in full fidelity in PowerPoint Online similar to SharePoint Online or OneDrive. Notice that the formatting issue now is gone in Figure 10-7.

FIGURE 10-6: Dropbox/Office Online integration.

FIGURE 10-7: Full fidelity document in Dropbox with PowerPoint Online.

Enhancing the Office Online Experience

The advantage of Software-as-a-Service solutions (SaaS), such as Office 365, is that SaaS vendors can roll out enhancements and updates in shorter cycles and require minimal actions from the end user. If you visit the Office 365 Roadmap page (see http://fasttrack.microsoft.com/roadmap), you’ll notice a number of features and updates in development to the service. When Microsoft launches these items, they may just show up in the service or application without the user installing anything. So don’t be surprised if you’re using Office Online one day and come back the next day to find new features to help you get the job done.

The subsequent chapters in this part of the book dive deeper into the functionalities of each of the core Offline Online apps. We think you might be interested to know about new features recently rolled out in Word Online.

Smart Lookup makes you smart

In the consumer version of Office Online, there’s a really cool feature that allows you to look up information from Bing, Wikipedia, the Oxford English Dictionary, and the web itself, without leaving the screen or page you’re on.

Let’s say, for example, you’re writing a blog in Word Online that mentions Paul Revere. You want to look up more information about Revere, or even embed a likeness of him. Unlike in the past, you won’t have to leave the current screen to open a new window or application to look up that information.

With the Smart Lookup (also known as Insights) in World Online, you can simply select the word or phrase while in Editing View, right-click the selection, and then select Smart Lookup. You will then see on the right pane more information about the word or phrase (see Figure 10-8). Isn’t that smart?

FIGURE 10-8: Smart Lookup in Word Online.

TIP

This feature isn’t available in Office Online when you’re using Office 365 for business yet. It is, however, available when you’re using the Office Pro Plus desktop application.

Getting your voice heard

Microsoft is eager to get your feedback on Office Online and other services. If you would like to help improve Office, there are many ways to make your voice heard.

In Office Online, at the bottom right of the screen, you will see a link that says HELP IMPROVE OFFICE. Clicking on that link will open a quick feedback form, which you can then submit (see Figure 10-9).

FIGURE 10-9: Help Improve Office feedback form.

If you want to actively engage with other users who are providing feedback to Microsoft, you can also visit the following forums:

Word Online UserVoice: https://word.uservoice.com

Excel Online UserVoice: https://excel.uservoice.com

PowerPoint Online UserVoice: https://powerpoint.uservoice.com

OneNote UserVoice: https://onenote.uservoice.com