Articles about Microsoft 365

Running a pirated copy of Office could earn you a discount on a Microsoft 365 subscription

Microsoft Office icons

For fairly obvious reasons, Microsoft -- like other companies -- would much rather people did not pirate its software. The major concern for any software producer is the loss of income, and Microsoft has come up with a solution for people running pirated versions of Office.

Citing various benefits, including avoiding the risk of security issues, Microsoft is urging pirates to take out a Microsoft 365 subscription. To sweeten the deal, the company is offering a discount on the usual price.

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Starting today, Microsoft 365 usage analytics is anonymized by default

Anonymous woman

As of September 1, 2021, Microsoft is making an important privacy change for Microsoft 365 usage analytics -- pseudonymization of user-level information by default.

Microsoft says that this change will help companies to more easily comply with local privacy laws, but it is something that is likely to be welcomed for various other reasons.

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Windows 365 lets you stream Windows 10 and Windows 11 from the cloud to any device -- including Mac, iPad, Android and Linux

When Windows 10 was announced back in 2014, Microsoft caused alarm bells to ring when it said the new operating system would be free "for the first year", and referring to it "as a service". That led to speculation that the software giant would start charging a monthly fee for Windows 10, much as it does for Office with Microsoft 365.

That never came to pass, but today at its Inspire 2021 conference Microsoft takes the wraps off Windows 365, a cloud-based Windows subscription service.

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Microsoft Office 2021 is coming to Windows 10 and macOS, but only a fool would buy it

Microsoft Office is the best software in the world. If I was running a company, I would choose it over any other solution. While free alternatives like LibreOffice are pretty good, they are all inferior to Microsoft's class-leading office suite. Any spreadsheet power user, for instance, knows nothing compares to Excel. These are indisputable facts.

Today, Microsoft announces that Office 2021 is coming to both Windows 10 and macOS later in the year. And yet, I am not excited about that, nor would I recommend anyone buy it. Why? Because Microsoft 365 exists.

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Microsoft Viva is a new people-powered workplace inside Teams

A few days ago, we reported that Microsoft was going to be revealing what's next for Microsoft 365 and Teams.

Today, it's been as good as its word, taking the wraps off Microsoft Viva, a new Microsoft 365-powered platform that brings together communications, knowledge, learning, resources, and insights -- from anywhere you work.

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Microsoft to reveal what's next for Microsoft 365 and Teams [Update]

COVID-19 has changed the world for many of us, and led to unprecedented numbers of people working from home. Quite what the future will hold for businesses once the pandemic is over remains to be seen, but it’s safe to say that not everyone will be headed back to the office.

Microsoft 365 and Teams has made it a lot easier, and more practical, for people to work and learn from home, and on Thursday, Feb 4 the software giant will be revealing what’s next for those two important tools.

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Microsoft makes changes to Productivity Score over privacy concerns

Colorful Microsoft logo

Microsoft has announced that it is committed to privacy as the company introduces changes to its Productivity Score tool that raised concerns recently.

The tool is part of Microsoft 365 and was designed to help employers analyze the performance of teams working on projects. But privacy advocates said that the ability to monitor employees on an individual basis amounted to it being a "full-fledged workplace surveillance tool". With the newly announced changes, Microsoft is hoping to allay such fears.

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Microsoft 365's 'Productivity Score' raises serious privacy concerns

Microsoft building in California

Microsoft has attracted the attention of privacy campaigners over the Productivity Score feature of Microsoft 365. The tool uses telemetry to enable employers to track the activities and performance of workers.

The analytics tool has been criticized for being a serious invasion of privacy, as it gives employers the ability to closely monitor individuals. One data privacy researcher describes it as "turn[ing] Microsoft 365 into a full-fledged workplace surveillance tool".

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Microsoft resolves issue that wiped out many of its services

Microsoft sign on glass building

Numerous Microsoft 365 services were knocked offline for several hours, leaving users unable to log into accounts and use various tools. Affected services included Office.com, Outlook.com and Teams, and the problem hit users around the world.

The company scrambled to determine the root cause of the issues, eventually homing in on a "recent change" which needed to be rolled back. This, however, did not ultimately solve the problem, so Microsoft was forced to put other mitigations in place.

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Master Microsoft Excel 2019 with these three free quick reference guides

Excel is a fantastic piece of software, but unlike Word, its Microsoft Office stablemate, it’s not something most people can conquer unaided.

In fact, I’ve seen many people over the years break off from doing something in Excel to add-up figures needed for their spreadsheet using Calculator, which is madness. There are plenty of courses to take, and books to read, which can help you master Excel, but we’ve got an easier route.

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Microsoft teases a new look for Office and Microsoft 365

Microsoft 365 redesign

Microsoft has given us a sneaky glimpse into the future, showing off some of the design changes that are coming to its Office apps. The company has revealed the updated UX that Microsoft 365 users can expect to see.

In addition to introducing a more muted color palette and fully embracing the Fluent Design language, Microsoft is also making some key changes to the ribbon. Part of this involves incorporating AI into the software so that a more flexible ribbon can contextually adapt to what you are doing.

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Microsoft releases a fix for Outlook crashes after a problematic update causes issues for many users

Microsoft building in California

Microsoft's track record with updates for Windows has been a little wobbly of late, with many updates introducing problems, or creating more issues than they fix. But it seems that it is not just the famous operating system that is jinxed -- Outlook is too.

Following reports from users that the Outlook desktop app was crashing with a 0xc0000005 error, Microsoft launched an investigation. While the company is now in the processing of pushing out a fix, a workaround has been shared online for those affected.

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Phishing attack evades Microsoft 365 security

Phishing

Researchers at email protection company Armorblox have uncovered a targeted email phishing attack designed to get past Microsoft 365 security.

The attack is a variant of 'PerSwaysion', a recent spate of credential phishing attacks that utilize compromised accounts and leverage Microsoft file-sharing services to lull victims into a false sense of security.

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Microsoft opens a can of whoop-ass on reply-all email storms in Office 365

When you work in an office, there are many annoying things you must put up with, such as coworkers microwaving stinky fish for lunch, or dealing with people that never refill the paper tray in the printer.

There is probably nothing more annoying, however, than reply-all email storms. This is where one coworker accidentally selects “reply all” rather than “reply” and ends up sending an email to a huge list of people. Then, other people in the organization do the same thing, creating a massive email chain that clogs up everyone’s inboxes. Thankfully, Microsoft is finally trying to end this nightmare in Office 365 (aka Microsoft 365) with the all-new “Reply All Storm Protection” feature.

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Clumio adds Microsoft 365 protection to its SaaS enterprise backup solution

Backup key

Enterprises and their data are vulnerable, perhaps more so than ever right now, with COVID related phishing scams booming.

Backup specialist Clumio is adding Microsoft 365 to its secure backup as a service offering, providing organizations running Microsoft 365 with a globally consolidated data protection service.

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