For the last three weeks I’ve been getting occasional problem reports from clients with hosted Exchange mailboxes on Office 365, after their Office 365 service was upgraded. For a handful of users, Outlook has sporadically been unable to connect to the online Exchange server, showing “Trying to connect” in the lower right corner for five minutes, or an hour, or several hours. In some cases it’s an isolated event but a very few people have had persistent problems that would come and go for a week or two.

There was no official statement from Microsoft about system problems, and the support forums were not erupting with similar stories, just a few isolated anecdotes.

Today I noticed this in the Office 365 system dashboard.

“Recently your company was upgraded to the latest version of Office 365. Microsoft has received reports of some upgraded customers having difficulty connecting to Exchange Online via the Outlook client. Analysis has found that this situation occurs most frequently with Outlook 2007. To correct this issue, Microsoft will be performing an update to the service that is expected to be completed by May 19, 2013. If you are having issues before or after this update is complete, a set of corrective measures have been outlined on the following web site: http://aka.ms/Sxcjj6. Many customers following the outlined steps have reported success. If you still experience Outlook client connectivity issues please contact support for further troubleshooting and as an alternative means of access Outlook Web Access is available.”

It might not be fixed yet. My copy of Outlook lost its connection for about ten minutes today. But a few things come out of this.

– If this happens to you, the problem is more likely to be at Microsoft’s end than your end.

–  It doesn’t last long for most people.

– There’s probably nothing you or I can do about it.

–  Microsoft knows about the problem and is working on a fix.

–  And the most important thing: don’t forget about Outlook Web Access. If Outlook isn’t up to date, go to http://mail.office365.com and check your mail there. Webmail has not been affected by this problem and the upgraded webmail interface will keep you functioning. Everything is indexed and searchable, each folder is presented in a single scrolling list (no more paging through messages 1-30, 31-60, 61-90), and it’s fast.

The post Outlook Connection Problems With Office 365 appeared first on Bruceb News.

Here we go again.

Windows 8 is succumbing to the pressure from too many people with too many agendas. It’s starting to get a bit of the Vista stink. Everybody seems to “know” that Windows 8 is something to be avoided. Nobody can articulate what the problems are – it’s something they heard somewhere. “I know somebody who got it and just hated it.” “I read an article that said it was awful.”

Let’s jump to the conclusion.

  –  Windows 7 is a lovely stable operating system. If you get a computer with Windows 7, you’ll love it.

  –  Windows 8 is a lovely stable operating system. If you get a computer with Windows 8, you’ll love it – if you take about ten minutes to read this or have someone show you around.

Almost all the people criticizing Windows 8 are the ones who didn’t get the ten-minute tutorial. (Or they have their own agendas. I predicted this when I warned you last year to expect an onslaught driven in part by competitors and Microsoft-haters.)

Get over the obvious misconception: there are no new bugs. You don’t have to “wait for the bugs to be worked out.” The underpinnings of Windows 8 come from Windows 7, with years of seasoning and the same stability and broad driver support.

This is what’s new in Windows 8: Windows 8 has a full-screen Start screen instead of a Start menu; it has some new full-screen apps that can be used or ignored; and some commands are moved to a bar on the right side of the screen. That’s it for the big changes. If those changes leave you breathless, you should get Windows 7 – but you should also know that you’re a very sensitive person.

Let’s look at a few different types of users. Microsoft’s goal for Windows 8 was to create an operating system that would behave the same way for all of these users, on all of these devices. Windows 8 is pretty effective, given the broad range that it covers.

Business users  If you use a desktop computer with a big monitor to run multiple programs side-by-side, the new Start screen and full-screen apps have little to offer you. It takes two minutes to configure Windows 8 so your day is spent in exactly the same desktop that you used in Windows 7. Put the Desktop tile in the top left of the Start screen so you can get there with a single click on the Enter key. If it helps, install Stardock’s Start8, a perfect re-creation of the Windows 7 Start menu. Set Internet Explorer to open on the desktop.

That’s it. When you’re working in the desktop, there is literally no difference between Windows 8 and Windows 7 – except for improvements in File Explorer and Task Manager, and extra speed.

On my desktop computer, the Start screen (above) has the Desktop tile in the upper left, and the first three groups of tiles are all desktop programs. The full-screen apps are off to the right, rarely used.

If you have a laptop computer without a touchscreen, you’ll likely set it up the same way. Most of your time will be spent on the desktop.

Laptop users with touchscreens  When your laptop has a touchscreen, it becomes an option to do more with the new apps, which look great on a smaller screen. It makes sense to swipe through the news with the full-screen app, or to reach out and swipe up and down on web pages. The Weather app looks large and intimidating on a 27” monitor but looks grand on a 14” laptop screen.

Touching the screen is not required. You can still use your keyboard and touchpad, which work better on desktop programs where many buttons are too small for fingertips. Use the touchscreen where it’s natural, use the keyboard and mouse where they work better.

Having the touchscreen makes it likely that you’ll spend more time in the Start screen, which is easier to navigate when you can touch it.

Tablet users  On a small screen, 8-10 inches, the Start screen takes its place as the center of activity, just as the home screen does on an iPad or Android tablet. On my Surface RT tablet, above, the Start screen is filled with full-screen apps and the Desktop tile is shoved to the bottom right, nearly offscreen. I use the Metro full-screen versions of OneNote and Skype instead of the desktop versions.

There is still a desktop on a Windows 8 tablet and you can open files in Word, Excel and Powerpoint, but you’ll likely spend more time using it to consume content – watching Netflix, reading Kindle books, or looking at your mail with the simplified full-screen Mail app.

Windows 8 is designed so you can ignore the parts you don’t want to use. If you’re a business user, bypass the Start screen. If you want an iPad-like experience with a tablet, ignore the desktop. Learn Windows 8 and use the parts that make sense for the device you’re using.

Many of the people complaining about Windows 8 are desktop users who don’t want to be distracted from the desktop. If you’re in that category, get Windows 8 anyway and remember you can configure Windows 8 to spend all your time in the desktop, and you can ignore the parts you don’t want to use. But take a moment for some perspective to understand why those new parts are there: the world is moving fast to tablets and touchscreen devices. Microsoft has created Windows 8 to work on screens from seven inches to twenty-seven inches – one OS, one experience that works for all of your devices. Without it, Windows would be well on the way to a long fade into irrelevance.

Later this year, Microsoft will release Windows 8.1, which will tweak the user interface in very modest ways. Although the update will be vigorously advertised as a huge improvement, the reality is that Windows 8 is easy to use and enjoy right now, no matter what kind of user you are. Don’t give in to the doubters too easily!

The post Windows 8 And The Death Of A Thousand Cuts appeared first on Bruceb News.

Sometimes it seems as if we’re making progress against spam. Spam filters have improved and we don’t bother to check the Junk Mail folder any more because we know it’s all junk. Oh, sure, some crud gets through to the Inbox from the bad guys but on the whole complaints about spam have dropped way down.

But anyone with a blog knows that blog spam is flourishing.

A bit of background, then I’ll tell you why I’m so proud of Bruceb News.

WordPress is the dominant platform for websites with blogs, running more than 60 million websites worldwide. Here’s some information about WordPress if you’re not familiar with it.

It’s common for blog articles to have a place for comments. There are many WordPress plugins to create those comment sections, which typically request a name, email address, and web site to go along with the comment.

Almost all blog comments are moderated, which means the comments don’t appear until they are approved by a moderator, usually the owner of the site.

Why the moderation? Hordes of spammers and bad guys have developed automated software that sweeps the web searching for WordPress comment forms that can be filled in automatically. Every blog – trust me, every blog – gets comment spam. Here’s a nice explanation of comment spam.

The point of the spam has nothing to do with the comment itself. The spammers hope to create links back to their own websites, which might be trying to sell something or might be hosting malware. They don’t want the comment to be seen by people; they want the link to be seen by search engines.

That’s why most bloggers install a spam filter. Akismet is the most commonly used spam filter on WordPress web sites – created by the people who wrote WordPress and installed by default on WordPress.com sites. I’ve had Akismet running on Bruceb News since it was moved to WordPress in 2009.

And that’s why I’m so proud of my humble news page today. Here’s a shot of the WordPress dashboard tonight.

The cool part is at the bottom. Here’s a larger version.

“Akismet has protected your site from 400,340 spam comments already.”

Four hundred thousand spam comments, baby! Thassa lotta spam! I was a few hundred short last night but bless the hearts of the bad guys, they put me over the top in no time.

Fortunately, only a handful of spam comments make it through the filter, 2-3 per day, easy enough for me to deal with manually.

It’s always fun to look through the spam comments to see what the bad guys think will get through the filter.

“As we all were practicing for each of our last proceed, Sarah and additionally I boxed up most of our CD collection.” “Go via these elder items and look for the that tickle your fancy.” “I cherished as much as you’ll receive carried out proper here.” It’s kind of like poetry, isn’t it?

My Gmail account is only accumulating spam at the rate of 20-25 new spam messages per day, less than a thousand new messages since the beginning of April. Hah! The WordPress spammers could teach those guys a trick or two.

Helps put your Junk Mail folder into perspective, doesn’t it?

The post Spam, Spam Everywhere appeared first on Bruceb News.

Previously:
The Difference Between A Microsoft Account And An Office 365 Account
Understanding Skydrive, Part 1: Skydrive vs. Skydrive Pro
Understanding Skydrive, Part 2: The Basics
Understanding Skydrive, Part 3: The Microsoft Office Connection

Microsoft has steadily improved sharing in Skydrive. Among other uses, it has become one of the easiest and most attractive services to use for sharing photos, and it is one of the best ways to deal with files that are too large to email.

The basics:

–  You can share any file or photo in Skydrive with just a couple of clicks from the Skydrive web site, from your computer, or directly from Office 2013.

–  You have control over who can see the shared file. The person you’re sharing with will get a link to the file. They don’t have to log in with a Microsoft account to see the file – unless you make that a requirement for extra security.

–  You have control over what the recipient can do with the file – viewing only or editing.

The next step is collaboration. You can give anyone permission to edit a shared file in Skydrive. The latest Skydrive improvements are designed to let you edit Office files with someone else simultaneously.

HOW TO SHARE FILES IN SKYDRIVE

There are links everywhere to help you share files in Skydrive.

Skydrive web site  Log into the Skydrive web site and look for the Sharing button at the top. You can choose individual files by checking the box for each one, or share an entire folder by clicking Sharing without clicking a particular file first.

You can also right-click on a file or a folder and find Sharing on the context menu.

Your computer  If you install the Skydrive app on your computer, right-click on any file or folder in Skydrive in Windows Explorer and click on Skydrive / Share.

Office 2013  You can share files directly from Word, Excel and Powerpoint in Office 2013 by clicking on File / Share. If the file is not yet saved in Skydrive, the program will help you put it there, then bring up the Sharing dialog.

If the file is already in a Skydrive folder, you’ll go straight to a dialog where you can either have the program send an email on your behalf, or create a URL that you can send separately.

ASSIGNING PERMISSIONS

When you share a file in Skydrive, the service creates a link to the file and attaches some security information.

The link looks like this: https://skydrive.live.com/redir?resid=7876C10FDD6417F3!3707&authkey=!AFAwBJbZ1AZQNSI

There is a Shorten button that will make the link less intimidating (and better suited to Twitter). The shortened version of the above link is: http://sdrv.ms/1024KX8  Click on the link to see what a photo looks like when it’s shared in Skydrive.

There are some simple choices about the link when you create it.

– Can the file only be viewed, or can someone with the link edit the file?

– Can the file be viewed by anyone with the link, or is it restricted to someone who logs in with a specific Microsoft account?

This is where you find the balance between convenience and security. It’s more convenient if your recipients don’t have to deal with logging into a Microsoft account – they might not have one. But if you send a URL that does not require logging in, it can be used by anyone who gets the URL. Your friend can forward the URL to others or post it on Facebook and anyone who clicks it can see the shared file. Frequently that’s not a problem, but don’t be taken by surprise.

Sharing links can be revoked or modified at any time, of course.

COLLABORATION

When you share Office documents and grant permission to edit the files, people can edit them in Office Web Apps without a Microsoft account.

This is a recent addition to Skydrive that makes it far more convenient for many users. (For security you can still restrict access to someone who logs in with a Microsoft account matching the invited email address. This is critical for businesses to understand! Don’t share confidential information in a way that allows uninvited people to see it or edit it.)

Two people can work on the same file simultaneously in Office Web Apps – you and someone in another location can both open the same Word document or Excel spreadsheet or Powerpoint presentation and work on different sections at the same time. Elaborate precautions are taken to make sure the two of you don’t interfere with each other.

At the moment, the two of you will only see each other’s edits when the file is saved and your view is refreshed. Microsoft announced last week that real time co-authoring will be introduced in the next few months, so you can watch your collaborator’s edits appear almost immediately in your copy of the file.

This is the area where Microsoft again leverages its ecosystem and includes features that Dropbox and Google cannot match. You can share files in Dropbox but the sharing options are not as polished and easy to use as Skydrive. Google encourages collaboration with Google Docs but cannot match the familiarity of the Office interface and the compelling need for businesses to stick with Office file formats for consistency.

It all makes Skydrive a compelling service for many of you, for everything from business documents to casual photos. It is a rapidly evolving service – the latest example came today, when Microsoft announced improvements in photo displays and faster photo upload speeds, continuing a steady stream of updates in the last year. Skydrive is one of the new things in the world that deserves your attention. Give it a try!

The post Understanding Skydrive, Part 4: Sharing And Collaboration appeared first on Bruceb News.

Previously:
The Difference Between A Microsoft Account And An Office 365 Account
Understanding Skydrive, Part 1: Skydrive vs. Skydrive Pro
Understanding Skydrive, Part 2: The Basics

Skydrive has become more compelling for business users because it is integrated with Office (Word / Excel / Powerpoint) in two ways:

–  Documents can be opened and saved in Skydrive directly from Office programs.

–  Office documents in Skydrive can be viewed and edited online in a web browser with Office Web Apps, web-based versions of the Office programs that are 100% compatible with Office file formats.

THE DOMINANCE OF MICROSOFT OFFICE

Microsoft Office is installed on more than 1 billion PCs.

Microsoft Office generated six billion dollars in revenue in the quarter ended March 31, 2013.

Year after year, the Office division makes more money for Microsoft than the Windows division. It makes more money than Microsoft’s server products, more money than XBox and the entertainment products, more money than anything Microsoft is doing in the cloud. By almost any measure, Office is Microsoft’s most important product.

There are some young hipsters using Google Docs who think Microsoft Office can be dismissed. You’re not living in their world. You’re living in the real world where business is done. In your world, Microsoft Office will be the dominant platform for office documents and collaboration for a long time to come.

Office is everywhere. It achieved its dominance because it was easier for businesses to work together if they shared common file formats. Microsoft is going to make sure that Office continues to dominate by making it ubiquitous, available everywhere.

Microsoft is moving aggressively to extend Office to the new post-PC world, where you expect to be able to do work on mobile devices and multiple computers. The new subscription-based licensing permits Office to be installed on up to five computers, PC or Mac, with plans available for home and for office users. Special Windows RT versions of Word, Excel and Powerpoint are included on Surface RT tablets. Windows Phone 8 devices include phone-sized versions of Word, Excel and Powerpoint. It’s widely believed that versions of the Office programs will be released for iPads and Android tablets, although the latest rumors suggest that might be delayed until Fall 2014.

We are all Office users. Skydrive makes it easier to use Office to work on your files. It’s really that simple.

OPENING OFFICE DOCUMENTS FROM SKYDRIVE

When you use Office 2013, it encourages you to sign in with a Microsoft account. When you do, Skydrive becomes the default location in the Office programs for opening and saving files.

That’s a big deal! At first it’s disconcerting to click on File / Open and see Skydrive as the first option. It takes an extra click to get to the Documents folder on your local hard drive. After you commit to storing files in Skydrive, of course, it’s just as natural as storing files in Documents, but with the added convenience of having access to them from anywhere.

Install the Skydrive desktop app for your computer and you can open and save documents to your Skydrive folders even if you are offline. All changes will be synced next time your computer goes online.

If you have files stored in Skydrive, your list of files will be identical wherever you open Word – on your office computer, your home computer, or your laptop. More: the list of Recent Documents is synced by Office behind the scenes, so it will also be the same on each computer.

(Geeky detail: if you decide not to use Skydrive, click on File / Options / Save in the Office programs and check the box, “Save to computer by default.”)

USING OFFICE WEB APPS

Microsoft has rapidly improved the browser-based versions of Word, Excel, Powerpoint and OneNote.

Try an experiment.

Upload a Word document to Skydrive. Then go to the Skydrive web site and click on the document.

The file will be displayed in a viewer that shows it with all formatting, as it would come out of the printer.

If you click on Edit Document / Edit in Word Web App, the online version of Word will appear.

Some formatting may not be displayed in the Word Web App, but nothing is lost – the web apps preserve 100% of the formatting. This is one of the reasons to prefer Office Web Apps to the horrible mangling that happens when Office files are worked on in Google Docs.

The editors are full of features and more are being added all the time. The ribbon has the commonly-used editing features. Drag and drop editing is supported now. A floating ribbon pops up next to highlighted text or pasted text. The web apps are being rewritten to work in all the major browsers, not just Internet Explorer. The whole experience is very much like using the installed version of Word.

Remember the central concept of Skydrive: if you edit a file with the web app, the edited version will be immediately available wherever you next approach that file – you’ll see the edited version when you get to your office computer or use another computer or tablet.

The other choice for editing is Edit in Word. The file will open in the local copy of Word, if it’s installed on the computer you’re using. When you save the file, it will be saved directly back to Skydrive – no fumbling with saving it locally and then transferring it around.

You can also create Office documents from scratch with the Office Web Apps, of course.

If you’re using a computer for your business, you’re almost certainly using Office, and it’s likely that you are working from more than one computer. Using Skydrive just makes sense. It’s more than a place to store files; it’s a working environment that lets you view those files, edit them, print them – anywhere, on any device.

It gets even better. Skydrive and Office Web Apps are built for sharing and collaboration, more easily and more effectively than any other online file platform. More to come!

The post Understanding Skydrive, Part 3: The Microsoft Office Connection appeared first on Bruceb News.

Previously:
The Difference Between A Microsoft Account And An Office 365 Account
Understanding Skydrive, Part 1: Skydrive vs. Skydrive Pro

Skydrive lets you store files online and access them from anywhere, including PCs, Macs, and mobile devices. There are some good reasons to begin using it as the primary location for saving all of your files and pictures.

SKYDRIVE WEB SITE

Go to http://skydrive.live.com.

If you’re not signed in already, then sign in with your Microsoft account.

You will likely see some folders – by default, there are folders for Documents, Pictures, and Public. If not, create Documents and Pictures folders by clicking Create / Folder.

Click on the Pictures folder. Click on Upload and choose a couple of photos.

Congratulations! You have photos stored in the cloud. You can go back to Skydrive from any computer and view those pictures. Go to mom’s house and log into your Skydrive account from mom’s computer and show her the pictures.

You can download an entire folder or individual files from the Folder actions button at the top. If you choose Download folder, a ZIP file will be prepared containing all the files in the folder. It will be up to you to extract the files after it downloads.

A context menu appears if you right-click a file, with all the options you’d expect – download, delete, rename, move, copy, etc.

If you left-click on a photo, a larger version of the photo is displayed with thumbnails of the other photos in the folder along the bottom. In that view, there are options along the top for a slideshow, downloading a photo and file management tasks. Detailed photo information is displayed on the right.

You can upload up to 7Gb of files to Skydrive. More storage was available to early Skydrive users, and more space can be purchased from the Manage storage button in the lower left (20Gb additional space for $10/year, plus options for 50Gb and 100Gb additional space). Available storage space is displayed in the lower left.

As we’ll see, there are more options at the web site for editing and sharing files, but let’s stop there for now. That’s the core concept: files are stored online where they can be accessed from any computer, anywhere.

SKYDRIVE FILES ON YOUR COMPUTER

Let’s add the program that makes it easier to store files online and work with them.

PC and Mac users can download and install a small program that creates a special Skydrive folder on your local computer hard drive. By default, it is created in your Users folder on Windows 7 and 8, usually C:\Users\(YourName)\Skydrive.

The Skydrive app keeps the folder on your computer in sync with the files stored online. When you are working on your computer, anything you do in the Skydrive folder will be replicated online. Add a folder – 1 file or 100 files – and the added folder will be uploaded in the background. If you edit and save a file in the Skydrive folder, the saved version will be synced online. If you delete a file, it will be deleted online.

Day to day, you won’t upload and download files from the Skydrive web site. You’ll work with a local folder on your computer, just like Documents and Pictures. Saving a file to Skydrive is exactly like saving a file to any other folder. It appears in the Favorites list in Windows 7 and 8 so the Skydrive folder can be chosen with a single click.

If you install the Skydrive app on more than one computer, changes to the Skydrive files will be synced to each computer. By default, the entire set of Skydrive folders are synced in their entirety to every computer. (It’s now possible to limit syncing of some folders in case there’s a linked computer without much hard drive space.)

RECYCLE BIN AND VERSIONING

Skydrive is not a backup program. Remember, if you delete a file from the Skydrive folder on your local hard drive, it is also deleted from Skydrive online! But there are two special characteristics of the Skydrive folders that are worth noting, both added to Skydrive recently and accessible from the Skydrive web site.

First, if you delete a file from a Skydrive folder, it goes into an online Recycle Bin and can be recovered for thirty days.

Second, if you edit Office files in a Skydrive folder, you can retrieve earlier versions of those files. Right-click on a file and click on Version history to see a list of up to 25 previous versions of the file.

ONENOTE

There are a couple of specialized uses of Skydrive that go beyond simple file storage.

Microsoft OneNote was designed to work best when notebooks are stored in your Skydrive folders. Every change in a OneNote notebook is instantly synced online. If you have two computers running OneNote and synced to the same Skydrive account, you can add a word to a OneNote page and have that word appear on the same page on the second computer within a couple of seconds. You don’t have to “save” the notebook or close the program. It just works.

If you’re not using OneNote, you’re missing a treat, by the way. Here are some enthusiastic notes about OneNote. If you have notebooks that are not already stored online, they can be moved to Skydrive from the File / Settings menu with a couple of clicks.

WINDOWS 8 SETTINGS

It’s invisible but Windows 8 uses Skydrive behind the scenes to sync your settings from one Windows 8 computer to another if you sign in with your Microsoft account. Everything from your wallpaper to your lock screen photo, from the settings for Office programs to your memorized wireless passwords and Internet favorites – all travelling to each of your Windows 8 computers using Skydrive as the transport.

OTHER DEVICES

There are apps and programs on just about every platform to provide access to your Skydrive files. Surface RT tablets and smartphones with Windows Phone 8 include a Skydrive app for viewing all the files, although they are not synced automatically to the devices to avoid filling up the limited hard drive space. The Pictures apps on the tablets and phones automatically display Skydrive photos, and the cameras can be set to upload all photos to Skydrive whenever you have a wireless connection. It’s the same as Apple’s iCloud service – take a photo on the phone, display it on the tablet, if you’ve chosen your ecosystem carefully.

(Geeky detail: By default, Windows Phone 8 uploads medium resolution versions of photos to Skydrive. If you have space and bandwidth, go to the Settings menu for the Pictures folder to set the phone to upload photos in full resolution.)

There are Skydrive apps for iPhones and iPads and Android phones and tablets.

COMPARISON TO DROPBOX

So far, what I’ve described of Skydrive is very similar to Dropbox. At one time, Dropbox would sync faster and more reliably than Skydrive, but those advantages have largely been erased as Skydrive has matured. I haven’t seen any recent comparisons – it’s possible that Dropbox still has the edge for raw speed, especially with delta transfers of large files, but I haven’t had any complaints about Skydrive for months. Now that Skydrive has added a recycle bin and versioning and improved its sharing, the feature list is pretty similar.

There are three reasons, then, that you might choose Skydrive over Dropbox, even if you’re already a Dropbox user.

The first is the convenience of having your Microsoft account become your single point of entry for a multitude of services, instead of a separate Dropbox account and password for online files and different names and passwords for other services. It’s a small thing but our lives with passwords are nothing but a pile of small things.

The second is that Skydrive has become more attractive and easier to use than Dropbox. The controls are more natural and better organized on the Skydrive web site. For some reason the Dropbox interface has stayed frozen for the last couple of years and it’s looking dated.

The third is Skydrive’s integration with Office, which Dropbox cannot offer. We’ll take a look at the Office features in the next article.

The post Understanding Skydrive, Part 2: The Basics appeared first on Bruceb News.

Skydrive is Microsoft’s service for storing files online and accessing them from any device. It is quickly becoming a core service for every Windows user, as important for you to understand as any program on your computer.

Skydrive is simple and flexible, it’s free, and it’s secure and reliable. Microsoft will give you a generous amount of storage space for your files. You can share them easily with others, making it the best way to share files that are too large to email. Skydrive is becoming more visible now as Microsoft builds it into the Office 365 service and Office 2013 programs (Word/Excel/Powerpoint/OneNote). Skydrive apps are available for Windows, Windows RT, Windows Phone, Android, and iOS.

I’m going to write more about how to use Skydrive, but let’s start with a note about the two different ways that Microsoft is using the name.

Skydrive is the service that everyone can use to store personal files online. You log into Skydrive with your Microsoft account.

Skydrive Pro is the service that some Office 365 business subscribers will use to store their work files online. You log into Skydrive Pro with your Office 365 account.

(There’s an explanation here of the difference between Microsoft accounts and Office 365 accounts.)

The concept behind Skydrive and Skydrive Pro is very similar. Both services are designed for storing your individual files – just like the way you use your Documents folder. Neither one is designed to be a central document repository for a business, like the shared Company folder on the server in the closet.

Skydrive Pro is integrated with the other Office 365 business services, so one login and password is used for everything – Exchange mail, Skydrive Pro online files, Sharepoint, and Lync. The Office 365 portal provides integrated access to all the services, and they are tied to the business account – when an employee leaves, the files in Skydrive Pro stay with the business, just like files in an employee’s Documents folder.

[Geeky details: Behind the scenes, the services are built on quite different architecture. Skydrive Pro is actually part of Sharepoint; it’s basically a redesigned Sharepoint MySites document library, simplified and integrated into Office programs and the Office 365 portal. Skydrive Pro uses a different method than Skydrive to sync files to your local computer (and replaces Sharepoint Workspace in Office 2010).]

The only bad news is another bit of branding confusion. Microsoft is upgrading Office 365 this year; Skydrive Pro becomes available for Sharepoint subscribers after the upgrade. (If you only subscribe to Exchange email, you won’t see Skydrive Pro. You can upgrade to a plan that includes Sharepoint at any time.)

After the upgrade, the new Office 365 portal gets a ribbon that provides easy access to all the Office 365 services, including – sigh – “Skydrive.”

They mean “Skydrive Pro.” Maybe they wanted to save space.  Really, a little consistency wouldn’t be so bad, would it?

Office 2013 works with Skydrive and Skydrive Pro as easily as it does with a Documents folder on your computer. More easily, because it will choose one of the cloud locations as the default place to store documents. If you have a personal Microsoft account and a business Office 365 account, you can use both Skydrive and Skydrive Pro – you’ll see both locations when you click on Open or Save in an Office 2013 program.

I’ll describe the consumer Skydrive service in the next few articles. Business users should keep in mind that they have another option for employee files with Office 365, Office 2013, Sharepoint, and Skydrive Pro.

The post Understanding Skydrive, Part 1: Skydrive vs. Skydrive Pro appeared first on Bruceb News.

Microsoft has taken great strides towards simplifying its products and services. It has discarded products that were overlapping (Live Mesh discarded in favor of Skydrive, Messenger discarded in favor of Skype), it has streamlined its product names (rebranding the Windows Live services, for example), and introduced the consistent interface used on Windows computers, servers, tablets and phones.

Nothing is ever simple with Microsoft. There are still areas where you can be hopelessly confused. Here’s something you need to understand if you want to take advantage of some of Microsoft’s best new services.

Microsoft has two different databases that have credentials for you – your email address and a password. They’re separate. They’re used for different things. It’s possible that someday Microsoft may come up with a way to combine them but right now it’s up to you to keep them straight. And in typical Microsoft fashion, they’re not used consistently.

Everyone can and should have a Microsoft account. It is an email address and a password; it might be your primary email address, or it might be a Hotmail or Outlook.com address. (You can use the Hotmail or Outlook.com address for email, if you choose, but you don’t have to – you might only use it to log into other services.) The Microsoft account can be used to log into a Windows 8 computer and it gives you access to online file storage with Skydrive, as well as a host of other services.

Separately – separately! – subscribers to Office 365 business plans have an Office 365 account. It is an email address and a password; it might be  your primary email address, or it might be (yourname)@(business).onmicrosoft.com. The Office 365 account is used to log into your mailbox (either in Outlook or in webmail) and other Office 365 services. It may also be the account that’s associated with your business subscription to Microsoft Office.

See how it works?

My Microsoft account is bruceb@bruceb.com, with a complex password. That’s the one I type to log into my Windows 8 computer.

My Office 365 account is bruceb@bruceb.com, with a different complex password. That’s the one I type to log into my mailbox.

For reasons that will become obvious, Microsoft sometimes distinguishes between a Microsoft account and an organizational account, as in this window that comes up when Office 2013 is first installed:

The key is remembering that the two accounts are separate. They can be the same email address; you can set the password to be the same, if you like; but they are separate accounts and Microsoft’s servers look in different databases to authenticate you for various services.

Here’s a quick overview.

Email address	- Your primary address or - Hotmail or - Outlook.com	- Your primary address or - onmicrosoft.com
Used for	- Log into Windows 8 - Log into Windows Phone 8 - Log into Skype / Xbox	- Log into Office 365 hosted Exchange mailbox - Log into Office 365 Sharepoint / Lync
Office subscription	Office 365 Home Premium	Office 365 ProPlus
Online files	Skydrive	Skydrive Pro

Perfectly clear! What could go wrong?

There’s one truly unfortunate crossover: as a consumer, you purchase a subscription to Office 365 Home Premium with a Microsoft account. For $99, you can install Microsoft Office on up to five devices, a great deal with only one side effect: the term “Office 365” becomes hopelessly muddled for you, because virtually nothing else about Office 365 applies to those consumer accounts.

That’s how you get instructions like this:

“How do I link my Microsoft Office 365 account with my Skype account?

“1. Sign into Office 365 with your Microsoft account.”

Yeah, I guess that’s technically accurate for some consumers, but it’s doomed to failure for all the business people who sign into Office 365 with their Office 365 accounts and can’t link the accounts to Skype. It’s confusing and frustrating.

If you have both a Microsoft account and an Office 365 account, they will sometimes cause conflicts because Microsoft is not handling them well behind the scenes. Open up your Office 365 business webmail, then try to go check your personal Outlook.com webmail. You’ll get an error message:

It’s not nice. People are forced to use InPrivate mode to check one or the other, so the accounts don’t fight with each other.

You can see IT pros complaining about the confusing setup here, among other places.

Very little is simple in 2013. Microsoft is moving faster than I would have predicted to clean things up from an even more complex muddle only a few years ago, so this is not awful, just something to know. And don’t make the mistake of thinking it’s better in Apple’s or Google’s ecosystems – they have their own issues.

If you can follow that, then you’ll be able to keep up when I try to distinguish Skydrive and Skydrive Pro in the next article!

The post The Difference Between A Microsoft Account And An Office 365 Account appeared first on Bruceb News.

Missing the Start button on your new Windows 8 computer? It’s easy to get it back with Start8 from Stardock Software.

Microsoft made a bold (and perhaps misguided) decision to insist that everyone use the new Windows 8 Start screen to start programs. Sure, there’s a rocky transition, but the idea is that if everyone becomes familiar with the Start screen, then two things happen: (1) the Start screen becomes pretty lovable, and (2) people will be more likely to use Windows 8 tablets and phones, since they share the identical interface.

In my experience with real users, that’s exactly what happens. With a few simple tweaks (especially this one), it’s easy to spend 99% of the work day in the Windows 8 desktop and use the Start screen as – well, as a full-screen Start menu, which isn’t such a difficult concept after all.

It’s no surprise, though, that a very vocal group of people are howling because their beloved Windows 7-style Start menu has been taken away. There are actually two different things in their minds.

One is the admittedly odd decision to leave the Start button itself off the Windows 8 desktop. That was just weird. If you jam your cursor into the lower left corner, you can click to the Start screen, but why take away the psychological comfort of a button where a button ought to be? It takes a while to make the mental adjustment to use the Windows key on the keyboard instead. Lots of grumbling about that.

According to Mary Jo Foley, Microsoft execs got sick of the grumbling and called the Windows 8 designers and laid down the law: Put The Damn Button Back. Microsoft is working on an update to Windows 8 that will be released late this year. It’s now expected that Windows 8.1 will have a button in the lower left that will send you to the Start screen. It’s not a big change but it may calm things down.

The other complaint comes from people who believe a Windows 7-style Start menu is more natural than the tiles on the full-screen Start screen. Windows 7 has replaced Windows XP as our comfortable old friend, and many people just aren’t interested in retraining themselves or their employees to use the Windows 8 Start screen.

Microsoft isn’t going to help. The Start screen is here to stay. I’d urge you to use it, learn it, love it.

But if you want a Start menu, you can have a Start menu.

For five bucks, you can install Start8, a small but inspired bit of software from Stardock, and have a Start menu with virtually all of the functionality of the Windows 7 Start menu. This is a Windows 8 desktop with Start8.

Looks familiar, doesn’t it? That’s the point.

Stardock has built in all the functions from Windows 7. The search bar lets you search apps, settings, and files. The Restart button is right where it should be. You can get to Control Panel, the Printers folder, lists of recent documents, and more.

If you’re adventurous, the menu can be customized – you can display a reduced-size version of the Windows 8 Start screen without leaving the desktop, for example. The hotspots in the corners of the screen can be disabled to avoid accidental clicks on the Charm bar as you mouse around.

There’s an additional option which is very important to some people: Start8 allows you to boot directly to the desktop when Windows 8 starts, bypassing the Start screen completely. That’s another natural option that should have been in Windows 8 all along. Microsoft is reportedly going to add that option in the Windows 8.1 update later this year, but you can have it now with Start8 for $4.99.

Stardock has another program that might appeal to anyone working on a Windows 8 desktop computer with a large monitor. ModernMix runs full-screen Windows 8 apps in windows on the desktop. Apps like News, Weather, Business, and Travel look great on a laptop or tablet but they’re unwieldy when they’re blown up to fill a 24” monitor. ModernMix puts each one in a window, making it easier for mouse users to switch from one to the other. Apps can be pinned to the taskbar, plus they get a title bar and an X button in the upper right to close them.

Neither of these programs is necessary, but if a Start menu will help you find peace with a Windows 8 computer, then don’t hesitate. Windows 8 has much to recommend it, so let’s not have cosmetic issues keep you from adopting it.

The post Windows 8 Tip: Bring Back The Start Menu With Start8 appeared first on Bruceb News.

Office 365 is in the middle of a major upgrade. Many small business subscribers have already been upgraded and Microsoft intends to have all subscribers upgraded in the next few months. Hosted Exchange mailboxes are being upgraded to new servers running Exchange 2013; it doesn’t change the day-to-day experience of using Outlook but there are some improvements in webmail that are worth knowing about.

Outlook Web App (OWA), the webmail component of Office 365’s hosted Exchange mailboxes, got a lot of attention from the Exchange 2013 designers. It resembles Outlook 2013 visually, with a simplified interface, lots of white space, and flat controls. For the first time, the experience is almost identical in all of the major browsers – Internet Explorer, Chrome, Firefox, and Safari. It’s customizable and efficient; OWA doesn’t have all the options available from the Outlook ribbon but it has the basic and important features.

The interface is designed to scale to different size screens, so it is usable whether you view it on a computer, tablet, or phone.

Outlook Web App now supports many things that were previously only available in the desktop Outlook program. The big one for many offices is that OWA now displays shared calendars, which have not been visible until now without a full copy of Outlook. OWA fully supports drag-and-drop mail sorting and right-click menus.

Out Of Office messages  Click on the gear in the upper right corner and set up Out Of Office messages (“Set automatic replies”). That can also be done from Outlook but OWA is simple and reliable, and the message can be adjusted on the fly from any computer.

Rules  OWA has also become the most reliable way to set up rules for handling mail, which in the past involved confusing decisions about local rules and server rules. When you create rules in OWA, they are stored on the server and fire reliably regardless of whether Outlook is running.

From the gear in the upper right corner, click on Options / Organize Email. Setting up a rule involves the same choices that have been in Outlook for years.

It’s easy to set up a rule that forwards all incoming messages to another address. The forwarding address can be chosen from anyone in the business address book or Contacts folders – or an address can just be typed into the window.

[NOTE: If you set up mail forwarding with a rule, remember that the rule should actually be redirecting mail, not forwarding it. Redirected mail appears unchanged in the destination mailbox, as if it came from the original sender. Forwarded mail has FW: in the subject line and appears to have been sent from the forwarding mailbox. Here’s some background about that.]

Mail forwarding  It turns out, though, that it’s even easier than that to forward mail from your Office 365 account after it has been upgraded.

Click on the gear in the upper right corner and click on Options / Account / Connected Accounts. You’ll find Forwarding by scrolling down a bit. Fill in an address. Done! All messages are now being forwarded. (They’re actually being redirected. They show up unchanged, just as they were sent by the original sender.)

Many small business Office 365 subscriptions have already been upgraded. The rest will be upgraded in the next few months. After the upgrade, take advantage of the improved webmail – it might be a better place than Outlook to do some mail chores. (And if you’re not an Office 365 subscriber, drop me a note and let’s talk about it!)

The post Office 365 Tip: Using The Improved Outlook Web App appeared first on Bruceb News.