·       Office 365 is a subscription-based service that consists of a number of products and services.

·       All of the Office 365’s services can be managed and configured through an online portal.

·       The service allows the use of Microsoft Office apps across various devices such as a desktop, laptop and mobile phone which means you can access everything wherever you are.

·       There are various subscription plans that can be purchased for a home user or enterprise customer depending upon the products required.

·       Office 365 enables you to install the latest version of Office on your PC regularly receiving updates with new features to Office.

·       The flexibility of Office 365 means that you can create a document on your desktop, continue on your tablet and then complete the document on your phone.

·       You can do this because the documents are saved in the cloud through OneDrive which can be accessed on your various devices.

·       When a customer purchases software from a company that resides in external data centres, that data is referred to as living ‘in the cloud’.

·       An example of this would be the Internet. Lots of applications are accessed via the Internet that people use every day however the software that is used is stored on data centres elsewhere, not on the computer itself.

·       For example, everyday users’ type in internet addresses into web browsers and a web site simply appears – the user doesn’t know where this data is being stored, hence ‘in the cloud’.

·       Business applications are now being hosted ‘in the cloud’.  Historically companies would have their own data centres with servers for storing data ensuring it is secure and scalable for the future. However, the cost of managing such data centres can be vast. This can be referred to as ‘on-premise’ computing.

·       With a hosted solution for storing data, companies pay someone else to host their data for them.

·       Office 365 includes web versions of the Office applications such as Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Outlook along with other productivity apps.

·       Previously, Office applications would have been opened by the Start button and All Programs and the application would open and run on the computer. When you then save the document you are prompted for a location to save the document in, e.g. a shared network drive and the file is physically stored in that location.

·       A Web App however, runs on a computer in a data centre and you access it over the Internet. When working on a document in a Web App it is saved in the cloud within OneDrive or a SharePoint team site. You can alternatively still select to save documents on your local computer instead.

·       So in summary, Microsoft Word, for example, runs on your local computer whereas Word Web App runs in the cloud and is accessed by using a web browser.

·       The URL for logging into the cloud is: www.portal.office.com. The page will then ask you to login, or return you to your home screen.

1.     From the Office 365 home screen click the App Launcher in the top left corner or the navigation bar.

2.     Select the app that you require. Notice that you can view apps by Home, New and All.

3.     Notice that the app opens in a new browser tab.

For apps that you use frequently you can pin them to the Home section within the app launcher.

1.     From the Office 365 home screen click the App Launcher in the top left corner

2.     Right-click the required app and select Pin to home

3.     You can also unpin by right-clicking an app and selecting Unpin from home

4.     You can pin apps to the top navigation bar.

5.     Right-click the required app, point to More and select Pin to nav bar

6.     The app is pinned to the horizontal navigation bar

7.     To unpin, right click the app in the navigation bar, point to More and select Unpin from nav bar.

1.     The settings icon can be found in the top right corner of the navigation bar

2.     Here you can customise various settings such as modifying the Theme, specifying the start page when you log into Office 365, change notification settings, your password or modify app settings. You can also access the Site Settings for OneDrive.