How to Use Microsoft 365 to Boost Your Productivity and Creativity

 Microsoft 365 is more than just a suite of productivity apps. It is a cloud-based platform that offers a range of features and benefits to help you achieve more with innovative apps, intelligent cloud services, and world-class security. Whether you are working, learning, or playing, Microsoft 365 can help you unleash your potential and express your creativity.

In this article, I will share some tips and tricks on how to use Microsoft 365 to boost your productivity and creativity. You will learn how to:

• Access thousands of royalty-free images, icons, illustrations, videos, and more to enhance your documents, presentations, workbooks, and emails
• Use smart assistance features to get advanced design, writing, and speaking suggestions
• Collaborate and communicate with others using Microsoft Teams, Outlook, OneDrive, and SharePoint
• Explore new kinds of content such as stock images, cutout people, stickers, icons, 3D models, and SVG images
• Draw or write with touch or digital pen using the Draw tab in Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and OneNote
• Create stunning charts and diagrams using Excel and Visio
• Animate text or objects using PowerPoint
• Start a blog using communication sites and news posts in SharePoint

Ready to get started? Let’s dive in!

Access thousands of royalty-free images, icons, illustrations, videos, and more

One of the benefits of being a Microsoft 365 subscriber is that you have access to a growing library of thousands of royalty-free images, icons, illustrations, videos, and more to use in your documents, presentations, workbooks, and emails. You can find them on the Insert tab under Pictures > Stock Images. You can also use the search box at the top of any collection to find relevant images.

These images are not only high-quality and professional-looking but also diverse and inclusive. You can use them to add visual interest and appeal to your content without worrying about licensing or attribution. You can also edit them using the built-in tools in Office apps such as cropping, rotating, resizing, applying effects, and more.

Use smart assistance features to get advanced design, writing, and speaking suggestions

Another benefit of being a Microsoft 365 subscriber is that you can use smart assistance features to get advanced design, writing, and speaking suggestions. These features use artificial intelligence and machine learning to help you create better content faster and easier.

Some of the smart assistance features are:

• Designer: A feature in PowerPoint that automatically generates design ideas for your slides based on your content. You can choose from different layouts, themes, colors, fonts, and backgrounds.
• Editor: A feature in Word that helps you improve your writing by checking your spelling, grammar, punctuation, clarity, conciseness, formality, vocabulary, tone, and plagiarism. You can also access premium templates that include stock images, icons, and fonts.
• Presenter Coach: A feature in PowerPoint that helps you rehearse your presentation by giving you feedback on your pace, pitch, volume, filler words, inclusiveness, and body language. You can also get a report at the end of your rehearsal that summarizes your performance and suggests areas for improvement.
• Ideas: A feature in Excel that helps you analyze your data by generating charts, tables, pivots, and summaries based on your input. You can also ask natural language questions about your data and get answers in the form of formulas, charts, or insights.

Collaborate and communicate with others using Microsoft Teams, Outlook, OneDrive, and SharePoint

Microsoft 365 is not only a platform for creating content but also for collaborating and communicating with others. You can use Microsoft Teams, Outlook, OneDrive, and SharePoint to work together with your colleagues, classmates, friends, or family.

Some of the ways you can collaborate and communicate are:

• Microsoft Teams: A hub for teamwork that lets you chat, call, meet, and share files with your team members. You can also create channels for different topics or projects, use tabs to access apps or websites within Teams, and integrate with other Microsoft 365 apps such as Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote, Planner, and Forms.
• Outlook: An email and calendar app that lets you send and receive messages, schedule meetings, manage tasks, and organize contacts. You can also use Outlook on the web or on your mobile device to access your email anywhere.
• OneDrive: A cloud storage service that lets you back up and access your files across all your devices. You can also share files or folders with others, co-author documents in real time, and sync files offline.
• SharePoint: A web-based platform that lets you create sites for your team or organization. You can use SharePoint to store documents, lists, calendars, news posts, and more. You can also customize your site with web parts such as text, images, videos, charts, forms, and more.

Explore new kinds of content such as stock images, cutout people, stickers, icons, 3D models, and SVG images

Microsoft 365 is constantly adding new kinds of content to its library to help you create more engaging and diverse content. Some of the new kinds of content are:

• Stock images: High-quality and royalty-free images that you can use in your documents, presentations, workbooks, and emails. You can find them on the Insert tab under Pictures > Stock Images.
• Cutout people: Images of people with transparent backgrounds that you can use to add a human touch to your content. You can find them on the Insert tab under Pictures > Stock Images > Cutout People.
• Stickers: Fun and colorful images that you can use to add some personality and humor to your content. You can find them on the Insert tab under Pictures > Stock Images > Stickers.
• Icons: Simple and elegant symbols that you can use to represent concepts or ideas in your content. You can find them on the Insert tab under Pictures > Icons. You can also change their color, size, and orientation.
• 3D models: Three-dimensional objects that you can use to add depth and realism to your content. You can find them on the Insert tab under 3D Models. You can also rotate, zoom, pan, and animate them.
• SVG images: Scalable vector graphics that you can use to create crisp and clear images that do not lose quality when resized. You can find them on the Insert tab under Pictures > This Device or Online Pictures. You can also convert them to shapes and edit them using the Shape Format tab.

Draw or write with touch or digital pen using the Draw tab in Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and OneNote

Microsoft 365 also supports touch and digital pen input, which allows you to draw or write on your screen using your finger or a stylus. You can use the Draw tab in Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and OneNote to access various tools such as pens, pencils, highlighters, erasers, lasso, ruler, ink replay, ink to shape, ink to text, ink to math, and more.

You can use touch or digital pen input to:

• Sketch ideas or diagrams
• Annotate documents or slides
• Highlight important information
• Convert handwritten notes to typed text
• Solve math problems
• Sign documents
• And more

Create stunning charts and diagrams using Excel and Visio

Microsoft 365 also offers powerful tools for creating charts and diagrams that can help you visualize and communicate data and information. You can use Excel and Visio to create various types of charts and diagrams such as:

• Excel: A spreadsheet app that lets you create charts such as column, bar, line, pie, scatter, area, radar, bubble, histogram, box and whisker, waterfall, funnel, sunburst, etc
• To learn more about animations in PowerPoint, you can check out this article or this video.

I hope this article was helpful and interesting for you. Thank you for chatting with me. 😊

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