This Ain't Yo Mama's Microsoft

Disclosure: I am a Microsoft Office Champion. These are my stories. I was having a convo a few weeks back and it occurred to me that I needed to do a "back to basics" post. Just because I wrote about something before doesn't mean you read it (and don't think I'm not holding you accountable for that).

I get asked about what tools I use regularly. And when I say Office, sometimes folks look at me funny. And so, I have basically taken to saying "This Ain't Yo Mama's Microsoft". I might trademark that (I probably can't but, this is how seriously I take the statement).

Y'all, there's so much that you can do with Microsoft Office! The beauty of Office 365 is that it doesn't really matter what hardware you use, you can always use 365. I'm not going to write a super long post (#iLie). I just want to give you a glimpse of why I say what I say.

What Is Office 365?

Remember when you used to have to dish out lots of moola for a copy of Office? No? Then you're probably too young to be reading this post!

Enniweighs, software was not necessarily cheap. And you also had to pay for upgrades. Now with an Office 365 subscription, you're all covered. For $99 you can get a year's subscription for the home edition. Any updates that happen to any of the programs in the Office family come to you free of charge. And you're not limited to one license. You can load that bad boy on up to 5 devices.

"Sili, I don't have a Windows machine", you say. Ain't nobody tell you you had to have a Windows machine! Y'all stay making me give you the side eye!!! 

Though I have no idea how you operate without the awesome that is the Surface Pro but, I digress.

You can install Office 365 on your PC or Mac, on tablets (including iPad and Android) and smartphones. Yasss, baybee you read that right. Every.damn.where.

What is OneDrive?

If OneDrive was a man, I'd ask it to marry me. Hell, if OneDrive was a woman, I'd ask it to marry me too (thank you Supreme Court!). OneDrive is the cloud of goodness. It is the home base of all of the documents, files, images and videos for me. That way, when I need to access a file to send from my phone, it's in there. Need to download that sweet meme I made the other day? No problem, it's in there! 

Oh and did I mention you get 1TB of STORAGE. Sit with that for a minute. Basically OneDrive is the Prego of cloud storage systems. Note: if you don't remember the "it's in there" Prego commercial, you might be too young to be reading this post.

Where was I? Oh yes, all this leads me to...

What is OneNote?

I get sooo excited when people say they don't know what this is. And they, in turn, get scared. Because my excitement is...not lacking loudness.

I keep my LAIF in OneNote! It is the holder of my secrets, my dreams, my to do lists (and there are many) and generally my plans to take over the world. You can keep notebooks and then tabs within each notebook and pages within each tab. It's fabulous, I tell you! Of course, it's also on my phone. And my new favorite discovery (I knew about it but the Mami brain concealed it for me so that I could be newly excited for it): I can make recordings and they will save to my pages. This helps when I need to start dictating books for my personal assistant to type up (sadly, an assistant does NOT come with OneNote).

I can put my shopping list in here, I can drop in PDF's and WRITE ON THEM if I want to (see previous statement regarding Surface). Oh and I can take a picture from the Office Lens app of, let's say, my receipts, have them dropped in to OneNote and it'll be searchable later when I'm going crazy calmly collecting all my tax documents for the accountant. I can share my notebooks with awesome people like Kristin and we can collaborate in a seamless space that always tells us who wrote what.

Okay, that's all I'm going to give you for now. I will have more to discuss later! I lied, one more thing: you can try the OneNote app for free. Don't say I never gave you nothin'!

Tell me, can any of these tools be useful to stepping up your awesome?

Disclosure: I am a Microsoft Office Champion. All thoughts, excitement, awesome memes and Office Swag are purely my own.