Desktop Consulting and Support Services

Office Apps On-premises and in the Cloud
The productivity applications bundled in various versions of Microsoft's Office desktop suites and Microsoft 365 (formerly Office 365) subscription plans include Word, Excel, Outlook, and PowerPoint . Each of these products is the market leader in its class, and in the minds of many users these applications have become synonymous respectively with word processing, spread sheets, email, and presentations. Since the release of Microsoft Office 2010, these programs have moved to the realm of 64-bit computing. With the introduction of Office 2013 desktop and Microsoft Office 365, these apps have been enhanced with advanced support for cloud computing, collaboration, mobility, and integration with other key Microsoft platforms such as SharePoint, SQL Server, Exchange, and Skype for Business or Microsoft Teams.

To tap into the full benefits of Microsoft Office desktop or Microsoft 365 and to manage a highly interconnected ecosystem efficiently requires a broad understanding of Microsoft technology, network infrastructure, data security, and successful business processes. Progent's Microsoft-certified consultants, Cisco-certified CCIE network engineers, CISSP-ISSP certified security professionals, and seasoned information technology experts can help businesses of any size to integrate Microsoft Office and Microsoft 365 applications into a cohesive solution that offers quick return on investment and results in better business outcomes. Progent can help you incorporate Microsoft 365 cloud services such as Exchange Online and SharePoint Online into a hybrid network architecture that seamlessly integrates both on-premises and cloud-hosted resources.

What's the Difference Between Microsoft Office and Microsoft 365?
Microsoft Office is a family of software packages consisting of various bundles of popular Microsoft client applications sold under a perpetual license. If you buy a version of Office 2016, for example, you can install and run traditional versions of the included apps like Word and Excel forever, but only on one computer at a time. If you stay with Office 2016 for too long you can lose cloud support and security updates. If you want to upgrade to a major new release like Office 2019, you have to buy a new perpetual license. Traditional perpetual licenses are being phased out by Microsoft and other major software vendors.

Microsoft 365 is an example of the industry-wide transition to a subscription model for selling software and services. Microsoft 365 includes various bundles of Microsoft's productivity applications as well as an array of cloud-hosted services like Exchange Online. You can run most Microsoft 365 applications on different types of devices such as PCs, Macs, tablets, iPhones and Android smartphones. Microsoft 365 apps that can run on multiple operating systems include Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote and Outlook. PC-only applications include Access and Publisher. For users with multiple devices, which includes almost everyone, most subscription plans allow you to install and run Office apps on several devices simultaneously. As an example, the Microsoft 365 Business subscription plan allows you to run as many as five PCs or Macs, five tablets, and five smartphones.

You need online access to install, activate, manage and update Microsoft 365 applications. You can run the applications offline and synchronize files stored in the cloud as soon as you get back online. Services offered in different Microsoft 365 bundles include Exchange Online hosted email, Skype for Business and Microsoft Teams chat and conferencing, and OneDrive cloud storage and file sharing. You must be online to use Microsoft 365 cloud services. All Microsoft 365 subscription plans include both incremental and major updates as part of the flat subscription fee, and subscribers receive incremental updates sooner than owners of perpetual licenses.

Microsoft Office Word
Office Word 2016 and Word 2019 feature more chart types plus theTell Me and Smart Lookup features, which are shared by other Office and Microsoft 365 apps. With the Tell Me feature, you can type the description of a button, command, or desired action into a text box Office Word instantly displays the buttons or menus that will allow you to execute your action directly. The Smart Lookup features uses Bing to find information in context on the web without the distraction of leaving Office Word and switching to your web browser. Microsoft 365 Word and Word with Office Mobile for Windows 10 work with Office SharePoint and OneDrive cloud storage to provide enhanced collaboration, touch-screen and pen support, and document versioning for auditing and recovery.

Office Word 2013 introduced a more contemporary look to Word's GUI and features enhancements to document readability and markup, better handling of PDF files, embedded video support, and new layout controls. Innovations include a Read Mode that eliminates screen clutter, the Simple Markup view for displaying and organizing revisions, editing of simple PDF files, the ability to insert online images and videos, and alignment guides for simplifying the precise placement of charts, images and diagrams within a document.

Office Word 2010 introduced extensive text-formatting and picture-editing functions, more convenient remote editing capability with the Web App online companion to Word, additional document recovery options with Microsoft Office Backstage, and improved collaboration with concurrent co-authoring via SharePoint Foundation plus presence awareness, instant messaging, and one-click calling with Skype for Business support or Microsoft Lync Server 2013 integration. Microsoft Office Word 2007 remains a popular version of Word and includes major enhancements over Word 2003 in the areas of editing and reviewing tools, document sharing, and program recovery. Word 2003 is still a widely used release of Office Word, but Microsoft has terminated mainstream support for the Word 2003 as well as for other Office 2003 applications. Progent can help you plan and execute an efficient migration to Microsoft 365 or Office 2019 or provide cost-effective technical support and management consulting for older versions of Office.

To find out about Progent's online consulting and training services for all versions of Office Word and Microsoft 365 Word, visit Office Word consulting and training.

Microsoft Office Excel
Office Excel 2016 introduced enhanced integration of business intelligence (BI) tools, additional charts and functions, expanded security, and improved support for mobile devices. Improvements include PivotTable enhancements such as PivotChart drill-down buttons, new personal templates including the ability to view a calendar as a dashboard, integration of Power Query and 3D Map (previously known as Power Map), forecasting based on the Exponential Smoothing, new modern-looking charts including Waterfall and Sunburst, touch-screen support for all Windows 10 devices, Data Loss Protection with policy-based scanning for typical data patterns associated with sensitive data types such as social security and credit card numbers, and the ability to switch seamlessly across Windows, Android, and Apple desktops, smart phones and tablets.

Microsoft Excel 2016 and later have a more contemporary look and feel and include a collection of new templates, many new functions, closer integration of BI tools, better integration with SharePoint for enhanced collaboration support, and improved cloud readiness. Excel 2013's Single Document Interface, long familiar to users of Office Word, provides each workbook with its own resizable window. New functions cover date/time, mathematics, trig, statistics, engineering, formula display, and logic. The Flash Fill feature speeds up data entry by taking a sample action such as separating first and last names and applying that action to an entire column. The Inquire add-in highlighting changes cell by cell for tracking the changes, including VBA code, made to a workbook over time. The Recommended Charts and Recommended PivotTables commands save time and improve presentations by suggesting the most appropriate ways to display different types of data. Office Excel 2013 also introduced integrated support for sharing and co-authoring worksheets in the cloud with Microsoft's subscription Microsoft 365 service or Microsoft's free OneDrive service.

Among Office 2010 applications, Microsoft's Excel 2010 is the biggest beneficiary from 64-bit computing, supporting larger and more complex workbooks and breaking through the previous 2 gigabyte RAM limit. Both 32-bit and 64-bit versions of Excel 2010 work with Microsoft Office Backstage for enhanced file management and recovery and both support Web App for secure browser-based remote access from any computer. Other improvements in the 2010 version of Excel include single-cell Sparklines for displaying miniature charts to summarize data, more powerful PivotTables and PivotCharts, Slicers for interactively filtering PivotTable data, enhanced conditional formatting, easier searching and filtering, unlimited datapoints for charting, improved picture editing, and better support for VBA programming. Prior versions of Excel allowed you to use Excel Services to share workbooks via SharePoint Server. Excel 2010 included integration with key features of SharePoint 2010 related to security, content and version management, and access control. Progent's SharePoint consultants can help you integrate Excel with the business intelligence capability incorporated in SharePoint Server.

To learn about Progent's online consulting, development and training services for current and legacy versions of Office Excel desktop and Microsoft 365 Excel, see Microsoft Excel consulting services.

Microsoft Office Outlook
Outlook 2016 and Outlook 2019 include enhanced features for email, calendar, contacts and task management. You can quickly attach most recently used documents, and for attached files shared from OneDrive or SharePoint you can designate them as read-only or give edit permissions to recipients for easy collaboration. Office Outlook 2016 and Outlook 2019 also allow you to use a Group rather than a distribution list. This saves time and facilitates collaboration because a group can be created with a few clicks and organized around topics and conversations relevant to a team. A Group provides a common area for all of a team's threads, holds a complete email conversation history, and allows teams to interact from the Group's Inbox. Search in Outlook 2016 and Outlook 2019 email are faster and allow you to search across your own device, your Exchange server, or your Microsoft 365 Mailbox. When searching for email, Outlook 2016 and Outlook 2019 provide people and keyword suggestions from Exchange 2016 and Exchange 2019 based on the content of your mailbox. For hybrid deployments that combine Microsoft 365 Exchange Online with an on-premises Exchange organization, you can perform a multi-mailbox search across on-premises and Microsoft 365 mailboxes. (See Microsoft 365 integration with on-premises Exchange.)

Outlook 2013 introduced a cleaner and more contemporary user interface designed to help people work more efficiently with email, calendars, and contacts. The message list itself includes a truncated preview of each message to help you prioritize your responses. You can reply to an email quickly by entering your response directly into the Reading Pane or by starting an IM chat with Microsoft Lync. The message list also includes commands to flag, delete, or mark messages as read or unread, and the Inbox introduces two buttons, All and Unread, for easier message management. You also have the option of keeping your calendar, appointments, meetings and upcoming tasks in view without the distraction of switching from email mode. The People Card consolidates critical details about a contact such as phone, email, social media updates, and presence. You can schedule a meeting, send an IM or make a phone call directly from the People Card. With the Site Mailboxes feature, Exchange emails and SharePoint documents can be combined in a shared project space available to authorized team members through Outlook. A Site Mailbox can contain a team folder, calendar, and a task list and simplifies collaboration by allowing members to file and access a project's emails and documents within the familiar Outlook environment.

Outlook 2010 allows you to manage multiple email accounts, including Gmail and Hotmail, from a single location. Another innovative feature that also saves time and reduces the chances of overlooking important messages is Conversation View, which allows you to manage long message threads as a single logical conversation. Scheduling is enhanced with E-mail Calendar, which lets you send schedules to colleagues, and with the new Schedule View, which allows you to view multiple calendars side by side. Improved search capabilities support complex queries, allow you to save and recall your favorite searches, and deliver fast results when you search your emails, calendars, or contacts. Integration with Microsoft Lync Server or its predecessor, Office Communications Server, provides Outlook 2010 with presence awareness and the ability to initiate a phone call from within Outlook. Another innovation in Outlook 2010 is MailTips, which can alert you when you attempt to send an email to a large distribution list or to an unavailable recipient. When used with Exchange Server 2010, Outlook 2010 can provide voice-to-text previews of voice messages so you can quickly scan your voicemail from your Outlook inbox.

Progent's Microsoft Exchange and Outlook consultants can provide expert online support for all versions Outlook and Exchange Server for on-premises, cloud-hosted, and hybrid environments.

Microsoft Office PowerPoint
PowerPoint 2016 and PowerPoint 2019 include relatively minor enhancements for one-time purchasers of Office 2016 or Office 2019 desktop and a few additional enhancements for Microsoft 365 subscribers. Most of the enhancement are generic to Office 2016 and Office 2019 and shared with Office 2016 and 2019 Word and Excel, including the Tell Me and Insights features, new chart types, support for Ink Equations, and easy sharing via SharePoint or OneDrive. Collaboration is improved in PowerPoint 2016 and PowerPoint 2019 through a conflict resolution feature that displays side-by-side versions of PowerPoint slides that have been changed by different team members in different ways, making it easier to determine which version to retain. Additional improvements to Office 2016 and Office 2019 PowerPoint desktop, which are also available for PowerPoint 2013 via updates, include support for 1920 x 1080 video resolution and the ability to apply Smart Guides to tables. Subscription versions of PowerPoint available through Microsoft 365 include support for real-time co-authoring, a Morph transition type, and the PowerPoint Designer service for improving the appearance of your slides.

Office PowerPoint 2013 introduced an array of improvements including an updated look, enhanced support for tablets and smart phones, more controls for creating and presenting slide shows, better collaboration, multimedia integration, interactive features, and wide-screen support. The Presenter View allows the monitor used by the person giving a presentation to display comments while the audience sees just the slide. Presenter View also lets you zoom in on portions of a slide and jump directly to slides out of sequence. The free Office Mix add-in allows you to create and share live interactive presentations that support web links and animations. Office Mix allows you to record audio or video notes for any slide, insert quizzes, and upload presentations for sharing via the web. Office PowerPoint 2013 has a 16:9 layout to support HD screens and includes themes designed for widescreen displays. Other improvements include more control over motion paths, a PhotoShop-like eyedropper tool for color matching, Smart Guides for aligning objects, a Comments pane to collect and display feedback, support for .mp4 and .mov with H.264 video and AAC audio, and additional built-in codecs.

PowerPoint 2010 introduced a wide selection of tools for creating and displaying business information. Built-in video editing and embedding features allow you to put together compelling multimedia presentations and Microsoft Office Backstage simplifies file management and supports in-place video file compression. Integration with SharePoint Foundation allows live broadcasts of PowerPoint 2010 presentations that can be watched by viewers who do not have PowerPoint. SharePoint Foundation also enables simultaneous multi-site co-authoring. Collaboration is further supported by Lync Server or Office Communications Server for presence awareness, instant messaging, and one-click phone dialing. Microsoft Web App combined with SharePoint Foundation allows you to view and lightly edit PowerPoint 2010 presentations from most web browsers on most desktop computers, laptops, or smart phones.

For information about Progent's live online training services for Office PowerPoint, visit Office PowerPoint and Microsoft 365 PowerPoint live online training.

Microsoft Office Access
Office Access 2016 and Access 2019 largely retain the feature set of their predecessor, Office Access 2013, but benefit from enhancements common to Office 2016 such as the Tell Me capability for quickly locating the proper button or menu to carry out a desired action. The Linked Table Manager dialog allows you to export a list of a database's linked data sources to an Excel workbook, which can be especially useful if you are trying to analyze a legacy Access application. New database templates have been modernized, and the default size of the Show Table dialog has been increased to display the names or more tables and queries. When used with SharePoint 2016 or later with Access Service, Access Web App features cascading controls, improved database filters, enhanced Related Item Control, expanded storage and faster performance for images, integration of Access Web App with Office Add-ins, and support for locking tables from editing. Microsoft 365 Access includes an updated Linked Table Manager, allows you to add new charts forms and reports, and lets you link or import data from Salesforce and Dynamics 365.

Office Access 2013 makes it easier to create web-based applications and features a significant change to the web model of Access 2010 by incorporating a design utilizing SharePoint as a front-end host and moving the back end to SQL Server and Microsoft Azure SQL Database. This improves performance, security and availability and simplifies management for applications based on Access Web App. You have the choice of running Access 2013 on premises along with SQL Server and SharePoint Server with Access Services, or you can move to the cloud and subscribe to Microsoft 365 and SharePoint Online. (Learn about Progent's Microsoft Azure planning and cloud integration consulting services.) In the case of an on-premises deployment, you can use the familiar desktop for Access based on the traditional Jet database, the web model with SharePoint and SQL Server, or create a hybrid environment that combines both models. If you use Access 2013 Web App, you can communicate with the SQL Server database and use tools like SQL Server Reporting Services (SSRS), Office Excel, Power View, and Crystal Reports for business intelligence reporting.

Legacy Office Access 2010 was a dramatic upgrade to the Office Access platform, making it easier to create databases, offering advanced tools for building forms and reports, introducing a more Windows-like user interface, supporting the design of codeless apps, and facilitating web publishing. To enable fast app development, Access 2010 introduced an array of integrated or add-in templates that provided the basic tables, forms, reports, queries, macros, and relationships needed to build viable apps. Areas covered by these templates include asset management, training, finance, inventory, non-profit, sales and marketing, plus time and billing. The databases built with Office Access 2010 templates are easy to tailor to the specific needs of an organization. Office Access 2010 also includes modules within Application Parts to create specialized databases quickly. The Office Themes feature, introduced in Office Access 2010, lets you consolidate and format multiple databases instantly. The legacy File menu of Office Access is replaced in Office Access 2010 by the Backstage view, which is part of the Microsoft Office Fluent interface and provides a common, extensible area for managing Access 2010 databases. The Office Access 2010 Expression Builder is enhanced with IntelliSense for streamlining the process of writing formulas and expressions. Access 2010's Macro Designer is also improved to simplify the addition of logic to an Access database. By installing a Web service definition file, you can connect to a Web service as an external data source. Access Services in SharePoint Server 2010 allows you to connect to and edit an Access 2010 database from a browser.

For information about Progent's online consulting, application development, and training services for all versions of Office Access and Microsoft 365 Access, visit Office Access consulting, development and training.

How Progent Can Help You with Microsoft Office and Microsoft 365
Progent's Microsoft-certified consultants can help you with all facets of Microsoft Office and Microsoft 365 integration, consulting, and technical support including:

• Business needs assessment and establishing the business case for upgrading to Office 2016 desktop or Office 365
• Readiness evaluation for upgrading to Office 2016 desktop or Office 365
• Migration to Microsoft 365, Office 2016, or Office 2019 from legacy versions of Microsoft Office
• Configuration and customization
• Online technical support
• End user webinar training for all versions of Office desktop and Microsoft 365
• Automated deployment and upgrade management for Microsoft Office applications
• Citrix XenApp Consulting for desktop virtualization with Microsoft Office applications
• Microsoft Office security consulting
• BYOD support via iPhone and iPad integration and Android phone configuration and management
• Collaboration and co-authoring consulting for Word, Excel, and PowerPoint
• Microsoft Teams planning and migration support
• Help with splitting off O365/M365 tenants for workforces involved in mergers and acquisitions

ProSight DPS 365 Total Backup Solutions for Microsoft 365
Microsoft 365 offers rudimentary archiving but does not have native support for crucial data protection capabilities such as Exchange Online backups or long-term point-in-time recovery for OneDrive or SharePoint Online. Hornetsecurity's 365 Total Backup delivers a full-featured platform for programmable backup and rapid recovery of all your organization's M365 mail, Teams Chats, SharePoint documents, OneDrive data, and content on Windows desktops and laptops. Progent is a certified Hornetsecurity/Altaro partner and offers ProSight Data Protection Services 365 Total Backup to provide comprehensive managed services for Hornetsecurity's 365 Total Backup suite. ProSight Data Protection Services 365 Total Backup delivers an affordable backup-as-a-service alternative that defends M365 apps against data loss or corruption resulting from user or system mistakes, malicious deletion, and cyber assaults like ransomware. To read more, go to ProSight Data Protection Services 365 Total Backup solutions for Microsoft 365.

Contact Progent for Microsoft Office Support
To find out more about Progent's migration and support services for Microsoft Office and Microsoft 365, call 1-800-993-9400 or visit Contact Progent.