When you open a Microsoft Office application, you know what you're going to get. Whether you're working from a PC, a browser or a smartphone, the way the software functions is familiar and consistent. On the other hand, converting Office files into Google Apps is a gamble. Learn more about the file fidelity issues that occur when converting Office files into Google Apps via the web, a tablet, and a viewer.

Last summer, Microsoft made a $1.2B investment in Yammer, recognizing enterprise social as key to how companies communicate and collaborate. Fast forward only eight months, and the momentum is tremendous. We've just finished our third quarter and Yammer sales grew 259% year-over year, Yammer gained 312 new customers, and March marked Yammer's best month to-date in terms of user engagement. We're excited about the value customers are seeing with Office 365 and Yammer together, and we believe this is just the beginning.

As we announced on February 27, The new Office 365 service is out of "Preview" and available to try and buy today. We received tons of actionable feedback resulting in new features customers want, improved performance, simple user experiences, more admin controls and the stability they expect. SharePoint Online (SPO) customers will soon be able to self-upgrade to the new SharePoint Online experience - a new user interface, global Office 365 navigation and a whole set of new features and supported scenarios.

In this episode, our adventurous hosts go deeper on how software updates really work for the new Office. Tune in as they demystify what's different compared to the Office Professional Plus 2013 MSI install and explain the optimized update service for the Office 365 ProPlus Click-to-Run install. Learn how the service works optionally so that you can set up your environment to look at sanctioned updates on premises or in the Public Cloud and see how to go beyond default settings. Plus Yoni gets behind the wheel in a Ferrari F430 Spider to see if he can beat Sydney, Australia traffic in today's XStream Install. 

When we launched the Office Web Apps in 2010, they were companions to the Office desktop experience that enabled lightweight, on-the-go content creation and review. Since then we've made a number of investments in Office Web Apps to make it easier for people to work together, author documents and access Office content from virtually any device. As we think about how people communicate and collaborate today and how their needs will evolve in the future, we'd like to share our plans for some of the investments we are making in the Office Web Apps over the next year and beyond.

Last year, Adobe became a pioneer in offering software subscriptions by unveiling Creative Cloud, their subscription-only software service. Yesterday, they took the next step by announcing plans to discontinue development of their Creative Suite or other CS products. Industry reaction is mixed. Like Adobe, we think subscription software-as-a-service is the future. The benefits are huge. Subscribers get the latest and most complete applications, not to mention support across the multitude of devices people use today.

We think people's shift from packaged software to subscription services will take time. In the meantime, we are committed to offering choice--premier software sold as a package and powerful services sold as a subscription. What do you think about software subscriptions-- #progressive or #premature?

If you're new to Windows 8, you probably noticed that the OneNote app looks and feels very different from other versions of OneNote. How do you search? What happened to the menus? The new Windows is designed to avoid distracting you with commands you don't need, but all that change can be a little intimidating at first. Fear not! In this blog post, we'll teach you how to use the OneNote app from the Windows Store. These tips and tricks can be applied to most other Windows Store apps as well. If you don't have OneNote yet, download it now and follow along--it's free!

Office 365 for business allows small and large companies to use the power of SharePoint Online. In this week’s webinar, you’ll learn some of the basics and we'll answer your questions.

What you will learn at Tuesday's webinar

• Logging on the first time
• What’s that there? A look around...

Crafting the right content takes time and attention. To help you minimize the distractions, we created a Read Mode layout in Word. Read Mode is an option in the View menu that hides toolbars and menus to leave more room for the pages themselves.  There's always a time for intensive formatting and editing when building great documents. But when it's time for review and final changes, make sure to check out Read Mode.

We're excited to announce that we've completed upgrading all Hotmail customers to Outlook.com. Coupled with the growing organic excitement for Outlook.com, this has pushed us to over 400 million active Outlook.com accounts, including 125 million that are accessing email, calendar and contacts on a mobile device using Exchange ActiveSync.  We're also pleased to announce that we're adding two new features to Outlook.com: SMTP send, so it's easier to send mail from different email addresses, and deeper integration with SkyDrive.