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.

In the finale of our three part deep dive on customizing and deploying the new Office, our intrepid hosts demonstrate Office 365 ProPlus Click-to-Run integration with your existing management and deployment tools while exploring pre-installation via Windows image. Watch too as our fearless host Jeremy gets behind the wheel to test if Windows Intune can install Office as fast as a direct install from Office 365 from his car, in the time it takes him to go over Seattle's famous 520 floating bridge.

Ever had to sum data based on multiple criteria situated in different Microsoft Excel worksheets? In this tutorial, Excel MVP Liam Bastick provides a quick tour of INDIRECT references and Table functionality while combining qualities of the SUMPRODUCT function with the SUMIFS function, providing a solution to the mother-of-all Multiple Criteria problems.

We're excited to announce that a preview of Skype video calling and messaging is starting to arrive in Outlook.com--making it easier to stay connected to the people you care about most. Your Skype contacts appear in your contact list, so the next time you get an email from someone, you can call them back with just a click.

Many of our users expressed the need to be able to draw on the touch devices that do not ship with a pen. With this update to OneNote for Windows Store, now you can draw with your finger! Read on to learn how and to download the update.