Office 2010 for back-to-school: 10 tips + free OneNote 2010 student planner

The annual back-to-school routine is right around the corner, and this year a projected 55.5 million K-12 students and 19.7 million college students will head for the classroom (according to the U.S. National Center for Education Statistics). That’s a lot of laptops and jeans!

Whether you’re a parent preparing your child for high school, or a college student suiting up for that first day on campus, there’s a good chance you’ll scour magazines and websites for the right wears and the best tools.

But as our founders proved, fashion matters a lot less than productivity and organization when it comes to real success.

Free OneNote 2010 Student Planner

Download and customize this free OneNote 2010 Student Planner to stay better organized throughout the year with research, notes, projects and ideas.

So whether you want your kid to have right tools to do their best in school, or you want to Excel in the college classroom (sorry, couldn’t resist), Office 2010 and Office for Mac 2011 have all the essential features to help people create standout work, from high school to higher-education.

10 things you can do with Office 2010

1.    Download the free OneNote 2010 student planner for capturing and organizing class research, notes, and ideas! Come study time, it’ll be easy to search your notes for a word, tag, or date.

2.    Collaborate simultaneously with classmates, or review your term paper with mom while she’s on a business trip, using co-authoring in the Word Web App.

3.     Show off your work! Embed your presentation (PowerPoint 2010) or science experiment data (Excel 2010) into a blog post with just a few easy steps.

4.     Quickly crop photos in Word 2010 and PowerPoint 2010. You can also edit audio and format videos within PowerPoint 2010 — no special media editing software needed.

5.     Use Word 2010 for more than just your standard paper. New charting and graphing tools make it easy to add graphics that illustrate your point, or search thousands of free templates at Office.com to create dazzling posters and flyers.

6.     Include people outside of the classroom by delivering your next group presentation via the Broadcast Slide Show feature in PowerPoint 2010.

7.     Use OneNote 2010 for your next 30-page biology paper, and experience first-hand the benefits of having your research, notes, bibliographical information and ideas in one easy-to-view location

8.     On a tight budget? Let Excel 2010 help you manage your expenses. You can even deter impulse shopping by checking your budget on-the-go with Excel Mobile 2010.  

9.     Last minute changes to a Word or PowerPoint document are easier than ever with Reorder Objects in Office for Mac 2011.

10.   Can’t focus with emails and IMs popping up? Maximize your on-screen space in Word 2011 for Mac with Full Screen View, letting you focus on your reading and writing. 

And while we’re on the topic of Office and education, it would be a miss if we didn’t remind you that the History Reimagined contest is still going on. So if you want to win an Xbox 360 + Kinect in the weekly drawings or a trip to Philadelphia, the Museum of Science and industry in Chicago, the National Air and Space Museum in Washington D.C., or Cape Canaveral in Florida. Just click here and watch the videos between now and August 17 and you get a chance to win!

Study hard and have fun!

-- Jevon Fark, Office Team 

For more information about these tips and other time-saving tricks check out www.office.com.