Office Web Apps

OneNote mobile apps work great with OneNote Web App

Jenni French — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 21:00:00 GMT

Today, the OneNote team announced an exciting new offering: OneNote Mobile for Android is now available in the Android Market app store!

OneNote mobile apps are available on a wide variety of platforms, including Windows Phone 7, iPhone, iPad, and now Android. They all work together with OneNote on your desktop and OneNote Web App in your browser.

Once you've gotten started with OneNote on your device, you can log in to SkyDrive to see a list of your notes, or view and edit them on the web. You can even share notes from your phone with friends, classmates, colleagues, or co-workers.

To share a note, just right-click on the file in SkyDrive and select "Share." This is one of my favorite features, because with one click you can share notes you've taken in classes, for travel plans, recipes, to-do lists, or even a shopping list, like the one we showcased at CES last month.

Thanks,

--Jenni French
Sr. Product Manager, Office Web Apps

Plan, pitch, forecast, fund: how to start a business

Emily Warn — Fri, 20 Jan 2012 23:21:00 GMT

Today Guy Kawasaki shares his final blog post in a series about making your entrepreneurial dreams come true. His witty wrap up offers up what not to say and what not to believe that investors tell you. These tongue-in-cheek lists serve a purpose: they run down everything he taught you about creating a business pitch and plan, and developing a financial forecast. Reading all the posts should give you everything you need to launch that business! No more excuses! And don’t forget – Office Web Apps are great tools for sharing and collaborating – perfect for entrepreneurs and their business partners when they set out.

Now get crackin!

(You can read or download the whole series on Guy's SkyDrive.)

New Year's Resolution: Cure for Attachment Disorder

Roxanne Kenison — Wed, 18 Jan 2012 14:16:00 GMT

It's habitual. You send out a document for feedback, and get back umpteen copies of the thing, each with a different set of comments. And, what if you want to share it with someone who doesn't have the same Office program as you? How will they open that Word, Excel, PowerPoint, or OneNote file?

If you find yourself clinging to the old way of attaching documents to email, don't be embarrassed. Just start storing your documents on SkyDrive. When you send a link, people can read your document in their web browser--just like reading a web page. It doesn't matter what version of Office they have, or whether they have it at all.

You can even skip email altogether and post the link on your Facebook or LinkedIn page. Here are all the details for sharing documents on SkyDrive.

If you give people permission, they can edit the document in their Office app, such as Word, or in their web browser. When they're done, all the changes will be in one tidy place on SkyDrive. Then you can access it from just about anywhere: your computer, a friend's computer, your smartphone, or an Internet kiosk.

Start now, while the year is young: save documents directly to SkyDrive in Office 2010, or upload them. Let 2012 be the year you broke free of past encumbrances.

Live from Las Vegas! Office Web Apps Comes to CES

Jenni French — Fri, 13 Jan 2012 19:26:00 GMT

This year we brought Office Web Apps to the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) to show off our latest sharing and collaboration features.

At the Office booth, we're showing customers how to use OneNote Web App to create a shopping list, then share it with family members so they can view it on their Windows Phone or on another PC. (You might also have seen this on TV recently, in Microsoft's "Keep Shopping" TV commercial.)

If you're already using OneNote Web App, it's easy to create and share a shopping list. Here's how:

In SkyDrive, click the OneNote icon to create a new OneNote notebook.
When it opens in the OneNote Web App, add a title to the page, then list the items that you need at the store.
To make sure the shopper buys your favorite brands, download the notebook to your computer, then add pictures of the branded products. You can add pictures from any web page by using the OneNote Screen Clipping tool on the Insert Tab.
To share the notebook with your family--especially those using Windows Phones--just right-click on the file in SkyDrive, and then click Share to send an email with a link in it.

That's it! Now you and your family members can update your shopping list from OneNote on your PC, on the web, or on your Windows phone.

Thanks,

--Jenni French
Sr Product Manager, Office Web Apps

Get Guy Kawasaki's tips on starting a business

Emily Warn — Mon, 09 Jan 2012 17:22:00 GMT

Who hasn't dreamed of quitting your desk job and starting your own business? It's a new year. Isn't it time to make your dreams reality?

Office Web Apps has partnered with author, venture capitalist, and tech influential @Guy Kawasaki to show you how to do just that. His exclusive posts will offer tips and templates to guide you through:

Creating an effective business plan
Putting together a pitch that wows venture capitalists
Presenting financial forecasts that help raise funds

Visit to read his first post about the perfect pitch.

Excel Web App powers Excel Mashups

Roxanne Kenison — Thu, 15 Dec 2011 18:54:00 GMT

Today's post is brought to you by Jenni Friench, a product manager on the Office Web Apps team.

The Excel team has released some new technology to allow developers to create mashups using Excel, powered by the Excel Web App.

A mashup is a type of application that combines data from different sources to create rich, interactive experiences typically hosted in a webpage. You’ve probably already used mashups built on other data sources from Microsoft or other companies, to combine Bing maps and search results with information about restaurants or real estate, to name just one example.

To create an Excel mashup, developers can use Excel Web App to embed a workbook stored on SkyDrive, and then display it in a host web page and add interactivity with code. On the Excel Blog today, Excel team member Larry Waldman gives an example of how he created a calorie calculator using Excel mashup. He made a spreadsheet and uploaded it to SkyDrive, then added it to a web page to look up nutritional information for different food items, automatically listing food and calorie information on his spreadsheet.

For another example, see the new Mashup tab on our Excel Embed how-to page. And for developers, you can learn how to make Excel mashups on the excelmashup.com website.

--Jenni Friench
Sr. Product Manager, Office Web Apps

New SkyDrive updates make sharing Office docs easier

Emily Warn — Tue, 29 Nov 2011 20:01:00 GMT

Today's post is by Jenni French, product manager on the Office Web Apps team.

Earlier this autumn, we shipped enhancements to Office Web Apps based on your feedback, delivering new features such as the ability to view ink in OneNote Web App, merge and autofit cells in Excel Web App, and print directly from the browser in Excel Web App. Today, the SkyDrive team is announcing some updates that are also based on your requests. Today’s SkyDrive updates will make it easier than ever to share and collaborate on Office documents using Office Web Apps on SkyDrive.

With today’s SkyDrive improvements, you can share individual files stored on SkyDrive, not just folders. Also, you can easily collaborate on Office documents through SkyDrive with anyone, even if you don’t know their Windows Live ID. You can even share directly with friends on Facebook and LinkedIn. Or you can share a document with everyone, by setting permissions to make it public and creating a link that you can send or share, or embed in your own blog or website.

Simpler sharing from Office Web Apps on SkyDrive

To share the document you’re working on, just click Share in the toolbar, and then you can enter your friends’ email addresses, a short message, and give permission to edit or require sign-in, all in one place!

The people who you’ve shared it with will receive an invitation almost immediately, sent from you, with a link that they can click to view your document.

Right-click to share Office docs from SkyDrive

Here’s another time-saver: With this update, the SkyDrive team has added right-click menus on the file list, allowing you to view, edit, download, and more.

Share your Office docs on social networks

In addition to sharing via email, now you can share your Office documents through social networks such as Facebook and LinkedIn. This is exciting, because it means that you can show off your Office documents with your friends in Facebook, or collaborate with colleagues in LinkedIn.

To post your Office documents to a social network, click Share in the navigation, and then click Post to.

Share an Office doc with everyone

In addition to sharing your Office documents with specific friends and colleagues, you can upload a document and share it with everyone, and then get a link that you can post or send to make your document public. You can also choose to set permissions so only friends you’ve shared it with can see it, or you can make it public for anyone on the web to see.

To make your document public, click Share, and then click Get a Link.

Embed your Office doc in your blog or website

If you have a blog or a website, you can embed your Excel or PowerPoint document directly into another web page.

To embed an Office document from SkyDrive, right-click the document, click Embed, and then click Generate to get HTML code that you can paste into your blog or website.

See it in action with Doug from Office Casual

Want to see what these improvements look like in action? Watch this video, from Doug on the Office Casual blog...or try them for yourself, just sign in to SkyDrive to get started!

I hope you’ll enjoy using these new features! And please do let us know what you think, in comments below or through the product, because we’re always listening…

Thanks,

--Jenni French
Sr. Product Manager, Office Web Apps

Setting the pace in cloud productivity

Roxanne Kenison — Tue, 29 Nov 2011 16:00:00 GMT

Today's post is by Jenni French, product manager on the Office Web Apps team.

Today, Microsoft is announcing updates to our cloud offerings for productivity on Office 365 and on SkyDrive. Office Web Apps is an important part of Microsoft’s cloud productivity solutions, and as a team we’re excited to see the improvements being made on both platforms.

Improvements to Office Web Apps in Office 365 include support for Open Document Format (ODF) 1.1, among other enhancements. For example, Office Web Apps are now integrated into Exchange Online in Office 365, which means you can view Word, Excel, and PowerPoint email attachments in the Web Apps. For more information about the latest updates to Office 365, check out the Office 365 blog.

Today’s changes also make it easier than ever to share and collaborate on Office documents on SkyDrive. These improvements are based on customer feedback, and include simplified sharing, more powerful file management, and easier uploads. For full details on today’s SkyDrive updates, see the Inside Windows Live Blog.

--Jenni French
Sr. Product Manager, Office Web Apps

You asked, we delivered: new Web App features now available

Roxanne Kenison — Thu, 29 Sep 2011 16:00:00 GMT

On the Office Web Apps team, we are committed to improving our products based on your feedback. Since we launched the Web Apps just over a year ago, we’ve been listening to you, and today we’re releasing new features based on what we’ve heard.

To everybody who has shared their opinion with us, we want to say a big THANK YOU!

Here’s what we’re delivering to you today, based on your requests:

...(read more)

Excel Web App in action: Seattle Times displays latest primary election results using Excel Embed

Jenni French — Fri, 19 Aug 2011 17:37:00 GMT

Earlier this year, we released some exciting new functionality that lets you extend your Excel skills to the web, by embedding an Excel spreadsheet on websites and blogs. This week, the Seattle Times is reporting the local 2011 primary election with the latest results displayed in an embedded Excel spreadsheet.

As a team we are super-excited to see this feature in action!

Seattle Times – Latest 2011 primary election results

It’s easy to embed any Excel document in any web page or blog post. Just upload your spreadsheet to Windows Live SkyDrive and open it in the Excel Web Apps. Then in Edit mode, click Share, click Embed, and then just copy the Embed code into your page.

You can even customize your embedded spreadsheet directly on this page, including ranges of data, appearance (like gridlines, headers, and dimensions) and interaction (whether you want your readers to be able to sort and filter).

For more details about embedding an Excel document, check out our Excel embed how-to page on Office.com

Thanks,
Jenni French,
Office Web Apps Sr. Product Manager

P.S. You can also embed a PowerPoint presentation directly into your blog or website. Here’s how.