As of March 30, DU students have access to use Microsoft’s Office 365 Cloud Collaboration Suite. The University has contracted with Microsoft for use of the extensive features of this software.
Every student is already registered for an account, and should have received an email with information and instructions on March 30 on how to use 365 Cloud.
With Microsoft’s Office 365 Cloud software, students, staff and faculty have access to 1TB of storage on OneDrive Cloud (that is equal to over 1000 GB, most likely enough to store everything from your college career). One Drive is a library—similar to Apple’s iCloud—where you can store, share and sync work across different devices. All the files in OneDrive are private unless users choose to share them.
Students will also have free downloads of the newest versions of Microsoft Office Pro Plus for personal Mac or PC computers and other Apple/Android devices, as well as the capability of creating, sharing and editing Microsoft Office documents through Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote in a web browser. Instead of being locked into GoogleDocs every time you work on a group project, you can create documents in any Microsoft program and share them with the members of your group for editing.
Additionally, by the end of the quarter, Office 365 will be expanded to include student email with Microsoft Outlook instead of going through the DU website. If you had your DU email account forwarded to another account like Gmail or Yahoo, the new email account through Microsoft Office will also forward to that mailbox.
With Office 365 comes a few new features for existing Microsoft programs. In Word, you can now view and work with documents you created on another device or with Word Online. Power Point and Excel can now be accessed on any device, from a computer to a tablet to a smartphone. Microsoft 365’s website at support.office.com has many useful tips for getting started.
University Technological Services had a series of informational and training sessions last week and should be holding more throughout the remainder of the quarter.
DU has also set up a website at go.du.edu/office365 that has information on the changes and updates. Students can also contact the UTS Help Center at 303-871-4700 or visit them in the library with questions.
