In this guide, we are really going to delve into Office for iPad. Here we’ll take a look at SharePoint and OneDrive for business, changing your laser pen in PowerPoint to a marker pen or highlighter, and inserting graphs and formulas in Excel.
In order for these tips to be effective, you will need an Office 365 subscription, and there are currently varying price points. A ‘single person’ subscription will cost £5.99/$9.99 per month and enables you to install Office on one PC or Mac, one tablet, access it via a range of smartphone apps or internet browsers, and get an additional 20GB of OneDrive cloud storage. Just head over to office.com to sign up and read on to find out how to make the most of Microsoft’s army of productivity apps.

Top 10: Office secrets

1 OneDrive for Business

Within the standard Office apps is the capability to add a OneDrive for Business account. This is similar to that of the consumer friendly version, but has pricing models per employee and is included as part of Office 365 for Business. You get 25GB per employee.

2 Access to SharePoint

Keeping to the business theme, Office apps also provide access to SharePoint URLs, providing you are connected to your company’s network. From within an Office app, tap Open, then SharePoint and enter your URL. You may need an admin password to access.

3 Pin your documents

Office apps provide you with a preview of documents opened from the most recent date. If there are specific documents you want to keep tabs on, or read later on, you can pin documents so that they always appear at the top of the list for easy access.

4 Page numbering

Incredibly, page numbering is disabled by default. To enable this feature in Word, head to the Layout button on the ribbon, and then Page Numbers. Tapping will provide you with various options to customise the page numbering layout in your documents.

5 Freeze Panes

A great feature in Excel, especially if you have lots of data, and need to keep the headers in plain view. Select the row, or column you wish to freeze, tap the View button and then Freeze Panes on the right-hand side for a selection of options.

6 Lookup & Reference

Under Formula is the Lookup & Reference section. This provides the user with a huge amount of options to create formulas and more. An ‘i’ provides a description of the function, and when selected the information required is pre-formatted in the formula bar.

7 Recommended charts

Known for its data and dynamic charts & graphs, Excel for iPad provides an easy way to create charts. Tapping Insert>Recommend, provides a preview of the best chart based on the data. In this instance, a bar graph provides the best representation of the data.

8 Sort and Filter

You can Sort And Filter your data with the following steps. Select the data you wish to sort, and while on the Home tab, tap the A/Z icon to the far right of the menubar. You’ll be presented with a number of options within which to ‘sort’ your data.

9 AutoSum

AutoSum is a handy tool that automatically adds up numeric data over a large number of cells. Located under the Formulas tab, and represented by the Greek icon for Sigma, AutoSum will add up all the numeric values in the cells directly above an empty cell.

10 Count and Average

Under the same Sigma icon of the Formulas tab are the functions of Count and Sum. Count will tell you how many cells in a selected range have data in them, and Average will provide you with the mathematical average, also within a selected range of cells.

In-depth: Transitions in PowerPoint

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