Office 365 is a line of subscription services offered by Microsoft as part of the Microsoft Office product line. It is an integrated experience of apps and services and can be accessed by SUNY Cortland faculty, staff and students from MyRedDragon.
Access Office 365
- Open Cortland.edu
- Select MyRedDragon at the top of the screen
- Sign in
- In the top left corner of your screen click on the App launcher to see the apps available in Office 365.
The apps you may use the most frequently are:
Outlook, it is your SUNY Cortland webmail. It is the same email that you will find on your installed version of Outlook.
OneDrive is your personal file storage in the Microsoft cloud. Each person with a cortland.edu email address has 1 terabyte of available storage.
Word, Excel and PowerPoint Online are online versions of these programs.
One of the perks of the Cortland Office 365 account is your ability to download the Microsoft Office Suite to your personal computer, tablet or phone. This is not something you need to do to use Office 365, however, if you would like the most full-featured versions of Microsoft Office at home or on a personal machine, alone or in tandem with the online versions, you can download it.
Download Office 365 (optional)
To download the Microsoft Office Suite to your personal computer (do not download to Cortland owned machines)
- Go to MyRedDragon
- Select the app launcher in the upper left corner of your screen
- In the Office 365 panel that opens choose Office 365 ®
- On the Office 365 screen that opens choose the Install Office button
- Select Other Install Options
- Choose the Apps and Devices tab
- Verify the correct language and version and then choose either Install Office or Install Skype
Outlook - Mail, Calendar, People and Tasks
The Outlook app will give you access to the same functions as in your Outlook client; Mail, Calendar, People and Tasks. Additionally, there is an Attachment button where you can access all the file attachments from your emails.
Your webmail will contain the same emails and folder structure as your installed version of Outlook. The only exception is that there is no Outbox folder in the Outlook Web App, after the Send button is pushed, the mail is sent almost immediately.
There is a slight delay when sending email to allow you to ‘unsend’ your email if needed.
Select Undo to pull the email back and not send it.
The default delay is 10 seconds. You can change this in the Compose and Reply tab of your webmail Settings
Settings
To change the Undo Send time, the layout of your email screen, the handling of junk mail, and many other things, you will need to access the settings. Any changes which do not only apply to Outlook webmail (like junk mail handling or rules) will also be reflected in the installed version of Outlook.
- Click the Settings button on the top right side of your webmail screen
- At the bottom of the panel that open, choose View all Outlook settings
- The Settings box will open. From here you can change settings for many aspects of your webmail as well as the Calendar and People apps
Choose General to work with the settings for the entire suite of programs. Choose Mail, Calendar, or People to work with the settings for the corresponding app.
Mail
The mail app is very similar to the installed version of Outlook with a slightly different look.
Calendar
To create a new calendar event (meeting or appointment) you can select the New Event button but clicking on the calendar itself will also open a New Calendar Event dialog box.
People
The People tab is your Contact list. At many places in Office 365, when entering an email address, it is sufficient to enter the person’s name and their listing in the Cortland directory will pop up. For people without cortland.edu email addresses it is necessary to enter them in your Contact list to have their name and email address come up in a menu
Word, Excel & PowerPoint Online
Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote Online are part of Office 365. Because these are web applications that run in your browser, Office Online will run on everything, from Linux PCs and Chromebooks to iPads and Android tablets. It doesn’t require any special plug-in and works in any popular browser, including Firefox, Chrome, and Safari.
All documents started from an online app will be saved in your OneDrive for Business. And your documents will be saved automatically and continually.
This web-based version of Office also offers easy collaboration features. Word Online offers real-time editing that allows multiple people to edit the same document at a time.
These online applications are a bit simplified and stripped down. While they offer a similar interface to the desktop version of Office, complete with a ribbon, they have fewer features built in. If you want to do a mail merge, run macros, create a special slide show or edit documents offline? You will need to use the desktop version of Office.
Word Online
https://support.office.com/en-us/article/cool-tips-in-word-for-the-web-31e85424-5ce4-4a8a-88fe-df6d9ed3b65c
This is the opening page of Word online, Excel and PowerPoint have similar opening pages. From here you can open a new blank document, open a document from your computer or open a document from OneDrive.
Any document created in Word Online will be automatically and continually saved to your SUNY Cortland OneDrive account.
PowerPoint Online
https://support.office.com/en-us/article/create-and-open-a-presentation-in-powerpoint-for-the-web-2a552b06-eae8-45b0-99df-ad74fa10fad9
PowerPoint has different design options with an AI engine so the designs presented are determined by what your presentation is about
Choose the Share button in the upper right corner of the document or presentation to Share it with others. The arrow in the access section will allow you to determine settings for the shared document.
Choose Open in Desktop app at the top of the your word, Excel or PowerPoint online screen to open the application in the installed version. If you are sharing the document it will still be shared.
OneDrive
https://support.office.com/en-us/article/onedrive-video-training-1f608184-b7e6-43ca-8753-2ff679203132
Microsoft OneDrive is your personal storage in the Microsoft cloud. You have 1TB of storage with your cortland.edu account.
To access OneDrive for Business, select the app launcher and choose the OneDrive icon.
Files and folders can be uploaded to OneDrive or they can be started in OneDrive.
To upload them choose the upload button at the top of your OneDrive screen. You can choose to upload either folders or files.
To start a document from OneDrive choose the New command and from the dropdown select which new item you would like to create. If you choose an application the online version of that app will open.
This is what your One Drive will look like:
To work on a specific file or folder, double click the file name top open it. To Share, Move or Copy a file select the circle in from of the file name to activate that menu.
To share a file, select Share from either the status bar menu or the drop down menu:
People with access can then edit the document in real time or at any time. If sharing with people without cortland.edu email addresses you will need to choose either the ‘Specific people’ or ‘Anyone with the link’ options.
Document that have been shared with you can be found in the Shared tab under Shared with me:
Sway
Sway is a digital storytelling app from Microsoft Office that makes it easy to create and share interactive reports, personal stories, presentations, and more.
Start by adding your own text and pictures, search for and import relevant content from other sources, and then watch Sway’s built-in design engine takes care of making your creation look its best. There’s no need to spend lots of time on formatting because if the initial design doesn’t work, you can easily apply another — or fully customize your layout to make it your own.
Add information to your Sway using cards. Select the plus sign at the bottom of a card to add text, media or both:
Choose the Design tab and Styles to change the orientation of your project, to apply a template or to apply custom colors and typefaces:
Forms
With Microsoft Forms you can easily create surveys, polls and quizzes to collect feedback, organize team events and measure learning.
Select the button at the top left of the window to create a quiz or the down arrow to create a survey:
The only difference between a survey and a quiz is that quizzes have a field for the correct answer.
There are a variety of possible questions:
The form can be shared via email or in Teams and the responses are all visible on the Response tab or they can be compiled in an Excel document.
Planner
Microsoft Planner is a Kanban solution that simplifies task management and to-do lists for teams and is connected across Microsoft 365 apps.
Plans can be private or they can be shared with others
Plans are made of ‘buckets’ or categories and tasks are added to those buckets. Tasks are assigned to specific people with a due date. The Charts tab will show the people with whom the planner is shared, their assigned tasks and the completion of those tasks.
Other Apps
To Do – This is a list making app which also brings in tasks from Planner and flagged emails
Stream – Microsoft’s video storage and sharing platform
Power Automate – Enables you to automate tasks that you do all the time
Whiteboard – An online whiteboard that can easily be shared
Bookings – the Microsoft app that will allow you to manage appointments
Flipgrid, Calendly and Vyond are some of the online apps that can be signed into using Microsoft 365 credentials
