Tech Talk: New Microsoft 365 Tools You Can Use (Today!)

Episode Notes

Transcript

Speaker 1:

So if I was starting today as a New Solo, I would

Speaker 2:

Entrepreneurial aspect,

Adriana Linares:

Change the way they’re practicing

Speaker 1:

Leader,

Speaker 2:

What it

Speaker 1:

Means to be,

Adriana Linares:

Make it easy to work with your clients,

Speaker 4:

New approach, new tools, new mindset, New Solo,

Speaker 5:

And it’s making that leap, making that leap leap.

Adriana Linares:

Hi everyone. Welcome to another episode of New Solo on Legal Talk Network. As always, I’m Adriana Linares and I’m your host. Before I get started with today’s special episode, which is really just me talking to you about Microsoft 365, I want to take a moment to say thank you. Many of you often send me notes via social media or to my email address thanking me for New Solo and saying how wonderful it is. And of course, it’s wonderful for me to receive those notes and I cannot tell you how much I appreciate it. So thank you for being a listener, whether you’re new or a longtime listener, and also I really want to thank all the guests we’ve ever had because without these guests who take their time to come on here and share all their knowledge, information and experiences, the show wouldn’t be as great as it is.

So I want to make sure and thank them, and again, thank you for being a listener. Now, having said that, what’s funny about today’s episode is there is no guest, it’s just me, which actually makes this a little harder than you would think, but I really wanted to take the opportunity of having this platform to help many of you who still struggle or don’t really understand or ask me a lot of questions about your Office 365 subscriptions and your apps and services, and especially now at a time like this when AI is becoming so popular and so useful and talk about Microsoft Copilot and how you can get it and sort of what its benefits might be. Of course it’s an added price and we’ll talk about that in just a few minutes after we get through the first two segments of the show. So I’m going to start by discussing the different types of accounts and then helping you figure out which Microsoft account type you have that might also help inform you as to whether or not you want to get a second account or change your account type.

Then after that, once we’ve got the account types figured out and settled out, we’re going to talk a little bit about subscription types because of course you can have an account, but then you subscribe to services based on the account type that you have and of course you can move up and down in tiers and services and add-ons from there. So we’ll spend a few minutes talking about subscription types. Then the last segment we’ll talk about are apps, what’s happening with apps, like why do you have a new outlook, why do things not work in it sometimes, what can you do about it? And of course Microsoft copilot, which I just think is the most awesome thing that has happened to us and a long time in so far as subscription services go. And I’ll give you a couple tips and suggestions about subscribing to it and why you might want to in our third segment there.

Hopefully this won’t be a long episode. I’m trying to make it short, sweet, and easy and give you a couple of places to look for the information that I’ll be sharing with you. So let’s go ahead and get started and discuss account types. So for the most part, there are three types of Microsoft accounts. The first account type is a personal and or slash family Microsoft account. The second type is often called a work or school account. We’re just going to call it a work account for the most part, but just know that work and school are kind of the same account type. And then the third is creatively referred to as a third party account type. So the three are personal and family work or school and third party accounts. The personal and family Microsoft accounts are typically tied to a personal email address and by a personal email address, I mean something that ends in Gmail or Outlook.

Some of you even use a Yahoo account to log into your Microsoft 365 account type. Some of you even use something like a Yahoo account to log into your Microsoft 365 account. So this isn’t very different than when you use that Gmail or that Outlook account to log into your bank account or into your eBay account or your Walmart account. You have an email. It’s what you use as your general point of communication and then that email serves as an identifier for you to be able to log into different services. So typically with a Microsoft personal or family account, you are logging in with that email address that is often free like a Gmail or an outlook.com account. And if you haven’t figured this out, an outlook.com account email account is very much like a Gmail account, right? So Google gives us free Gmail accounts and Microsoft gives us free outlook.com accounts.

What’s the best use case for lawyers when using a personal or a family account type? It’s really ideal for personal documents like where you might store your own tax records, your personal insurance records, your family bills, your family photos, your chronology of your family crest and all your personal records. So typically personal accounts or family are used for your personal stuff and I subscribe to both. So I’m going to talk right now about my personal account, but then we will talk about the work account, which is where I keep all my client work. So I have a Microsoft personal account and guess what? I log into it with a Gmail account and over there is where I keep all of my family photos. Again, all my bills, my tax records, my insurance records, my mortgage papers, everything that’s related to my personal life and my family life go into a personal account.

Now, the reason I have that personal account is because I don’t want to commingle all of my personal stuff with my business stuff and you shouldn’t either. From technical tactical perspective, I always worry, well, what if I get hacked? What if somebody figures out what my Gmail password is and then they’re able to get into my Microsoft 365 personal account? Well, at least I’ve separated my personal and my business world, so only half of my life is being hacked, is getting in trouble and I’m having to deal with it. If you use a personal account, which many of you do to store all of your personal stuff and your client work, then you’ve put pretty much all of your security eggs in one basket and you’re not even trying to minimize your risk. So just final last thought on that. It’s important to separate your personal account activities from work just because it’s good security measure, but also you’re trying to maintain professional boundaries and also the personal and family accounts might not have the same security opportunities that you would have with a work account, which is the next one we’re going to talk about with a work account.

It’s created by and paid for an organization, your law firm, even if you’re a Solo, if you have an at Adriana Linares.com domain and through that domain I have my email and then through that email I have my Microsoft 365 account. Then it’s a work or school account, and again, we’re just going to call it work because most of us are using a school account. If you’re in a bigger firm, even two or three or four people and the firm is paying for that email and you’ve got someone managing your Microsoft 365 account that’s assigning email addresses to employees and attorneys as they join or leave the firm, then chances are that’s a work account. So the benefits for you as a lawyer to have the work account is they often come with the Microsoft business apps as part of the subscription. Remember we’re going to talk about subscriptions in the next section.

They also can include additional management features and those advanced security protocols that I mentioned earlier. That’s not to say that the personal and family accounts are not secure. They are and everything’s encrypted when it comes to Microsoft, but with a work account you do have the ability to add on extra features, especially to things like email. We had Adam Alexander, my favorite IT guy on New Solo, a couple of episodes back and he mentioned how Microsoft Defender is something that you can add now to your email. If Microsoft is providing your email, if you’re servicing your email through that work account for just a couple of bucks a month, it adds some business level business grade security protocols to your email. So again, I’m not telling you Microsoft family and personal is not secure. It is. I’m just saying that when you have a work account, you get some added benefits and features that are designed specifically for business users.

Of course with a work account when you subscribe to a service Microsoft 365 service through these accounts, there’s also natural and inherent collaboration that is with a work account, so sharing calendars, sharing folders, you get SharePoint typically with a work account, which I don’t necessarily encourage law firms to use, but I want you to know what’s out there. If you’re a longtime listener of New Solo, you know that I love legal specific document management services, but I have found that more and more firms are using SharePoint. So SharePoint is a business feature. You only get a service like SharePoint with a work account, and if you look through the past catalog of New Solo, I think last year I did an episode specifically explaining the difference between OneDrive and SharePoint. So I’ll mention this really quickly since I brought that up, and I do encourage you to go back and listen to that episode.

If you’re trying to put all these Microsoft 365 pieces together with a personal and family account, of course you get OneDrive and with work account you also get OneDrive, but on top of that you get SharePoint. SharePoint is designed for collaboration and being used as a shared resource. It’s kind of meant to replace a good old fashioned server that you had in your office while OneDrive, which you get with either account type, personal or work is given to everyone, and that is the location where you store your documents and of course you can share them with other people, but you have to do it more deliberately than you do with SharePoint. The last thing I’ll say about that because this is just the example that I use all the time, is when you put things on SharePoint and its access to its different libraries, think of them as folders has been set up correctly.

It’s a lot like having that file room out in the middle of the office where anybody that had access to the file room could go and get files, could store files, could get office supplies. It’s sort of the central shared location for files. While OneDrive is a little bit more like having a drawer in your desk, in order for somebody to get the files out of the drawer in your desk, you have to give them permission whether that’s a key or just yes, come on in to come into your office to come over to your desk and to pull open that drawer and pull those files out so you’re managing sharing a little more explicitly and specifically with OneDrive, while when SharePoint is a place that files are being shared, it’s more like, okay, everybody in the firm has access to all of the files that are in the client work folder, often called the library in SharePoint.

So again, your benefits for an attorney for a law firm with the work accounts is that you get these added business apps and features and security protocols. The last account type that we’ll talk about is going to be a quick gloss over are known as third party accounts, and many of you have one of these. Those of you that have bought Microsoft 365 through a service like GoDaddy, you are packaging your Microsoft 365 subscription through GoDaddy because maybe you bought a domain name and they’re also hosting your website. And when you were going through the process of buying that domain name, a service like GoDaddy very conveniently says, Hey, we see you’re buying a domain name. Do you want email with this domain as well? Your answer is probably always yes because you’re like, heck yeah, that sounds like it’s going to be a lot easier than me trying to figure out how to connect an email address.

So a lot of you will buy a domain maybe hosting and then Microsoft 365 through a third party account like GoDaddy. Oftentimes that’s fine. I will tell you that I spend a lot of time helping people quote divorce their Microsoft 365 account from their GoDaddy account. So if you can avoid it, buy your domain name and buy your hosting at a service like GoDaddy, that’s fine, but I always recommend you go directly to Microsoft to get yourself that work account and then you can still connect your domain to your email account through Microsoft. Sometimes you might have to get a little bit of it help to do that. Sometimes you can figure it out on your own. Microsoft does kind of have a step-by-step where it helps you connect that domain that you may have bought on a third party site like GoDaddy. But long story short, third party accounts are where you’re just buying your Microsoft 365 through some other service and not going directly to microsoft.com and also paying your bill directly to Microsoft.

You’re paying it to this third party and it’s often bundled with your purchases When you’re buying your domain name, oftentimes many of you are unsure of which account type you have. So let me give you a couple of ways to figure that out. First and foremost, the easiest way to go find out is open up any app. So here I’m going to open up Microsoft Word on my desktop, whether you’re a PC or a Mac, I’m going to open Word. Then I’m going to click on that file button to go to the backstage area of Word and look at, you’ll see the part where it says New recommended for you. It’s got your recently access documents. You can do this in any of the Microsoft apps, but basically you’re going to click on that tab that takes you to, they call it the backstage or the getting started page.

So I’m going to click on file in Word, I’m going to scroll down or look down. On the bottom left hand side there’s a column and you should see the word account there. When you see the word account, you’ll click on it and then on the right hand side of your screen it’s going to say Product Information, Microsoft, and then it should say subscription product for should have your email address, and then it’s going to tell you whether you’re using Microsoft 365 apps for business, which is my subscription type, and you’ll get some information there. Of course, you can also go to office.com, log in. By the way, if you go to office.com and you get redirected to GoDaddy to log in, you have a third party account through GoDaddy. If you go to office.com and you log in without seeing some third party login portal or login without getting prompted to log into a third party service, chances are that you’re directly connected to Microsoft through your account and you’ll log in with your user ID and password.

Once you’re in there, you can go to the top right hand corner, click on my account and then take a look at what type of account you have. I hope that helps. One more quick visual aid for Windows users. This is not going to be helpful for Mac users, but for Windows users down on the bottom right hand corner of your screen where the time is and all of your other little easy access icons, you should see a little cloud down there. Your OneDrive cloud, that cloud is gray. It’s a personal Microsoft account. If that cloud is blue, it’s a work account and you might have both Gray Cloud and a Blue Cloud like I do, and that means I have both. I’ve got my personal OneDrive that I can look up and store files of my personal life in two very easily, but of course there’s my Blue cloud, which I can also access very easily through File Explorer and see my business accounts.

Speaking of File Explorer, when I open up File Explorer, and this should be the same on a Mac, which of course is called Finder on a Mac, when you click on File Explorer or go to Finder, you will see the clouds again, or maybe on a Mac you don’t see the clouds. No, I think you do. I don’t have my Mac open, so you’ll have to just follow along as best you can. Typically the drives which are, you can think of them like big fat folders where you store all your stuff, but your drives will actually say Adriana personal, and that’s where all my personal files are. And then it might say Adriana for me it says Law Tech Partners, which is the name of my company. So I can very clearly see that I have two file locations to store things into. One is my personal, it literally says personal in File Explorer, and then my work account has my company name, my law firm, excuse me, I’m not a law firm.

It has my company name next to it. I also happen to have a OneDrive account for the San Diego County Bar Association where I work. It says Adriana San Diego County Bar Association. So there are a lot of visual clues that should help you figure out whether you have a worker or a personal account. But of course the main thing is a Gmail account, an Outlook account or a Yahoo account, something like that. You end up having a personal account, but there’s always a catch, right? So I have a work account, but I didn’t service my email through it because I’m a Gmail user. So you might see, and don’t get thrown off by this, I don’t use Microsoft for email. I use Google Workspace, which is their enterprise level for email. So my login for my work account is actually one that Microsoft sort of assigns you when you aren’t using Microsoft’s email service.

Many of you are, so don’t let this throw you off if you’re using Google, and this is probably going to apply to you, but when you sign up for a work account and you aren’t having your email serviced through Microsoft 365, they will assign you an email address and it normally ends in dot on microsoft.com. So my login for my Microsoft 365 work account is actually Adriana at Law Tech Partners dot on microsoft.com. It doesn’t mean anything. I don’t use that email address. I sort of ignore that it’s there, but if you see something like that in your account description or when you go to account information in one of your Microsoft 365 apps, then again chances are you have a business account. Alright, I hope that explains and doesn’t confuse you even more, but do take a moment to look around if you aren’t sure and figure out what type of account you have because that is going to make a difference on the subscription types and the apps and services that you’re able to subscribe to.

We’re going to take a quick break, listen to some messages from some sponsors, and when we come back we’re going to talk about subscription types that are based on your account types. Okay, and we’re back to talk about Microsoft subscription types, help you figure out which one you have. Do you want to upgrade it, change it or add to it? So I’ll tell you the best way to follow along with this part of the conversation is to open up a web browser, and I’m going to do this as I’m recording this with you and just type in the words Microsoft Office pricing. So you’re going to do a Google search or a Bing search, whatever you want for that. Once you do that, you’re going to of course get some hits. You want to scroll past the sponsored stuff and the very first normal link you should get is compare all Microsoft 365 plans or something similar to that.

As I’m reading this, it reminds me this used to be called Office 365. Remember Microsoft rebranded itself, I think last year rebranded. What we knew is Office 365 where we pretty much just got word, Excel, outlook, SharePoint, the basic office suite of products, which is why it was called Office 365. They’ve added so many services and apps and programs that they just are now calling it Microsoft 365 where you could subscribe to and take advantage of calendaring, software, form software, all kinds of stuff. So now we just call it Microsoft 365. So what you’re used to being Office 365, we want to go to the link that says Compare all Microsoft 365 plans. When you click on that page, if you take a moment to look around, you’ll see that there are two horizontal links, one that says for home and one that says for business.

Now this is where you would typically go and where I send everyone when they’re buying their Microsoft 365 account and subscriptions for the first time. But again, if you’re trying to figure out what you have or whether you want to create a second account, let’s say you figured out that, oh my gosh, I have been using a personal account for my work. My whole law firm is stuck inside this personal account. I’m a Solo. I’m getting ready to hire a new secretary for the first time or a new assistant, and it would be great if we could share calendars, if we could easily share files and you’re thinking then about adding or switching to a business account, this is where you would go, but you should go and look at the site anyway to understand what your options are. So here I am on this page that has compare all Microsoft 365 products as an option.

So there’s two hits. Kind of scroll down maybe about a third of the way down it says for home or for business. So that’s what we were first talking about, the difference between family and personal accounts and business. So let me just take a moment to just give you a little bit of feedback and information on the difference between the family and the personal accounts. Many of you say to me, oh, well we have a family account because my wife also uses Microsoft 365. So you would’ve purchased then a Microsoft 365 family account. It’s good for two to six people, so it’s not designed for one person, it’s literally designed for a family. Even if that family is just two people, it’s still a family. It’s $99 a year for up to six users. So it would be your husband, your kids, your mother-in-Law, six people can get the Microsoft 365 family account.

Any one of those six people can be logged into their Microsoft 365 account on five different devices all at one time. So your husband is able to be logged onto his iPhone, his Mac at home, his PC at the office, and his Android device that he uses when he’s watching football and just has to have a device in his hands, right? So one person can be logged into five devices or each person I should say, with this Microsoft 365 account, and that doesn’t matter, doesn’t care if you’re a pc, a Mac, whether you’re using phones or tablets. The whole family as a whole gets six terabytes of storage and then you get Word, Excel, PowerPoint, defender, OneDrive, outlook, OneNote, and a few other services. You also get, and don’t forget, this is a secure service identity, data and device security. So security is tied in to these accounts, whether it’s a family or a work account.

Now we’re still talking sort of about these personal and home accounts. So I just described to you the Microsoft 365 for family, it’s designed for two to six people. There’s also the personal, which many of you have. If you literally have no one else that you wanted to share, a Microsoft 365 account, instead of that one being $99 a year, it’s $69 a year. It’s per person. Only one person is able to log in, not at a time because you still get to be logged into up to five devices at once, and that one person, often you if you’re a true Solo, gets one terabyte of cloud storage and that cloud storage is of course typically found inside of your OneDrive. OneDrive is where we store our files. You do get all the apps, word, Excel, PowerPoint, outlook, and of course that security is built in and then you get an email address with that.

Of course you don’t have to use it, but it’s probably an Outlook account. You can always still use your Gmail or whatever you want, but those are the family accounts and the personal accounts. So keep that in mind and remember, if you’ve got a Gray Cloud or if it says Dash personal next to your Drive and finder or explorer, you’ve got one of these 99 or $69 a year subscriptions. As a law firm business owner, I always recommend of course that you have the four business or those work accounts. So on this page, again, I’m simply going to click to look at the four business options. So remember I’m on this Microsoft Compare all products page, try to get a good understanding of what my subscription options are. Now based on my account types with that personal or family account type, your two subscription types are personal, one person or family up to six people.

So now let’s take a look at the for business subscriptions. When it comes to for business, you get pretty much the same things that you got with your Microsoft personal except you have the ability to add on more enhanced features. You get Microsoft Teams, you get your custom business email address if you want it. So again, if you bought a domain name, you can use it with Outlook. You get a bookings service. So a lot of you’re paying for Calendly or Acuity. Remember because the business accounts are geared toward businesses, you get some apps and services that are really helpful to you as a small business owner. You get Planner, which is kind of like a to-do list for a group. You can create secure online forms that people can fill out using Microsoft Forms. You get automatic spam and malware filtering with a business account.

So when you’re using a service like Gmail or you’re getting your email through GoDaddy or a OL or Yahoo, those service Gmail, Yahoo, a OL, anything else are your spam and malware filtering providers, they are the ones who are letting the email pass through. So they are the ones that are managing your spam. A lot of times you have your Gmail inside of Outlook and you are marking something as junk mail thinking that Outlook is marking those emails as junk for you. Outlook is never marking your emails as junk or spam. It is the service provider behind Outlook that is doing that for you. So if you have a Microsoft 365 work account and your email is being serviced through that account by Microsoft, then Microsoft is providing your spam and malware and security features. If you are using Gmail or a OL or Yahoo, then those services are providing your spam and malware and security features for your email.

Keep that in mind. It’s really different. A lot of you call me or make appointments to the San Diego County Bar or through my private consulting business and say, I click this is spam all the time and it doesn’t seem to do anything. While there might be a reason for that, you might not be going to the direct source to mark things as spam. I hope that helps and didn’t confuse you even more with understanding spam and malware filtering and stuff with your email. But it is again important for you to understand who’s servicing your email and how you’re getting your Microsoft 365 services. So back to talking a little bit more about work accounts. You get SharePoint here as soon as you switch over to the work accounts where you’re subscribing to a business subscription. An added feature is of course SharePoint and then Exchange.

Which exchange is that email service provider that I mentioned earlier? See Outlook is just a mailbox, just like you might have a mailbox at a UPS store, right? So in that mailbox you’re going to get mail that comes via FedEx. You’re going to get mail that comes via USPS. You’re going to get mail that comes via UPS itself or even DHL. That mailbox is just a place where your mail lands who is servicing your email or your packages in a physical world on the backend. You can think about email as being the same sort of service outlook is just your mailbox, unless of course you’re using outlook.com, which is Microsoft’s version of Gmail, in which case Microsoft is indeed then providing your spam and malware filtering because they are your email service [email protected]. Okay, so let’s just talk a little bit about the different business subscriptions that you can get.

I will tell you right now, if you go to this page that I’m looking at, you’re going to see four different prices. This is not all of them, but these are the most popular. There’s a $6 per user per month where you get Microsoft 365 business basic subscription. None of you want this as attorneys. I’m telling you right now, none of you want to be paying $6 for business basics and here’s why. That only includes the web-based apps. You cannot download Word, you cannot download Outlook, you cannot download Excel. They’re all on microsoft.com, which is fine, and the truth is this is where we’re headed anyway. So maybe some of you do have only the web apps, but that’s the $6 a month. You still get all of the services, you still get security. If Microsoft is servicing your email, you just aren’t able to download the apps, which means you have to be connected to the internet.

Most of you don’t want that because it means you have to be connected to the internet all the time. And of course we have internet problems. We get on airplanes, internet just blips out, so a lot of us do like having the desktop apps available to us, but just a glimpse into the future, everybody, they’re pushing us to the web. Okay? What most of you have is the $8 and 25 cents a month subscription, which is Microsoft 365 apps for business. The $6 one is called Business Basic. Again, most of us don’t want that. Many of you start with the $8 and 25 cents. It’s apps for business. This is where you get the desktop versions of Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Outlook. You get a terabyte of cloud storage per firm user, and you do get really good phone and web support. By the way, with any of the business apps.

Once you’re logged into your admin account, once you have a work account slash business subscription, then there’s actually very good support. So a lot of you get stuck sometimes and I walk you through logging into your account and dealing with the technical or subscription issue. So keep that in mind too. Now, after the $8 and 25 cents, you can go up to Business Standard where you get more features like webinars with attendee registration reporting, you get more collaborative workspaces. There’s this cool new feature inside of Microsoft called Microsoft Loop where you can build components like let’s say you build a table inside of Excel and you want to put that table inside of a Word document, but you and your team also want to be able to massage that table of assets inside of a teams meeting. So Loop allows you to take that table and keep it alive and updated and consistent through all of the Microsoft products.

It’s pretty neat. They also give you video editing and design tool called Microsoft Click Champ and a couple of other great services and features. So like I said, typically once you start at that $8 25 cents a month, it just goes out from here. So there’s a $22 a month subscription that includes everything from business Basics and Business Standard and Apps for Business, which is the three we just talked about before and has enhanced cybersecurity, threat protection, enterprise grade device and endpoint protection. So more security, and then you can also classify and protect sensitive information at a greater level. Now of course, if you’re going to subscribe to these advanced features, either you or somebody that works with you or for you like your outsourced IT company, it needs to be really good at understanding how to take advantage of these services. So if you’re paying $22 a month per user per subscription, make sure that your IT company or you, whoever’s helping you has literally gone and turned all these features on so that you are using what you are paying for.

Well, I’ll wrap up this conversation about the subscription types that you have access to based on your account types. I just encourage you to do this Google search for Microsoft 365 pricing and go look at the different cloud services and web and mobile apps that you get based on the subscription service that you then have. One last note, if you have Microsoft 365 that ends in a number like 2019 or 2021, those are not subscription. You paid a one-time price for a one-time download or installation of something like Word or Outlook, they typically come separate. So if you are looking for the most recent versions of all these apps, word, Excel, PowerPoint and Outlook all the time, then you want to have an ongoing recurring Microsoft 365 subscription. A lot of you don’t need it, right? And I get it, not everyone needs Microsoft 365 to be brutally honest.

I don’t know what lawyer on this Planet doesn’t need all these services, but every once in a while I do see a good use case someone who’s maybe semi-retired or slowing down their practice or use Google Workspace, but you still want to have just word for the occasions where you are working with a client. You really want Word documents or you’ve got to upload or share Word documents and you don’t do a lot with only PDFs, then I get it. But for the most part, a modern business today I think is running Microsoft 365. So I really want to make sure that you understand what you have, what you’re paying for, all of these subscription types now have the ability for you to add on Microsoft copilot. We’re going to talk about that in the last segment of today’s podcast after we listen to a few messages from some sponsors and we’re back.

So just a hopefully short segment on understanding apps, and I wanted to very specifically talk about Outlook. I know it’s storing a bunch of people off and the web versus desktop apps, which I’ll repeat a little bit from the previous section and specifically about copilot. So with all of these subscription types, whether you have home or business, you have the ability to download the apps or work on the web apps. Well, Microsoft has thrown us for a little bit of Loop of a Loop lately with Outlook. If you’ve downloaded Outlook, you may have been enticed by a button that says New Outlook, try the new outlook. And then if you’ve done that, you’ve noticed maybe some weird things happening, like some folders are missing some of your add-ons like the Clio Add-on if you happen to be a Clio user isn’t there and you panic because things are missing.

Well, what has happened is Microsoft has introduced to many of our desktops sort of this hybrid version of Outlook where it’s more rubbish than it is desktop ish. And hopefully you figured out that if you go back to that same button where you switch off the new outlook, go back to the old, all those features and functions and maybe even folders have come back. Well, what has really happened is that Microsoft has on a lot of our PCs, and I’m not really sure if Macs have had this happen to them. Sorry, I haven’t tested this on my Mac lately, but at least for the Windows users and Mac, you have to let me know maybe in a comment if this happened to you too. If you’ve got that new button, I think you do, it’s installed a second version of Outlook, and if you do a search at least on your Windows machine, so I’m going to come down here and I’m going to click search, I’m going to type Outlook after I have clicked on flipped on that new outlook at least once.

You should actually see Outlook on your desktop search twice. You should see one that says Outlook with the Word app underneath it, and then you’ll see a second outlook that has in very insultingly small, tiny letters in the bottom right hand corner, PRE, like it’s a preview for the new Outlook, and that is the new outlook. So let’s say you like the way the new outlook looked, but you were missing some of that functionality. You can actually open both versions at the same time and flip between them. Why would you want to do that? I don’t know. I do. I kind of like the new outlook, but then maybe I’m helping someone. I need to open up my old outlook. You can have them both open. It’s not practical. I’m just telling you that it’s there and you might want to get used to it because when Microsoft does this sort of stuff, it’s because they’re slowly pushing us in a direction.

Think about this. Your desktop apps require a download and update and often a restart. It’s a lot of maintenance to keep all of these millions, if not billions of PCs up to date when there’s something installed locally on our hard drives. All these companies, QuickBooks is a great example, is figuring out that if they can just move all the features and functionality to web based versions of their apps, it’s a lot easier for them to keep them updated. For us, they’re likely more secure because they’re not downloading and installing stuff on our hard drives. Whether you’re a personal or work account user, you do get Outlook. If you have flipped that switch for the new outlook, turn it off if it’s not what you like or you’re missing some features. But also check to see if you have two installations running, in which case you can run them side by side.

So last thing I just wanted to emphasize as far as the apps go is to go look at the comparison page that we mentioned in the segment. After you do a Google search from Microsoft 365 pricing, it’s going to show you all the different apps and services that you have access to based on a subscription. So that’s one way that you can see and decide on what apps you would get. You will get, you might want if you change your subscription or your account type, but if you want to see what apps you have access to right now, you’re going to go to office.com. You’re going to log in from your home screen, which should say Microsoft 365 at the top in the top right hand corner, you should see your silhouette, your picture, and or your initials when you’re on this home screen that says, welcome to Microsoft 365.

On the left hand side you will see a button that says apps. Remember, if you’re a GoDaddy user, you’re going to have to go through GoDaddy and this might not look exactly the same for you, but the point here is when I click on apps within my Microsoft 365 account by going to office.com, I can see all of the apps and services that I’m already paying for. Forms is in here Stream by the way. Stream is, again, back to the work accounts is a place where you can keep and share videos within the firm. So if you’ve created training videos to onboard new assistants or how to time Keep in my law firm, you can actually keep videos in a video library Inside Stream. Of course you’ve got to do, which is a way for you one person to list and manage your tasks. There’s a service called Planner, which is a way a group of people can work on projects together.

It’s that kan bond style of managing projects. You get a whiteboard, you get this cool new tool called Lists if you like Excel and if you think you liked Access back in the day, which it’s still around, but it’s very confusing. There’s a new service inside of Microsoft 365 called Lists, and I like to say that it’s as if Access and Excel and Canva had a baby. So you can really create cool lists of data that include links, images, check boxes. It’s way easier than using Excel. You also get Power Automate with a work account, which is Microsoft’s answer to Zapier. I’ll tell you honestly, I have a hard time with Power Automate, especially after using something like Zapier, which is so easy. But you can really automate your workflows, your document work, all kinds of stuff with Power Automate. So if you’re interested in learning more about that, I would definitely hit up YouTube, figure out a way to use these tools and services.

So it’s important that you figure out what apps you have, what services you have, which are cloud-based, which are web-based. It’s going to make your whole life a lot easier and understanding how to become more productive and more efficient when you know what you have access to. Let’s finish off this conversation with talking about copilot. So Microsoft’s copilot, it’s an odd term. There’s a word copilot, there’s a Bing copilot, there’s an Excel copilot. They’re basically using the word copilot to describe any of the AI robots that are getting baked into our services. We get some copilot for free and to remind you, Microsoft is chat GPTs number one investor. So what we are talking about when we’re talking about copilot is chat PT baked into Microsoft 365, but a couple months ago they introduced copilot from Microsoft 365, which then puts Microsoft 365 apps within.

Actually, it’s the other way around. Puts copilot into Microsoft 365. That means you can have copilot, summarize a Word document from within Word. You can have copilot help you draft emails. Again, as long as you’re using a Microsoft 365 account. By the way, for Microsoft Copilot to work inside of Outlook, you do have to be having your email serviced by Microsoft. Now the copilot subscriptions are extra, so keep this in mind. You have to go into your billing in your Microsoft account and add copilot. It’s $20 a month per user inside of personal family accounts, and it’s $30 a month for those of us who are using work professional accounts. If you are five person firm and you’re just not sure if it’s worth it, get it for yourself first. Get it added to your subscription, get it installed. You do have to update your licenses.

Microsoft walks you through how to do that and check it out. I have a feeling if you start using it and see how helpful it can be to summarize documents, draft language for you, create images, which you can still do for free by the way, over on Edge and inside of Bing, you’re going to find it’s pretty useful. So copilot, which I think is wonderful is Microsoft’s AI tool and service. It’s backed and really built on chat GPT, but of course when you’re subscribing to it within your Microsoft 365 account, all of your data is secure. You are not putting any of your or your client’s data out into the large language model world. Microsoft is promising to keep it secure and private, and this is really important for those of you that are doing lawyering tasks. When you get copilot for Microsoft 365 and have successfully subscribed to it, Microsoft makes you go through this new billing update process.

It’s a little bit of a pain, you guys, I got to be honest, but you just follow the steps. I managed to figure it out. You will see a copilot button inside of Outlook, inside of Word, inside of PowerPoint, inside of Excel and some of your other services, and it’s really cool. I strongly encourage you to use it. So I really hope this has helped you get a better understanding of what type of account you have, why you might want to switch to a work account. If you’ve been using a personal account. Personally, I think everybody should have both a personal Microsoft 365 or maybe you’re using Gmail as your personal, which is fine, but if you’re a Microsoft 365 user and you’re doing a lot of your client work, you really should be on the business side, the work accounts, and you want to make sure that you’ve really turned on all of the security functions and features that two-factor authentication is turned on, that you’re using the Microsoft 365 Authenticator app to get logged in.

These are really important security measures and controls that will really help you meet a lot of those standards when it comes to protecting your client data. Well, I hope this was useful. Again, I appreciate all you listeners all the time. It really means a lot to me to get your notes. Escher. Hope to hear from you if this episode was helpful. If you have any other questions, maybe you’ll do a question and answer segment. Send any of your questions to [email protected]. That’s my email about your Microsoft 365 subscriptions and questions. I’m not offering tech support, but if there’s enough of the same question that comes in once or twice, I’d be happy to do a follow-up and try to help the masses in a better way with my limited knowledge. But maybe I can dig in a little bit and make this podcast even more useful for everyone. If you have ideas for any other podcast topics, send them my way. I’d love to hear from you. Thanks again for listening to another episode of New Solo and I’ll see you next time

Speaker 6:

From nine to five. Been Biting My Tongue for all. This time won’t let anyone Clock Me show. I was thinking this was the way to go and you put up your pocket show. I say.

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