Microsoft Office 365 Question

Cromulent · 14 Feb 2017 at 03:40

So in the past I've always used Google Apps for Work (now called G-suite I think) but for a new domain and new business I'm thinking of subscribing to Office 365 for email and Microsoft Office 2016. One of the features I use a lot in G-Suite is being able to use the online spreadsheet app and the word processing online app and then sharing documents with people outside of my domain. Can I do the same thing with online Word and Excel in Office 365? I'd like to be able to share read only and if a specific person has the correct URL make them able to edit the document as well. I might also just want to be able to let other people leave comments on documents and spreadsheets without actually being able to edit the real content.

Basically being able to share documents with people is very important to me and I need to be able to share documents to people outside of my organisation. Is this sort of thing possible in Office 365?

Obviously I can also just create documents with the desktop apps and just email them to other people but being able to use the online apps is very useful for collaborative editing and viewing on the go and stuff.

Thanks for any help

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Edit: Oh and another question. I currently have a personal OneDrive account with some not very important personal files in it. If I get Office 365 will I be able to sync both my personal OneDrive and my business OneDrive on the same computer?

Carta · 14 Feb 2017 at 08:06

Use O365 at my work and it does indeed make it very easy to share work via onedrive. You can assign privileges to each shared document or you can share the whole folder.

I haven't had much experience with joint collaborations on documents so I cant comment, but I do have both of my personal and business onedrives mapped as the business one uses "onedrive for business" and personal is just onedrive

Cromulent · 14 Feb 2017 at 08:35

Carta said:
Use O365 at my work and it does indeed make it very easy to share work via onedrive. You can assign privileges to each shared document or you can share the whole folder.

I haven't had much experience with joint collaborations on documents so I cant comment, but I do have both of my personal and business onedrives mapped as the business one uses "onedrive for business" and personal is just onedrive

Cool. Thanks. Sharing sounds cool. I guess I can edit a document using the desktop versions and upload them to OneDrive where I can then share them with other people as well? That would be pretty damn sweet if that was possible as I generally prefer to work in the desktop apps rather than the online versions (although if I am away from my computer being able to login via a browser and continue editing them would be really good).

Sounds like Office 365 is exactly what I want.

Carta · 14 Feb 2017 at 09:55

Cromulent said:
Cool. Thanks. Sharing sounds cool. I guess I can edit a document using the desktop versions and upload them to OneDrive where I can then share them with other people as well? That would be pretty damn sweet if that was possible as I generally prefer to work in the desktop apps rather than the online versions (although if I am away from my computer being able to login via a browser and continue editing them would be really good).

Sounds like Office 365 is exactly what I want.

Yeah you can, also edit on the fly with web apps if you are out of the office (done this on my phone)

Usually save to onedrive and edit the permissions of the file via the onedrive itself, havent tried to share that within an office application (word,excel etc)

Cromulent · 14 Feb 2017 at 10:12

Carta said:
Yeah you can, also edit on the fly with web apps if you are out of the office (done this on my phone)

Usually save to onedrive and edit the permissions of the file via the onedrive itself, havent tried to share that within an office application (word,excel etc)

Sweet. I'll be signing up then as soon as I buy my domain

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Simmz · 14 Feb 2017 at 10:39

Hi, yes you can share documents internally and externally with onedrive for business, but I'd recommend using this just for personal files and creating a sharepoint team site (basically an office 365 group built with some sharepoint backend). You can create this in literally 30 seconds and add in whoever you wish to that group. Within there you can share folders, documents, basically use it like you would a file server. You can also have 40 people at any one time work on the same document. As for auditing, you can drill all the way down to who shared what, if it was downloaded, even right down to single character key strokes. MS also launched all the new security for onedrive & sharepoint a few weeks ago, so you can also completely lock it down by IP etc if you wish to do so, or just allow documents to be worked on using the online version of office and not be downloaded locally to their machines

Cromulent · 14 Feb 2017 at 10:44

Simmz said:
Hi, yes you can share documents internally and externally with onedrive for business, but I'd recommend using this just for personal files and creating a sharepoint team site (basically an office 365 group built with some sharepoint backend). You can create this in literally 30 seconds and add in whoever you wish to that group. Within there you can share folders, documents, basically use it like you would a file server. You can also have 40 people at any one time work on the same document. As for auditing, you can drill all the way down to who shared what, if it was downloaded, even right down to single character key strokes. MS also launched all the new security for onedrive & sharepoint a few weeks ago, so you can also completely lock it down by IP etc if you wish to do so, or just allow documents to be worked on using the online version of office and not be downloaded locally to their machines

Ah. Thanks for telling me about this. OK. Stupid question incoming

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Basically the business I'm planning on starting will just be me on my own so it'll just be me working on these documents for the most part although I might send the odd document off with edit permissions to people outside the business but for the most part it'll just be read only documents that I send via email links.

If I used this Sharepoint system would that make sharing files and folders easier for people outside of the business? So say I email a person working at (off the top of my head as an example) Zotac and want to give them access to a document what do I do? Just include a URL in the email or is it more complex than that?

Carta · 14 Feb 2017 at 11:04

I think you can make a file on that sharepoint public and then send them the link

Cromulent · 14 Feb 2017 at 11:39

Carta said:
I think you can make a file on that sharepoint public and then send them the link

Cool. Thanks

. I'll look into Sharepoint then. I've never heard of it before today.

Simmz · 14 Feb 2017 at 15:07

Yeah, you can share the file directly with them.

If it's just yourself and the odd person, then stick with onedrive to begin with, but if you grow and need multiple people etc, look into sharepoint teams.

Django x2 · 14 Feb 2017 at 16:34

Simmz said:
Hi, yes you can share documents internally and externally with onedrive for business, but I'd recommend using this just for personal files and creating a sharepoint team site (basically an office 365 group built with some sharepoint backend). You can create this in literally 30 seconds and add in whoever you wish to that group. Within there you can share folders, documents, basically use it like you would a file server. You can also have 40 people at any one time work on the same document. As for auditing, you can drill all the way down to who shared what, if it was downloaded, even right down to single character key strokes. MS also launched all the new security for onedrive & sharepoint a few weeks ago, so you can also completely lock it down by IP etc if you wish to do so, or just allow documents to be worked on using the online version of office and not be downloaded locally to their machines

No, OneDrive for Business is for SharePoint online and shouldn't be used for "personal" documents in the true sense of the word. It should be used for business related content. OneDrive for Business is about to die (March I think) and will be replaced by OneDrive NextGen so OD4B can only sync SharePoint document libraries. OneDrive Personal and OneDrive - {insert domain here} are the segregated client for syncing personal stuff.

ie:
OneDrive ([email protected]) is your personal life (photos of your cat in a box that you don't want to share, or selective share with friends and family)
OneDrive - MyCompany is your personal store in your company's Office 365 subscription. I use this as my Work in Progress folder for documents
OneDrive for Business is for syncing SharePoint Libraries and will be going soon, but you would use this to share externally with customers. Then assume your identity when you share, so be careful about only sharing the document (not the library) unless you are sure you are happy for them to see everything in that DL. They don't consume a license so there's no addiitonal cost for sharing externally.

OP, you can also Co-Author through the web apps, ie, you and your shared partner can edit and live comment on the same document at the same time.

Cromulent · 15 Feb 2017 at 04:36

Django x2 said:
No, OneDrive for Business is for SharePoint online and shouldn't be used for "personal" documents in the true sense of the word. It should be used for business related content. OneDrive for Business is about to die (March I think) and will be replaced by OneDrive NextGen so OD4B can only sync SharePoint document libraries. OneDrive Personal and OneDrive - {insert domain here} are the segregated client for syncing personal stuff.

ie:
OneDrive ([email protected]) is your personal life (photos of your cat in a box that you don't want to share, or selective share with friends and family)
OneDrive - MyCompany is your personal store in your company's Office 365 subscription. I use this as my Work in Progress folder for documents
OneDrive for Business is for syncing SharePoint Libraries and will be going soon, but you would use this to share externally with customers. Then assume your identity when you share, so be careful about only sharing the document (not the library) unless you are sure you are happy for them to see everything in that DL. They don't consume a license so there's no addiitonal cost for sharing externally.

OP, you can also Co-Author through the web apps, ie, you and your shared partner can edit and live comment on the same document at the same time.

Hmm. That sounds confusing. I think I'd rather just use the sharing settings within the document to handle sharing. That way I don't need any extra services on my PC in order to share stuff. Although thinking about it I'd need OneDrive on my machine to sync work I do with the desktop applications. I'll have to think about this a bit.

Maybe I could wait until March for the new OneDrive software to come out? Do you have a release date at all or is that still unknown?

Thanks for the post though it was really useful.

Django x2 · 15 Feb 2017 at 10:01

Think of OneDrive as just a sync client. That's really all it is, a conduit for transferring documents from your machine to the cloud (be it OneDrive or SharePoint).
With SharePoint and OneDrive applications (from the browser) you can simply drag and drop documents as required from your desktop and never really need the client installed on the PC, but it can make life easier).

OneDrive4Business is currently part of the Office2016 install which will be deprecated very soon (if installing from O365). There will then be one OneDrive client which will handle all 3 tasks (personal, business personal and SharePoint Libraries). This can be done now with a reghack, but best to wait for the official release.

Also worth noting there are file size limits for both SharePoint and OneDrive and also filename caveats

Cromulent · 15 Feb 2017 at 13:26

Just watched a video about Sharepoint Online and Office 365 sites and stuff on YouTube. Looks pretty complicated to set it all up properly. I'll have to sit down and look through this properly when I sign up for Office 365. This could take awhile

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Django x2 · 15 Feb 2017 at 14:12

Trust me when you're ready and I'll happily talk you through some of the semantics. Or, if you want, I can give you access to my tenant so you can have a roam around.

Cromulent · 16 Feb 2017 at 13:02

Django x2 said:
Trust me when you're ready and I'll happily talk you through some of the semantics. Or, if you want, I can give you access to my tenant so you can have a roam around.

That is very kind of you. I don't think I'll be signing up for a little while though for various reasons. Probably in March or something which is when I'll be planning on starting this business. I'll post in this thread when I'm all set up. Thank you again

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Cromulent · 19 Feb 2017 at 04:28

Django x2 said:
Trust me when you're ready and I'll happily talk you through some of the semantics. Or, if you want, I can give you access to my tenant so you can have a roam around.

Bought my domain and got my new website up and running so I'm now ready to sign up for O365. Will probably do it tomorrow night when I have some free time. Hopefully it works well.

Django x2 · 19 Feb 2017 at 19:20

Cromulent said:
Bought my domain and got my new website up and running so I'm now ready to sign up for O365. Will probably do it tomorrow night when I have some free time. Hopefully it works well.

Cool, Configuring O365 with your domain is a pretty simple process (now). Before, it used to involve a lot of manual DNS entries on your registrar. You can still do it that way of course, but it's a lot easier.

GoTo Domains, Setup Domain, it will ask you to insert one DNS value into your registrar, or, if your registrar is a popular provider (GoDaddy, 123Reg, etc), it will simply ask you to log in (from within O365). This is to verify that you own the domain that you are trying to configure.

The rest is pretty straight forward.

Cromulent · 20 Feb 2017 at 04:18

Django x2 said:
Cool, Configuring O365 with your domain is a pretty simple process (now). Before, it used to involve a lot of manual DNS entries on your registrar. You can still do it that way of course, but it's a lot easier.

GoTo Domains, Setup Domain, it will ask you to insert one DNS value into your registrar, or, if your registrar is a popular provider (GoDaddy, 123Reg, etc), it will simply ask you to log in (from within O365). This is to verify that you own the domain that you are trying to configure.

The rest is pretty straight forward.

Right. I signed up for the Office 365 Business Premium trial and set everything up. Had to do DNS manually because O365 didn't support my DNS host but that wasn't a problem. Made one crucial mistake though I created a second user with [email protected] and found out that that created two users the admin and the second user so I deleted the second user and tried to create an alias for the admin instead but because O365 keeps the user for 30 days before deleting it I can't create a [email protected] email address anymore. Oh well. I guess I'll just have to use my real name. Not much of a problem. I'll set up a second user for my Dad who will be working on this project with me. Outlook 2016 synched the new email account perfectly and is rather easy to use. I might use it for all my email accounts.

Loving the new features in Office 2016. That will certainly come in handy. Especially the new Excel features.

One problem I have is that if I log into the Office 365 portal and go to OneDrive I can see a list of files but I can't see where to download the OneDrive for Business desktop client for Windows 10? It doesn't appear to be anywhere. I mean I know I could use the web interface but actually having the client installed on my Windows 10 desktop would be much better.

I'll look into the other features when I have some more spare time. I'm not sure how many of them I actually need since it is just the two of us at the moment. In the future I might want to use them but for the time being I think they are largely useless. Thank you for your help so far. It has been very useful.

Edit: OK worked it out. The Windows 10 OneDrive client can connect to multiple accounts. So I now have files syncing on my personal account and my Office 365 account so that is cool.

Django x2 · 20 Feb 2017 at 17:21

You don't need OneDrive for business to sync with OneDrive. You need normal OneDrive (in Win10) and when it asks for your email address, you use your new [email protected] address. OneDrive for Business is only for syncing SharePoint libraries now, and that will be going too in a few weeks as OneDrive NextGen comes in.

Oh, I've just seen your Edit.