Student Access
All undergraduate students at the University of Waterloo have an Office 365 account including access to:
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OneNote,
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Mail (Outlook),
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Calendar,
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Word, PowerPoint, and Excel,
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OneDrive,
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And more!
Additionally, there is access to 5TB of OneDrive storage. Students can install Office 2016 (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote, Access, Publisher, Outlook, Skype for Business, OneDrive for Business) for free on up to 5 devices or use the web versions of all Office applications. Undergraduate students will have access to Office 365 throughout their time at the University of Waterloo and for 16 months after their last registered term. Students will receive an expiration email 30 days prior to the expiration as warning.
To access your Office 365 account, go to https://portal.office.com and enter your uWaterloo email address (userid@edu.uwaterloo.ca) and your WatIAM password. If you have trouble logging in go to https://watiam.uwaterloo.ca and reset your password.
Let’s look at some of the most useful Office 365 applications:
OneNote
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Acts as a digital notebook and great organizational tool that syncs across all your devices.
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It’s organized into sections (which can act as separate folders for different courses) and pages (to keep track of different classes within a course).
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You can type, write (and convert to text), draw, speak, and copy links and videos into OneNote to fit your note taking style [1].
Outlook, Calendar, & Tasks
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In Outlook you can check your uWaterloo email (userid@edu.uwaterloo.ca).
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Outlook is also tied to your Calendar and Tasks which makes it easy to share your schedule with classmates and keep on top of due dates and commitments.
Word, PowerPoint, & Excel
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There is a web based version of all three core Office applications available online through the Office 365 portal or you can download the applications and edit documents, presentations and spreadsheets there.
Sway
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Microsoft describes Sway as a ‘re-imagination of how to create and share interactive reports, personal stories, presentations and more’.
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You can create reports, presentations, newsletters, and stories in it that are more interactive than your average presentation [2].
OneDrive
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An online cloud storage system (5TB available to uWaterloo students) for your pictures and files.
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Use the OneDrive for Business client to keep a local copy of your files in sync with your cloud storage [3].
SharePoint
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A collaborative web platform that makes it easier for groups to coordinate with one another. Files and pictures can be added to a mutual SharePoint site to organize information and have it readily accessible for the whole group. [4]
Forms
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Allows you to create quizzes, surveys, questionnaires, and registrations.
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Easy way to quiz yourself, study with friends, and gather data for classes. [5]
Additional Office Features
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Smart Lookup: You can use Smart Lookup with Office 2016, which uses Bing to look up definitions, articles, and top searches on the web. The Smart Lookup can be found under the Review tab. [6]
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Ink Equations: As well as being able to annotate documents, in the new Office 2016 provided by Office 365, you can convert drawings into shape, and you can in addition to writing out equations draw them out using your mouse or a touchpad [7] [8].
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Tell Me: Instead of searching for features, in the tell me box you can type what you are looking for in the Tell me what you want to do… box such as insert a picture, and the application will pull up the corresponding option [9].
References
[1] OneNote 2016 training. Microsoft. Retrieved May 25, 2017, from https://support.office.com/en-us/article/OneNote-2016-Training-51d1d95b-bdf4-48df-acad-a3331dec8f97
[2] Getting Started with Sway. Microsoft. Retrieved May 25, 2017, from https://support.office.com/en-us/article/Getting-Started-with-Sway-2076c468-63f4-4a89-ae5f-424796714a8a
[3] OneDrive. Microsoft Retrieved May 25, 2017, from https://onedrive.live.com/about/en-ca/
[4] What is SharePoint? (Microsoft). Microsoft. Retrieved May 25, 2017, from https://support.office.com/en-us/article/What-is-SharePoint-97b915e6-651b-43b2-827d-fb25777f446f
[5] What is Microsoft Forms? Microsoft. Retrieved May 25, 2017, from https://support.office.com/en-us/forms
[6] Get Insights on what you’re working on with Smart Lookup. Microsoft. Retrieved May 25, 2017, from https://support.office.com/en-us/article/Get-insights-into-what-you-re-working-on-with-Smart-Lookup-debf2083-5ac0-4739-8667-ae2467bec044?ui=en-US&rs=en-US&ad=US
[7] Jones, B (2016, June 20). How to Write Math Equations in Office 2016. Makeuseof.com. Retrieved May 25, 2017 from http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/write-math-equations-office-2016/
[8] Draw and write in ink with Office. Microsoft. Retrieved May 25, 2017, from https://support.office.com/en-us/article/Draw-and-annotate-with-ink-in-Office-2016-c00b7319-2b50-4784-8114-47593d991c5c
[9] Do things quickly with Tell Me. Microsoft. Retrieved May 25, 2017, from https://support.office.com/en-us/article/Do-things-quickly-with-Tell-Me-f20d2198-17b8-4b09-a3e5-007a337f1e4e
[10] [Office 365]. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://static1.squarespace.com/static/541b8bbee4b09b50ed999338/t/58c07de6d482e9c2772e86bc/1489010159755/o365hero.png?format=2500w
