8 Office 365 Add-ons You Can’t Live Without

Microsoft’s Office 365 is an incredibly powerful and comprehensive suite on its own, but with add-ons you can supercharge your Office 365 productivity. Whether it’s saving you from opening another app or window, automating a process or making sure that report or email is grammatically flawless, there is an Office 365 add-in for the task. Here are eight Office 365 add-ons that will have you doing your best work in record time.

1. Translator

Even if translation isn’t a daily task, the ability to highlight text and automatically translate it to or from almost 50 languages is simply amazing and much simpler than cutting and pasting text into a separate app or online service. The Translator add-on relies on Microsoft’s robust Translator online service for its translations. Suggested translations can easily be edited before inserting them into the document and, in the case of multiple potential interpretations of a passage, all versions will be displayed.

2. Search the Web

Opening up an extra window to do a quick web search may not take that long, but it’s a distraction. Search the Web lets you perform a standard Google search or Google Image search within a pane in any Office 365 app. Get the answer or image you need and get back to work in moments.

3. FindTime

Trying to schedule meetings can be one of the most frustrating and time-consuming tasks in any office. FindTime can’t automate the process completely, but it will definitely save you from endless back and forth. It first locates open spaces in all participants’ schedules and provides you with those options at which point you select several times and put them to a vote among the attendees. Once sufficient votes have been tallied for a specific time, the meeting is automatically scheduled.

4. DocuSign for Outlook

DocuSign is one of the most popular e-signature solutions on the market and, with this add-on or its Word counterpart, you can securely sign a document yourself or have a recipient securely sign. You also have the option to save all signed documents automatically to Microsoft OneDrive. A 10-day free trial is available to test the service, and monthly subscriptions start at $10 per month.

5. Pexels

Looking to dress up that report or presentation with good-looking images without scouring Google for an hour? Pexels lets you easily search for professional stock photos and instantly drop them into your document. The images are all under a Creative Commons Zero license meaning that you can use them for any legal purpose without the need for attribution. Speed up the process even further by using the popular images gallery or save your favorites for future usage.

6. Grammarly

Grammarly is an unsurpassed proofreading tool that will help improve your writing, whether it’s a simple email or a full-blown report. The Grammarly add-on operates in Word and Outlook to make your writing cleaner and more direct with more than 250 grammar and spelling checks, vocabulary suggestions, writing style suggestions and even a plagiarism detector. Grammarly Premium costs $11.66 a month when paid annually.

7. Office Tabs

Thanks to every modern web browser, we have all grown accustomed to tabbed interfaces. Office Tabs brings that familiar paradigm to Word, PowerPoint and Excel. At a basic level the add-in allows you to open multiple files within the same window, but the functionality goes much deeper than that. Users can quickly close or save all documents with a single click or all but the currently active document. Some quick changes like renaming a document or saving to a new folder can be done by right-clicking on the documents tab in the taskbar. In a document you can easily hide the taskbar with a quick keyboard shortcut and then just as quickly bring it back.

8. StaffHub

For staff workers, Microsoft offers an app that can help them schedule their shifts. This is particularly helpful for service and factory workers who often lack an office or computer, but do have a smartphone. Workers will be able to swap shifts without relying on bulletin boards and paper schedules. IT admins can also add important documents to the app. For now it will only be available to companies with unlimited-user licenses.

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