Microsoft Office and Exchange has always been the backbone of many corporate and business enterprises. With the launch of Microsoft Office 365, Microsoft is taking its desktop/server system to the cloud, allowing professionals to access their emails, important documents, contacts and calendars from almost anywhere and from any device.

Microsoft Office 365 isn’t just your regular Microsoft Office on the web. It also consists of Outlook, SharePoint and Lync where you can access your email and collaborate with others. Some of you might think that Microsoft is late to the game and that Google Apps already has the area covered. You’re wrong. After trying Microsoft Office 365, I feel that Office 365 is much more superior (in terms of features and functionality) and is able to integrate better with your desktop/Exchange system. However, it’s also more expensive than Google Apps, starting at $6 per user. There are few components in Office 365: Office web app, Outlook web app, Lync website, and Team.
Table of Contents
Office Web App
Microsoft has released the Office web app for the consumer. Once you’re signed in to your real Windows account, you can view, edit, and create documents with the Office web app. In Office 365, this same Office Web app is there too. The applications that it supports include Ms Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote.
Outlook Web App
The Outlook web app is quite handy and works exactly the same as the desktop version. The default email account is the office365 account, but you can easily configure it to sync with Outlook on your desktop. The calendar, contacts and tasks remain intact. In the contact section in Outlook, you can also select a contact and immediately start a chat session with him/her. This brings us to another Office 365 feature Lync.
Lync (IM)
Microsoft Lync, formerly known as Communications Server, is an instant messaging platform where you can send messages, audio, video, and VoIP. You can install the desktop client (supports Windows only) or receive messages via the web interface. For the desktop client, you can also share your desktop with others during the online meeting.
team site
The team site is where you can create a website for your business and also manage your documents in one central place. When you create a document in the Office web app, the document will be saved to the team site.
Advantage of using Office365
Well integrated Microsoft Office suite, all on the web. If your company is already using Microsoft Exchange, this will make it easier for you to interact and collaborate with each other. 99.9% availability guarantee. This is almost the industry standard. It also means that as long as you’re connected to the web, you’ll have access to your documents and emails.
Disadvantage of using Office365
Too complex – All in one solution. Either you get all the features or none. Google Apps united all the modules, but allowed you to access each of them individually. Too integrated You can only get the full potential of Office 365 if you’re running the Windows operating system and have a Windows Phone 7, or should I say, immerse yourself in a full Windows environment. All in all, for businesses looking to move to the cloud and be more productive at the office, Office365 is definitely a great choice. Although there are advantages and disadvantages, there is no doubt about the quality of its offer.
Viewing & restoring document revisions for Office 365
If you’re familiar with using the Office desktop applications, you know that revisions of the documents you work on are automatically saved and tracked within the document. If you need to look at an older revision or revert back to one, it’s as simple as opening the activity pane and clicking the desired version of the document. however it’s a little different when you aren’t using the Office desktop applications. If you’re away from your computer and need to view these documents using the Office online applications (through the Office portal), you may notice that you can’t find the activity pane to look at older versions. If you need to view or revert a document to a previous revision you can follow the steps in this article to do so.
Note: In order to access the document revisions, you need to have the document in question saved either in OneDrive or inside a SharePoint location
How to access document revisions online
- First make sure you log in to your Office 365 account
- From the portal, open up OneDrive or SharePoint depending on where you have the document saved
- Navigate to where the file is saved
- Once you’ve located the file, right click on it (or click the 3 dots button that appears when you hover the mouse cursor over it) and click Version History from the menu that appears
- The version history pane will open, find the version you’re looking for and right-click it (or click the 3 dots button) and then click Restore from the menu. This will make that specific version active and a new version should appear at the top of the list.
- Now right click the X button in the top right to close the Version history pane, then right click on the document in the list of files and choose to open it in the online app (e.g. Word Online, Excel Online)
- That revision will open in the chosen app and allow you to view and edit it if necessary (be aware changes are saved automatically with the Office online apps)
- If you need to revert or access another revision just follow this process again, as many times as needed. Accessing revisions online is currently not the most intuitive, Microsoft are actively updating their Office online apps and this process may change and become easier in the future. If this process changes at all we will update this article, but for now this is the best way to access version histories of your OneDrive / SharePoint files.