Microsoft is a well-known company on the internet and in real life, as a technological company with line products that involve software and hardware almost in the same way, being the leader in local operating systems with Windows and productivity, chatting and entertainment software, as well as in the manufacturing of computers and other devices labeled with the Surface brand. However, the strength of Microsoft has always been software and the offer of online services, as it proved back in the day with MSN Hotmail as a service platform that still remains active until today, gathering all the service platforms and products offered by the company in just one place, providing the user with a news portal and an official Microsoft Store, too. In this way MSN for more than 20 years has become a recognizable and known brand related to Microsoft, as a portal with millions of users every day and available in many languages. Next we are going to be talking about MSN in terms of a little bit of its history, services available, advantages and other benefits Microsoft users can have through this service platforms. In the beginning, MSN included a news portal with different categories that remains alike at present day, offering also at that time Hotmail as the official email service provided by Microsoft. In simple words, Microsoft have used MSN as commercial brand to promote and offer its services within a platform, including news and other useful information for the users. So, Hotmail was the first service offered through MSN, and then MSN Messenger would be added in 1999 and would become the most used messaging and chatting service globally. Eventually, Microsoft would include services like MSN Search as search engine to find information and web pages online, MSN Virtual Earth for maps, MSN Spaces as online pages for users´ personal use, MSN Alerts for notifications, along with MSN Groups and MSN Direct. In the year of 2006, Microsoft would reorganize almost all of its services under the brand name of Windows Live, being MSN Hotmail rethought and transformed into a content and news portal almost entirely, with options to access Microsoft services with an online approach until this day. The same case would not happen with the Windows Live platform in terms of transformation, being cancelled in 2012 and all the accounts linked with Skype as primary chatting service. Also, Hotmail would become Outlook, MSN Search is now Bing and MSN Virtual Earth is known at present time as Bing Maps. MSN portal and what it offers today MSN through its current domain www. For example, MSN shows users updated news with impact on their location and in their own language, dividing the content in categories of interest for the readers to pick, including weather information in real time, entertainment and sports news, money and lifestyle content, health, food and drink, travel, autos and content in video. Apart from the news, there are other wide sets of services that can be accessed through MSN, which are offered by Microsoft directly without the need of using other software, thanks to the possibilities web pages and advanced web browsers can deliver. First of all, you will be able to access a full search engine to find any information or query you want thanks to Bing, empowering the search bar at the top of the MSN´s home page. Microsoft is a company that offers plenty of products online apart from its OS software and hardware lines, being Outlook the main service platform which conjoins the rest of the service through one account. Throughout MSN, users can access Outlook and check their new emails and send new ones, with tools to modify text and attach documents in just one place. Also, users can open the online version of Skype to chat with their friends, without requiring any software or download whatsoever and offering almost the same benefit of the installable program. With MSN can also access other services offered by Microsoft in real time, such as editing and creating documents in Office, which later can be saved in OneDrive as the personal and business cloud platform Microsoft provides its users, involving up to 5GB of free storage on its free version. In this way, every document, email and content created will be saved on the cloud for protection and safe backup, including other paid plans with more storage, wider download and upload limits and other benefits. Lastly, MSN offers the possibility to access Bing Maps and OneNote directly as platforms that can help you to move and locate destinations easily, as well as saving notes with important information on the go thanks to cloud options of OneDrive. Other services integrated and available on MSN You can access other services in MSN to interact with other users and post comments on the news, thanks to the integrated services of Facebook and Twitter included in the platform where you can log in and use your personal accounts. Like this, the interaction becomes simpler and can be posted on your personal timelines at the moment of leaving a comment or opinion. In this way, MSN results in a platform that can offer entertainment, valuable information and content of interest for the user in real time, as well as providing a set of services that can be very useful by the hand of Microsoft, being the majority of them delivered for free and without the need of other resources or downloads related. Nowadays, internet users have the possibility and advantage to use plenty of online services, covering almost any function and product of interest for people across the world. For example, if we need a calendar, a calculator, and a chatting platform and of course; email services, these are all available online and can be used without the need of downloading any other resources or related software into the device. That is why; a company as Microsoft with great relevance in technological and software business is moving to this new paradigm of use, by redesigning all of its service platforms to have an available and functional online version for all the users. So, Outlook Mail, Skype, OneDrive, Tasks, Photos Sway and software included in the Office suite as Word, PowerPoint, OneNote and others are there to be used by anyone. In order to take advantage of these service platform offered by Microsoft, we just need to create an Outlook or Microsoft account, functioning in first instance as an email product that opens the door for a more useful and powerful conjoined set of instruments and software online to enjoy. In relation to this, in this tutorial we will be speaking about how to use Microsoft Excel Online in Outlook, as a very powerful version of this financial program to be used. To do so, we just have to enter the URL address and provide the platform with proper email address and password, and by doing so we will be in the Outlook´s homepage. In this page we can see our inbox and email content, however from this home screen we also have the opportunity to access the different services related and provided by Microsoft, where we will be able to open Excel Online at just one click. So, by clicking on this option a menu will get displayed and show all the different services and products you can use, such as Skype, OneDrive and others. Included in this list there is the Excel icon for you to find it, being placed with the other online versions of Word, PowerPoint and OneNote. Just click on it and at once another page will be opened showing you Excel as if it were the installable program on Windows. Choosing templates to use on Excel Online and opening locally or cloud stored workbooks Being in the Excel Online platform as another page or tab opened in the browser you are using, at first the service shows you some sort of home screen where you can select the templates to use, in case you require creating a workbook with specific purpose and design, as well as uploading work and projects stored locally or in cloud services. At the left we have the recent panel where are shown all the files opened in date order. Also at the bottom of this panel we can see the options to open files from cloud services like OneDrive and DropBox. To do so, we just have to click in the cloud service where the document is saved, select it and it will get opened. On the other hand, at the left of the screen we have the different templates available for using and creating workbooks with distinct functions and intentions. To select the template we just click on it and Excel will get opened. Although, if we scroll down a little bit we will be able to see other useful templates that can help us to track tasks, manage personal money and expenses and establish family budgets. As in the case explained earlier, we just have to click on the wanted template to open it. In this section of the home screen we can also upload workbooks that are stored locally in our computer or device and we want to still editing them on the go, thanks to possibilities provided by Excel Online. Using Excel Online: different options to edit and create workbooks As it happens with the other Office
