If you’re a student returning to school this fall, it can be a stressful and chaotic period, with new projects, disorganized course notes, fresh deadlines, and a full inbox. However, making the most of the Microsoft 365 tools at your disposal will make getting back into the swing of things a breeze.
1
Manage Deadlines in Microsoft To Do
Microsoft To Do is an easy-to-navigate, AI-powered, stress-saving task management app that can help you organize your tasks, to-do lists, and deadlines. It can help you get off to a good start in the new semester as you switch from beautiful beaches to crowded classrooms.
Many to-do apps on the market charge a one-off or subscription fee for their best features. However, Microsoft To Do is free on Windows, Mac, iOS, and Android devices, and you can also access the free web-based version through the Office website.
All you need to get going is a free Microsoft account. If you have an outlook.com, hotmail.com, live.com, msn.com, or another Microsoft-managed email address, any of these will do. If your school runs its systems on Microsoft, you can use the email address assigned to you when you first enrolled.
Creating a to-do list in Microsoft To Do is quick and easy. Once you’ve opened the app and signed in with your Microsoft account, you’ll see a straightforward sidebar to the left of the main panel. Here’s how it looks on Windows 11.
On the sidebar, you have:
- My Day: This is where the tasks you’ve set yourself to complete today are located.
- Important: Any tasks you’ve identified as priority appear in this list.
- Planned: This is where any tasks with a due date or reminder are displayed.
- Assigned To Me: If someone in your school has delegated a task to you, it shows here.
- Flagged Email: If you flag an email in Microsoft Outlook, it appears as a task in this list—provided you’ve used the same account to log in to both apps.
- Tasks: This is where all tasks not assigned to one of the above lists sit.
To create a new to-do list, click “New List” in the bottom-left corner. Then, select the list in the sidebar, and press F2 to rename it.
After selecting a list, type a task in the bar at the bottom of the window.
Add as much detail as you can, including the due date, and Microsoft does the organizing for you. For example, here, when I typed Complete molecular introduction homework due Friday 22 and pressed Enter, To Do automatically added a due date to the task. You can see this by selecting a task and viewing the pane on the right.
In the same pane, you can add sub-tasks by clicking “Add Step,” add the task to today’s list by clicking “Add To My Day,” or set an alert by clicking “Remind Me.” In fact, there’s a whole host of things you can do with each task in this pane, so take some time to explore the various easy-to-use options.
Finally, once you’ve completed a task, click the round checkbox. If your speakers are turned on, you’ll hear a joyous chime!
2
Collaborate With Peers and Teachers in Microsoft Word
Whether you have been assigned a group task, want to brainstorm ideas for a project with a peer, or want to let your teacher annotate your work, co-authoring in Microsoft Word is the way to go.
To co-author with others in Microsoft Word, you need to have access to a shared storage area, such as a school OneDrive or SharePoint account, and all co-authors must have permission to access and edit the file. Also, you must be using a version of Word released after 2010, and the file you’re working on must be in a modern format (in other words, a DOCX file rather than a DOC file).
Before you share a Word document with someone else, make sure you’ve saved it to the cloud (OneDrive or SharePoint). Then, within the file itself, click “Share” in the top-right corner of the Word window, and click “Share” again in the drop-down menu.
Click “Copy Link” if you’d rather send the link manually, such as in a Microsoft Teams or WhatsApp message.
Next, if you’re using your school account, start typing the name of the person with whom you want to share the file into the text field, and click their name when it appears. If it doesn’t, type their email address instead. The collaborator receives the invitation as an email, so make sure you add a message so they know what the document is, what it contains, and what they need to do with it.
When you’re done, click “Send.”
Now, the recipient can click the link in the email to open the document in Word for the web. If they’d prefer to use the desktop version of Microsoft Word, they can click “Open In Desktop App” in the Editing drop-down menu in the top-right corner of their browser.
If someone is working on the document at the same time as you, you’ll see their initials wherever their cursor is placed.
To change who can access your file, click Share > Manage Access.
3
Organize Your Notes in Microsoft OneNote
Today, pretty much everything is digital, and your class notes, meeting minutes, and research materials can be too with Microsoft OneNote. This handy app is free on Windows, Mac, iOS, and Android devices, and you can access the free web-based version through the Office website.
See OneNote as a digital notebook you can access wherever you are on all your devices—it’s much better than lugging a heavy bag of papers around with you or forgetting where you left your notebook when you think of an idea!
The OneNote for Microsoft 365 interface is made up of three primary panes.
First, on the left, there’s the Section pane, which represents dividers in a ring binder. As well as the default sections, you can add personalized sections by clicking “New Section.” Then, right-click the added section to rename it, or click and drag it to a different position in the Section pane.
Right-click a section and hover over “Section Color” to change the tag. Also, if a particular OneNote section is for your eyes only, right-click it in the Section pane on a desktop version of the program, and click “Password Protect This Section.”
To group sections together, right-click the blank part of the Section pane, and click “New Section Group.” Then, click and drag existing sections into the newly created group.
Then, once you open a section, you have the Page pane, where you can add new pages by clicking “Add Page.” What’s more, if you click and drag a page name to the right, it becomes a sub-page of the main page directly above.
Finally, the Note pane is the main panel on your screen. This is where you create your course notes by typing some text, inserting a table, drawing freehand, adding an image, attaching a file, or embedding other content like spreadsheets. To find these options, browse the “Insert” and “Draw” tabs on the ribbon.
As well as creating straightforward notes, there are other tools in OneNote that you should try.
For example, to extract the text from an image you’ve inserted into a page, right-click the picture and select “Copy Text From Picture.” Then, after you press Ctrl+V to paste the copied text, you can edit the text as necessary.
Similarly, click “File Printout” on the Insert tab to locate and upload a PDF, and then use the tools on the Draw tab to annotate the PDF or highlight certain sections.
OneNote can also help you with your math equations or scientific notation. Once you’ve created a page in a section, click “Equation” in the Insert tab on the ribbon. Then, use the Structures group of the Equations tab to input the relevant components.
On the other hand, after freehanding an equation using the Draw tool, use the Lasso tool to select it, and click “Ink To Math” in the Draw tab to convert it into recognized text.
4
Declutter Your Inbox in Microsoft Outlook
At the start of the new academic year, the last thing you want is an inbox cluttered with emails from the previous semester. If you’re using the latest desktop or free web-based version of Microsoft Outlook, the Sweep tool can help you get things in line.
Outlook’s Sweep tool is similar to creating email rules. However, where rules apply to future emails as they arrive, Sweep affects all emails, including those you’ve already received, so they’re a great way to tidy up your inbox.
To use this tool, select an email, and click “Sweep” in the Home tab on the ribbon.
While your aim here is to tidy up your inbox, you can also use the Sweep tool with emails in all other folders except your junk, drafts, sent, and deleted folders.
Next, choose a folder where you want emails from this sender to be stored, and select one of the four options in the list of actions.
The tool kicks into action as soon as you click “OK,” so you’ll see a tidier inbox straight away.
5
Work on the Go With the Microsoft 365 Copilot Mobile App
The Microsoft 365 mobile app, which is available on Android and iOS, lets you create new Word, Excel, and PowerPoint files or open and edit existing ones, all from your phone.
You don’t need a subscription to view, edit, and create files on the Microsoft 365 mobile app if you’re using a device with a screen that is 10.1 inches or smaller. However, those with a Microsoft 365 subscription get premium benefits, like advanced editing and formatting options, more collaboration tools, no ads, and more OneDrive storage.
There are many benefits to using the Microsoft 365 Copilot mobile app, but the biggest is that it saves you from having to download the individual Office productivity apps. That said, bear in mind that you can only open one file at a time.
When you open the app’s menu, there are three options that you’ll find useful as you start the new semester:
- Chat: This is where you can ask Copilot questions about your files (if you’re using a school account) or give it Office-related instructions.
- Search: Use this tool to search for files stored in the OneDrive or SharePoint cloud or on your device.
- Create: When you tap this option, you have the choice of converting physical documents into PDFs through “Scan,” pulling text from images or documents through “Extract,” using your voice to create and edit documents through “Dictate,” or starting a new Word, Excel, or PowerPoint file through “Document.”
Once you’ve located a file, click the three dots to see the actions you can perform, like opening the file, sharing it, adding it to your favorites, renaming it, or moving it to a different folder.
If you’re using Microsoft Word to draft lengthy academic papers, make your documents professional, easy to read, and in line with your college’s expectations by making the most of the program’s tools and features, such as styles, multilevel lists, section breaks, tables of contents, and bibliography generator.