SharePoint 2010 All-in-One For Dummies
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SharePoint integrates with Office Online applications, such as Excel Online, Word Online, and PowerPoint Online. All of these services fall under the Office 365 umbrella, so they work together nicely.

Excel Online

The Excel application is a component of Microsoft's productivity suite called Office. Excel is geared toward numbers, lists, and analysis. Excel is widely adopted in the business world and many users probably wonder how they could function in business life without this tool. Excel Online is a service that SharePoint integrates with to cater to Excel spreadsheets. In particular, Excel Online lets you view your Excel data in a SharePoint site.

Using Excel Online, you could have one analyst responsible for the management of the Excel document but share the summary page, graph, or entire document with the rest of the organization. The rest of the members of the organization might not even realize they are looking at an Excel document as the driving force behind the data. From their perspective, they just see a web page on a SharePoint site with graphs, charts, grids of data, and summary data (or whatever part of Excel you decide to include in the page). The person that manages the Excel document doesn't need to learn a new tool. If she has used Excel, then she can simply continue to use Excel with the difference being that her hard work is displayed to the rest of the organization without the involvement of the IT department, developers, or anyone else.

Word Online

Word is another application that is part of the Microsoft Office productivity suite. Word provides word processing capabilities. SharePoint integrates with Word Online, which lets you view and edit Word documents from your SharePoint site. When you click a Word document, the Word Online service takes over; you can interact with your document without leaving your browser.

Just like PowerPoint and Excel, you can also preview a Word document that is located in a SharePoint library. To preview a Word document, just click the ellipsis beside the document name; a small version of the document appears. This provides you with a way to peek inside the document without opening it.

PowerPoint Online

SharePoint can also integrate with PowerPoint. PowerPoint is part of the Office suite, and it's designed for building and displaying presentations. SharePoint works closely with PowerPoint Online, so you can view and edit a PowerPoint presentation in your web browser from your SharePoint site.

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