Microsoft Office 365 logo

Microsoft Office 365 (For Student)

Starting from May 2014, we have made available Microsoft Office 365 (hereafter referred to as Office 365), a cloud-based messaging solution provided by Microsoft for the education sector, to all students.

Office 365 delivers Microsoft’s powerful suite of office productivity and collaboration tools to any Internet-connected computer. Office 365 is the same Office you already know and use every day. As Office 365 is powered by the cloud, you can get to your files and applications from virtually anywhere - PC, Mac, and mobile devices.

 

 

What does Office 365 include?

 

Office 365 provides the following services to students:

MS Teams Logo
Microsoft Teams
A digital hub for teamwork that brings conversations, content and apps together in one place. Teams built on capabilities of SharePoint and Skype for Business, Microsoft Teams makes collaboration easy. You can share ideas anywhere on your desktop or mobile devices and have instant access to everything your team needs.

 

Features:
  • Chat - It is a persistent chat workspace to store threaded conversations, including private chats with classmates/colleagues/guests or group chats among team members. Chat history can be reviewed by any current and new members.
  • Conference Call – Audio/video conference and screen sharing are available.
  • Channel - A channel is a discussion topic in a team. You can create channels for different subjects, projects and etc.
  • Tab - Teams also allows you to add Tabs to frequently used files on OneDrive document library, OneNote Online, SharePoint as well as other cloud services and external websites.
  • Multi-platforms – You can use MS Teams on Outlook on the Web (web browser), MS Teams client as well as mobile devices running on iOS, Android OS and Windows Mobile.

For details, please visit Microsoft Teams.

The Logo of Skype for Business
Skype for Business Online (Lync)
Supports conducting online meetings with audio, video, desktop sharing and virtual whiteboard

 

Features:
  • Get real-time presence information including photos, availability status and location; enhanced instant messaging (IM) to connect efficiently and effectively.
  • Make voice calls through your computer to other Skype for Business users within and outside EdUHK.
  • Create, moderate and join pre-planned and on-the-fly audio, video and web meetings with people within and outside EdUHK.
  • Enhance online presentations with screen-sharing and virtual whiteboards.
  • Enable non-Office 365 users to participate in your Skype for Business conference calls.

You can access the Skype for Business Web Scheduler directly via the URL: https://sched.lync.com. However, if you would like to use the full features of Skype for Business, you have to download and install the Skype for Business client from the following URLs:

  • For Windows (Skype for Business comes with Office 2016, if you are using older version of Office, please download it from the link below)
  • Microsoft Skype for Business Basic

Note: Please check the system requirements for installing the Skype for Business client.

OneDrive logo
OneDrive
A personalized web storage option which enables users to keep synchronized with their hard-drives for off-line access

 

Features:
  • Provide 5 TB of storage quota for each user. Each file stored in OneDrive can be up to 250 GB in size.
  • Share documents with anyone within and outside EdUHK.
  • Create and edit files (e.g. Word, Excel) with Office Web Apps.
You can access OneDrive using one of the following ways:
  • Web access - Login to your EdUHK account via http://portal.microsoftonline.com and select ‘OneDrive’ from the top menu bar.
  • PC/Mac access - For automatic synchronization of your files against a directory in the local hard drive or multiple devices, you need to install the OneDrive client.
    Please download the "OneDrive client" for your system and view the system requirements.
  • For iOS - Microsoft OneDrive
  • For Android - Microsoft OneDrive

For more information, you can go to OneDrive for Work or School Help.

Office Web Apps logo
Office Web Apps
Web-based version of Microsoft Office productivity suite

Features:
  • Provide web-based versions of MS Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote.
  • Allow users to access their documents using a web browser and collaborate with other users online.
  • Work tightly with OneDrive.

Microsoft Student Advantage logo
Microsoft Student Advantage
FREE Office 365 ProPlus for Students

Students can enjoy Office 365 ProPlus, a full version of the Microsoft Office suite, for free on personal PCs and mobile devices through the Student Advantage programme.

Office 365 ProPlus is a full version of Office, which includes Word, PowerPoint, Excel, OneNote, Outlook, and more.

For more information on PC/Mac, please go to Microsoft Student Advantage.

For mobile devices:

Please visit the app store Apple App Store or Google Play Store from your device and download the followings apps:

  • The image illustrate the Microsoft Word app icon Microsoft Word
  • The image illustrate the Microsoft Word app icon Microsoft Excel
  • The image illustrate the Microsoft Word app icon Microsoft PowerPoint
Note: For students, users cannot insert any add-ins as there is no mailbox on students’ O365 account. Students can only insert Office Add-ins on Windows version if the product provide standalone add-ins installation.

 

 

How to access Office 365 through the web?

By simply using a Web browser (Internet Explorer, Google Chrome, Firefox, etc.), you can access Office 365 services at the following URL:

Note: At the "Account" field in the Sign In screen, please enter your login name in User Principal Name (UPN) format. UPN format is in the form of full email address (e.g. sxxxxxxx@s.eduhk.hk).

You are strongly recommended to use the following Web browsers that support all or most of the Office 365 features:

  • For computers running Windows Operating System:
  • Internet Explorer 10 and later versions
  • Firefox 17 and later versions
  • Safari 5 and later versions
  • Google Chrome 24 and later versions

  • For computers running Mac OS X 10.5 and later versions:
  • Firefox 17 and later versions
  • Safari 6 and later versions
  • Google Chrome 24 and later versions

  • For computers running Linux:
  • Firefox 17 and later versions
  • Google Chrome 24 and later versions

 

 

Limitations

While Office 365 provides many useful office productivity and collaboration tools for your work, it has some limitations that you need to bear in mind. The followings just give you a few limitations that you may encounter. More limitations with Office 365 can be found at Office 365 FAQs.

  • For OneDrive:
  • Length of file name combinations, including file and folder name is up to 400 characters.
  • File upload limit is 250GB per file.
  • Some types of Files cannot be added to OneDrive e.g. *.tmp or *.ds_store extension, desktop.ini, thumbs.db, or ehthumbs.db (Please refer to here for a full list of file type cannot be added). Any file that’s currently open by an application. Invalid characters in filename/folder " * : < > ? / \ |
  • No. of Items (files & folders) can be synced to OneDrive is up to 20,000 items

 

Please also see Office 365 FAQs for more related information about the Office 365 services.