Create Office documents from your homepage in Office 365

After logging into https://portal.office.com, you may be seeing a new homepage. Application tiles for Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote are now available right from the moment you log in. People new to Office 365 often ask “How do I create an Office document? I have Office 365 now and I have read I can use a browser to create documents, but where do I start?”

It’s a fair question. OneDrive made it easier a few months back with tiles for the different applications. Now Office 365 has followed suit.

1. Click on Word and Word Online will open in a new tab, ready for you to start creating. Your document will be saved in your OneDrive for Business.

2. Name your document BEFORE you get started, to make it easier to find.

Documents are saved as you type. There is no save button.

3. To see where your document is being saved, navigate to your OneDrive for Business by clicking the link beside the Online application. The link is named after you because it is YOUR OneDrive for Business. If this was a document in a Team Site document library, the link would be named after your Team Site.

I’d like to see an option in the future to choose where a document is being saved to. The Save As button could benefit from the same “Site Folder” experience we have within OneDrive for Business where we can browse access document libraries from the sites we have followed.

The new Office 365 homepage is a good move on Microsoft’s part, to help people find the application they want to use and get working, further improving the experience for working in your browser.