Getting More From Microsoft 365: Features Your Practice Probably Isn't Using
Your practice pays for Microsoft 365 every month. But if your team is mainly using Word, Outlook, and the occasional Teams call, you are likely getting a fraction of what you are paying for. That is not unusual - most small professional services businesses default to the familiar and leave the rest untouched.
Microsoft 365 includes well over twenty applications, depending on your plan. Some of them are genuinely useful for a busy practice. Others sit idle because nobody knew they were there. Here are seven features worth knowing about.
The search bar at the top of any M365 app is not just for finding help articles. It works as a shortcut to settings and functions buried in the menus. If someone needs to change page margins in Word and cannot find the option, typing "margins" in the search bar gets them there immediately. It saves the frustrating click-through-every-tab routine.
Word, Excel, and PowerPoint include a built-in library of stock images, icons, videos, and 3D models, all licensed for commercial use. If your team puts together client proposals or presentations, this removes the need to source images elsewhere. Find them under Insert, then Pictures, then Stock Images.
Microsoft Forms is one of the less-known applications in the M365 suite. It is a straightforward survey and form builder that works in the browser. Results come through as responses are submitted and can be exported directly into Excel. For practices that send client feedback surveys or intake forms, it is a cleaner option than using a separate tool.
If anyone in your team presents to clients - whether in person or over video - PowerPoint has a built-in rehearsal tool called Presenter Coach. Turn it on while practising and it will flag pacing issues, filler words, and repetitive language. It is an AI-powered feature that most people walk past without noticing. Look for "Rehearse with Coach" under the Slide Show menu.
Outlook has a feature called Quick Parts that saves blocks of text for reuse in emails. If your team regularly types out the same paragraphs - directions, payment instructions, standard disclaimers - they can save those blocks once and insert them with two clicks. Highlight the text in a draft email, go to Insert, then Quick Parts, then Save Selection. It is a small change that adds up over time.
Excel's data types feature connects your spreadsheet to live databases covering topics from nutrition to geography to financial information. For practices that do any kind of research-heavy work, it can pull structured data into a spreadsheet in seconds rather than hours. Select your list, click the Data tab, and choose the relevant data type from the panel.
Finally, one small Word customisation worth making: a keyboard shortcut for pasting as plain text. Copied text often brings its original formatting with it, which can make a document look inconsistent. You can create a custom shortcut for "PasteTextOnly" under File, Options, Customize Ribbon, then Keyboard Shortcuts. It takes two minutes to set up and saves the constant reformatting that follows a copy-paste. If you want more settings worth enabling across your Windows environment, there are several Windows 11 options worth turning on that pair well with these M365 tweaks.
None of these changes require significant time to implement. Most take a few minutes. The challenge for a busy practice is usually not the doing - it is knowing where to start and having someone who can set things up properly across the whole team, not just one person who figured it out by accident. That is exactly the kind of thing IT support for professional services firms handles as part of day-to-day management. Small improvements like these are part of how the right technology setup lifts team output without requiring big changes or new spending.
If you want to know whether your M365 setup is actually working for your business, ITstuffed offers a free 15-minute IT Fit Check. It is a quick conversation, not a sales process.