Office 365 continues to get better across the board, and recently Microsoft emailed subscribers to sweeten the pot even more. In “just one way to say ‘thanks’ for being an Office 365 subscriber,” the email offers 3 months of Adobe Creative Cloud Photography (a $29.97 value, as Photography CC is normally $9.99/mo) for free:

I received the emailed offer to my personal account, where I an Office 365 Personal account (we also use Office 365 for our @onmsft.com accounts – I didn’t receive the offer there, and am assuming the offer is going out to consumer accounts only), and in a bit of a surprise, I was able to redeem the offer even though I already have an Adobe Photography CC plan. I just logged in with my Adobe account, redeemed the offer, and now my account is paid through October.

What’s perhaps most interesting about the email is the note at the end:

And this is just the beginning
More ways to say “thanks for subscribing” are in the works—watch your inbox for other special offers.

While offers like this aren’t “free as in beer,” if you sign up for Photography CC the hope is that you’ll continue to use the service after the three month grace period, it’s still an interesting perk, and effectively cuts the price of Office 365 Personal by 1/3, which isn’t a bad thing. Check your inboxes if you have Office 365 Home or Personal, and let us know if you received this offer or a similar one in the comments below.

Etherborn, a new puzzle title from Altered Matter, is now available to download and play on Microsoft’s Xbox One family of consoles.

This new game is a gravity-puzzle game which requires the player to navigate surreal environment using physic-based movements and strategies.

Here’s the official game description and trailer:

Etherborn is an elegant leap in the gravity-puzzle genre; an environmental puzzle platformer built on exploring and understanding gravity-shifting structures. You are a voiceless being that has just been born into a world where a bodiless voice awaits your arrival. As your first thoughts emerge, you realise your journey has just begun. You must reach this ethereal voice to fully understand your own existence.

In this world, the laws of physics behave in a way that will bend your imagination. You experience gravity perpendicular to the surface you are standing on, allowing for creative exploration possibilities in environments carefully crafted as navigation-based puzzles. Travel through beautiful and exotic sceneries where each level is an organic puzzle that you need to explore, manipulate and shift your gravity on in order to decipher the way forward.

Etherborn is a relatively cheap video game, currently selling for just $16.99 in the Microsoft Store so it may be worth a look for those after some variety in their gaming this weekend.

Have you played Etherborn yet? Share your thoughts on it with the community in the comments below and then follow us on Pinterest for more Xbox gaming content.

Download
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Etherborn

Developer:
Akupara Games

Price:
$16.99

Microsoft, who passed the $1 trillion market cap milestone a few weeks ago, continues to fire on all cylinders with the latest earnings results. Nearly every category is up, some significantly. Revenue is up 12% to $33.7 billion for the quarter, commercial cloud is up a whopping 39% to $11 billion, and $11 billion seems to be the theme of the day:

Q4 FY19 revenue by segment
???? Productivity & Business Processes: $11 billion ⬆️ 14%
????️ Intelligent Cloud: $11.4 billion ⬆️ 19%
???? More Personal Computing: $11.3 billion ⬆️ 4%

— Microsoft (@Microsoft) July 18, 2019

About the only thing down in this blockbuster earnings release was gaming revenue, which declined 10% (down 8% in constant currency) with Xbox software and services revenue down 3% (down 1% in constant currency). This isn’t as alarming as it could be, however, with a typically soft 4th quarter (no holidays or back to school to boost revenues), and a looming Xbox Scarlett and the new game streaming service xCloud looming on the horizon, perhaps giving gamers pause to wait for the next big thing.

The rest of “More Personal Computing” was up:

Revenue in More Personal Computing was $11.3 billion and increased 4% (up 6% in constant currency), with the following business highlights:

• Windows OEM revenue increased 9% (up 9% in constant currency)
• Windows Commercial products and cloud services revenue increased 13% (up 16% in constant currency)
• Surface revenue increased 14% (up 17% in constant currency)
• Search advertising revenue excluding traffic acquisition costs increased 9% (up 10% in constant currency)
• >Gaming revenue declined 10% (down 8% in constant currency) with Xbox software and services revenue down 3% (down 1% in constant currency)

Office 365 Commercial revenue growth was up 31%, there are now 34.8 million consumer Office 365 subscribers, and LinkedIn really seems to be catching on:

LinkedIn revenue increased 25% (up 28% in constant currency) with record levels of engagement highlighted by LinkedIn sessions growth of 22%

There really just isn’t anything to complain about, and even though Microsoft has already gained from its trillion dollar position, expect it to continue on the upswing.

Whether you’re a student at an educational institution, an employee at a company, or just the average person with a Gmail account, email is likely to be a big part of your day. So, to avoid being caught up in a mess of messages, it is always best to use some sort of software to help manage your inbox.

Microsoft Outlook just so happens to be one of the most popular desktop solutions for just that, and it is included for free with Office 365 subscriptions. In this guide, we’ll take a closer look at some of the tips and tricks in Outlook that you can leverage to manage and send emails with the utmost efficiency and productivity.

Use Outlook hotkeys

During your busy day, you might not always have the time to drag your mouse over icons to accomplish common tasks like composing, replying, or forwarding messages. Luckily, just like in Microsoft Teams, there are several Outlook hotkeys that you can use. These hotkeys can save you time by skipping menus. We’ve gathered a few of our favorites below.

• CTRL + Shift + M: Creates a new message
• CTRL + R: Opens the reply window
• CTRL + F Opens the Forward window
• CTRL+ Shift+ R: Opens the reply window, to reply to an entire group
• CTRL+K: Can be used to insert hyperlinks into emails
• CTRL+ Shift+ G: Flag a message
• F4: Search for text in an email
• CTRL+ 3: Opens the contacts list
• CTRL+ 2: Opens Outlook calendar

Our list is just the start of the shortcuts. Microsoft has a deep dive into more Outlook hotkeys right here, so feel free to check it out.

Use the Outlook resizing tool to send large picture files

One of the pains of emails (and Outlook) is that there is a 20MB limit for when you want to send pictures or files in your messages. No need to worry though, as there is a workaround to this. Outlook has an automatic resizing feature that can be used to cut down on image sizes before sending your emails out.

After you’ve composed your new message and attached all your photos, you can find the option by heading to the “File” tab on the top left side of the window. You can then click the yellow box that says “Image Attachments” Finally, you can choose “Resize large images when I send this message.” Typically, this will reduce files from MB to smaller sizes in KB. Keep in mind though, that this feature will only work if you’ve attached the photos by using the Insert files button. Images embedded directly in the email won’t be resized with his method.

If all else fails, you could always send your attachments as a ZIP file.

Combine the power of OneNote with Outlook, or save emails as PDF

Outlook is great on its own for managing emails, but it also can be paired with the power of the notetaking app OneNote. For instance, when you take note and plan items in OneNote 2016, you can transfer it over as an Outlook task. To do this in OneNote, highlight the words that you want as a task, and then in the menu that shows up, click the arrow next to the “Outlook Tasks” button to choose a reminder.

You also can transfer any email from Outlook right into OneNote to help you mark up the email, and even schedule tasks. To get started with this feature, select the “Home” Tab on your Outlook inbox, and then click on the email you’d like to send to OneNote. Then, click the “Send To OneNote” icon. If you’re signed into OneNote with the same account, this will open up a version of the email OneNote Microsoft Store desktop app, allowing you to edit it as you please.

As an alternate method, another great way to markup emails would be to save it as a PDF file, You can do this by going to the “Print” menu, choosing Microsoft Print to PDF, picking a folder, and then pressing “Save.” You can then navigate to find the PDF file, and open it in Microsoft Edge and write all the notes as you please.

Backup your emails to avoid accidents

When you’re managing your email accounts across various devices, things can sometimes go wrong. You might accidentally delete an important message, or a message can be misplaced. Well, you can easily back up your emails in Outlook to avoid such embarrassing situations.

One of the easiest ways to back up important emails in Outlook on Windows 10 is to simply highlight the message and then drag it into a File Explorer window. This will cause it to show up as an Outlook Item, and if you double click it, the message will still open in Outlook, regardless if it was deleted from the server or inbox.

You also can export your entire mailbox as a .PST file manually on a regular basis. You can do this by heading to your inbox, clicking “File,” and then “Open and Export.” Next, you can click on the “Import/Export” button and choose the “Export to file” button. Complete the wizard by choosing .PST, and then clicking the folder you’d like to export (in this case, the Inbox.) You can then choose where you want to save and then click finish. If you want, you could password protect it, but this is optional.

Opening and importing back the .PST file into Outlook is easy, simply head back to the “File” menu, click “Open and Export,” and choose “Open Outlook Data File.” Once you open the PST file, this will create a new area on the left panel known as Outlook Data. That’s the new home to your backed up messages.

Use the Clean up tool to purge messages

Nothing is more annoying than a full inbox, but Outlook has a built-in tool to help you purge all the unwanted messages. To use this tool, right-click on an email conversation you’d like to clean up. Outlook will then give you a warning prompt and will send all redundant messages over to the Deleted Items folder. Outlook considers an item redundant if it appears more than once within a message thread. This is especially useful for cleaning up long email conversations.

You also can use the same tool to clean up folders, simply visit the folder you want to clean up, and click on the “Home” tab, and then click on the icon of an envelope with an “X” over it under the “Delete” group.

…And that’s just the beginning!

We’ve only highlighted five tips and tricks in Outlook, but there’s plenty more that you can do. You can secure your Outlook data with a password, set up professional-looking email signatures, set up rules for your inbox, schedule messages, and plenty more. Will you be checking any of these out? Let us know in the comments below if you have any other Outlook tips and tricks.

Microsoft today is announcing Windows 10 19H2 build 18362.10006 to a subset of Windows Insiders in the slow ring. This release will appear as a cumulative update, and not as a full build update in Windows Update. Given Microsoft’s progressive ways of testing features in builds, it also turns on some of the new features that were previously turned off by default with the previous build 18362.10005.

If you’re one of the lucky few that are seeing build 18362.10006, this now means you’ll be able to enjoy some new features. One of those includes the ability to voice activate Alexa above the Windows 10 Lock screen. Another feature is Key-rolling or Key-rotation features which enables secure rolling of recovery passwords on MDM manages AAS devices. You can see the list of other changes and known issues right here.

As of July 17th, this is now the third Windows 10 19H2 build to be released by Microsoft. This follows both build 18362.1 released on July 1, and build 18362.10005 from July 15th. Today’s release will also include all the fixes from KB4507453 for the May 2019 Update.

Microsoft’s Skype app will soon lose the SMS functionality that allowed users to send and receive SMS from an Android phone. The feature will stop working after August 30 , and Microsoft is inviting users to switch to the Your Phone app after that date. If you’re using the Skype app, you may be notified about the upcoming retirement of SMS Connect right within the app.

Here we go again, Microsoft removes SMS – skype integration for the nth times. pic.twitter.com/5WPxgPzJ9T

— Florian B (@flobo09) July 17, 2019

Here’s what Microsoft said about the retirement of SMS Connect on a support page:

After limited availability, we decided to remove SMS Connect functionality from Skype. SMS Connect will no longer be available after August 30th, 2019 but don’t worry, you can still find all your individual SMS conversations with full history on your phone.

If you want to continue reading and replying to SMS messages from your computer and you’re using Windows 10, we recommend you install and start using the Your Phone app from Microsoft. With this app, you can send and receive SMS or MMS messages, share photos between your phone and computer and more. The Your Phone app is continuing to evolve so stay tuned for more feature updates.

SMS Connect in the new Skype app was a replacement for the SMS Relay feature that was previously available on the Skype UWP app for Windows 10 And Windows 10 Mobile. As Your Phone on Windows 10 now provides a more complete feature set for Android users, it didn’t make sense for Microsoft to keep SMS Connect in Skype. It’s worth noting that it will still be possible to use your paid Skype credit to send SMS from Skype after August 30, as this feature isn’t being discontinued.

Following a very busy E3 in June, the Xbox team will come back to Cologne, Germany for gamescom 2019 next month. The annual trade fair for video games will open its door on Wednesday, August 21, but Microsoft will have a special Inside Xbox episode live from Cologne on Monday, August 19 at 5:00 p.m. CEST (8:00 a.m. PDT).

Starting Wednesday, August 21 to Friday, August 23, Microsoft open both its Xbox booth in Hall 8 of the Koelnmesse, but there will also be an “Xbox Open Doors” multiday experience at the Gloria Theatre in Cologne. “Entry to Xbox Open Doors is free and fans will be able to participate in community events, game tournaments, panel sessions and other exciting experiences,” the team said today, and more details about Xbox Open Doors will be shared very soon.

Back to the Xbox booth at gamescom, Microsoft plans to have close to 200 gaming stations this year where attendees will be able to play upcoming Xbox Game Studios titles such as Age of Empires II Definitive Edition, Battletoads, Bleeding Edge, Gears 5, Halo: The Master Chief Collection on PC, and Minecraft Dungeons. As for third-party titles, Borderlands 3, which will be released three days after Gears 5 will also be playable at the Xbox booth, along with Doom Eternal, NBA 2K20, and Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon: Breakpoint.

Microsoft’s Project xCloud game streaming service will also be available for testing at gamescom. Microsoft allowed select journalists to try the service at E3 last month, and Project xCloud was also available for testing at opening of the first Microsoft Store in London last week. Public trials for Project xCloud are expected to kick off in October, just a month ahead of the launch of Google’s competing Stadia service.

If you’d like to attend the biggest gaming event in Europe next month, you can get your tickets on the official gamescom website. We’ll be making the trip to Cologne this year, so you can expect lots of news about Project xCloud and upcoming Xbox Game Studios titles on OnMSFT next month.

Microsoft on Wednesday, July 17, announced what it is calling an “extensive multiyear alliance” with AT&T on cloud, A.I. and 5G technologies. With the goal of “improving how people live and work today and in the future,” Microsoft will also become AT&T’s preferred cloud provider for non-network applications and will support AT&T’s consolidation of its data centers.

Under this new extensive alliance, AT&T will come onboard with the power of Microsoft 365, and will also move its non-network infrastructure to Microsoft Azure. Microsoft, however, will also be able to leverage AT&T’s 5G networks to design, test, and build edge-computing capabilities. There is an additional vision with this alliance to use 5G to bring instantaneous communications for first responders using AI-live powered voice translations to communicate and break down language barriers. In the words of Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella:

“AT&T is at the forefront of defining how advances in technology, including 5G and edge computing, will transform every aspect of work and life. The world’s leading companies run on our cloud, and we are delighted that AT&T chose Microsoft to accelerate its innovation. Together, we will apply the power of Azure and Microsoft 365 to transform the way AT&T’s workforce collaborates and to shape the future of media and communications for people everywhere.”

Other plans under the alliance will see both companies bring voice, collaboration, conferencing, intelligent edge, networking, IoT, public safety, and cybersecurity solutions. In addition, there are separate goals for the two companies to work on technology solutions for social good — relating to sustainability, accessibility, and community challenges such as homelessness. This ties in with both Microsoft’s affordable housing initiative and AT&T Believes.

Both Microsoft and AT&T already have worked on enterprise networking, IoT, and blockchain solutions, and more services will be announced later in 2019.