As many have become aware, the newer desktops that have been installed recently no longer have the "Desktop Version" of Microsoft Office.  Moving forward the district has chosen to instead use the "Cloud-based Version" typically called Office365.  All of the basic applications (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, etc) are still available to you but everything is done through the web browser rather than an application installed on your desktop.  Because of this change, you will have to re-train your brain the way that you interact with these applications as you can no longer just "double-click" on a Word document and it will magically open. 

OneDrive

One of the major things that this transition has achieved is the elimination of the antiquated H-Drive system.  Many of you remember those years past when the H-Drive system would fill up and you could not save anything to it or it would crash and your files would be unavailable.  The OneDrive is basically just like the H-Drive except that instead of being on a computer server housed in our data center it is housed on a server maintained by Microsoft.  Having your files stored on the OneDrive means that you can access them from anywhere (even at home), unlike the H-Drive system where you HAD to be in school to get to it.  There is a simple procedure to create a linked folder from your Desktop to your OneDrive to easily copy to and from them.  Follow these steps:

1. Login to your account on https://office.com using your email address as the username and the password you use to access your email as the password
2. Once logged in you will see a series of icons to the left each is a symbol for one of the Microsoft Applications you are very familiar with.
   
   Click on the icon that looks like a series of dots.
3. A menu will appear that looks like the one shown.
   
   Click on the one labeled "OneDrive"
4. Clicking on this OneDrive icon will take you to your personal OneDrive.
   NOTE: The computer services department worked very hard to transfer ALL documents from the old H-Drive system to each staff member's OneDrive so everything you see should be exactly what was on your H-Drive 
5. Across the top of the window, you should see a series of icons like the ones below
    
   Click on the Sync icon (you will only need to do this once to set up the syncing for this computer and then from this point on syncing will happen automatically)
6. A window will appear that looks like the one below
   
   and you will be asked to give permission to open OneDrive which you will allow
7. When prompted enter your email address and password that you used to login to office.com
8. Once this process has been completed you will have a folder on your computer that is directly linked to your OneDrive
   
   Anything you save (or copy) to this folder will automatically be available on your OneDrive

So now that you have set up a link to your OneDrive from your Desktop and you want to open and/or edit a Word, Excel, or PowerPoint file you MUST take the following steps.

1. Go to https://office.com and log in, if you are not already
2. Click on the OneDrive icon
   
3. Scroll through your OneDrive and locate the Word, Excel, or PowerPoint file you want to open.
   
4. Click on the file you want to open and the appropriate application will launch
   NOTE: If you just double-click on the file in your OneDrive folder on your desktop it will not know how to open it since Word, Excel, and/or PowerPoint are not installed on the computer.

Set Your Default Downloads Folder in Google Chrome to your OneDrive

One thing you may want to do to make things easier on yourself is to set up your default "Download" folder in Google Chrome to go to your OneDrive rather than your Desktop.  To do this do the following:

• Launch Google Chrome
• On the top right corner click on the settings menu (it looks like three dots, one on top of each other).
• Choose "Settings" from the menu that appears
  
• In the settings, window click the "Advanced" section on the left side, then choose "Downloads"
  
• In the Downloads settings, you will see the first setting labeled "Location" click on the Change button
  
• In the window that appears locate the OneDrive folder you set up in the steps above
  NOTE: Remember it is called "OneDrive - Pemberton Township Schools"
  
• Once you have chosen your OneDrive folder you can create a new folder called "Downloads" by clicking on the "New Folder" button on the top of the window
  
• Once you have created this new "Downloads" folder select it and click on "Select Folder"
  
• From this point forward whenever you download something it will automatically go to this folder on your OneDrive