Microsoft 365

The Microsoft 365 app is a dashboard, or front-end, to all of the work you perform in the Microsoft Office productivity apps and services. It’s a simple app with app shortcuts, document templates, tutorials, and quick access lists of your recent, pinned, and shared documents and other content.

Where did it go?

The Microsoft 365 app was previously called the Office app. It was renamed as part of a broader rebranding effort where most of the products and services that used to be part of the Office brand are now consider part of Microsoft 365. The Office name is still used for the familiar desktop and web applications like Word, Excel, and PowerPoint.

The Microsoft 365 app might look familiar: Microsoft offers the same basic user experience on the Microsoft 365 website and the Microsoft 365 mobile apps for iPhone, iPad, and Android, and its lists of recent, pinned, and shared documents work a bit like the Recommended area in the Windows 11 Start menu and the File Explorer home page.

Understand Microsoft 365

Microsoft 365 is the umbrella brand for Microsoft’s productivity apps and services that includes, among other things, a family of consumer and business subscription services. Some Microsoft 365 capabilities are available for free to anyone with a Microsoft account—there are free but somewhat limited versions of Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and other Office apps on the web, for example—while other, so-called premium features require a paid subscription.

You can compare the consumer Microsoft 365 subscriptions on the Microsoft website.

The Microsoft 365 app in Windows 11 will behave a bit differently depending on whether you are a subscriber and whether the Office desktop suite of applications is installed on your PC. If those applications are available, the app shortcuts on the left and the templates under “Create New” will launch the relevant desktop app when selected. If not, your default web browser will open and navigate to the web version of the relevant app.

Well, for the most part. The Microsoft 365 app will oddly use web apps sometimes even when you do have a desktop version installed. This can make using the app a bit frustrating.

There is no way to configure this behavior. Indeed, there is no way to configure any aspect of this app. Its settings interface is basically empty.

Access your Office apps

The Microsoft 365 app provides shortcuts to the core Microsoft Office apps—Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, OneDrive, Teams, and OneNote—in its navigation pane on the left. These are all pretty obvious, but there are other items there of interest:

Create. Click this button to access a broader set of templates than is available in the home view. This is briefly described below.

Apps. Click this button to access a broader set of apps than is available in the navigation pane, including several web-only utilities.

If you do have a paid Microsoft 365 subscription and the Office desktop apps are not installed on your PC, you can use the “Install apps” button in the upper right of the home view to install them now.

Create a new document with a template

The “Create New” area of the home view provides a few basic document templates for Word, PowerPoint, and Excel. But if you select the “See more ->” link or click the “Create” button in the navigation pane, you can access a much more complete set of templates.

You can use the buttons in the “Start with a template” section to display different types of templates. For example, the “Calendars” choice provides calendar-themed templates for PowerPoint, Word, and Excel.

Access your recent, pinned, and shared documents and other content

At the bottom of the home view, the Microsoft 365 app provides three lists of documents.

Access your recent documents

The Recent list displays the most recent documents you’ve accessed, in reverse chronological order. You can use the “Show more” link to display more recent documents in the app, or the “More in OneDrive ->” link to display your recent documents in OneDrive on the web.

As you mouse over a document in this list, a “More options” (“…”) link will appear. Click this to display a context menu with choices relevant to the document like “Open in Browser” (which will open the document in the relevant web app), “Add to pinned,” “Open in the Desktop App,” “Remove from list,” and “Open file location.”

Oddly, that last option will display the file’s location in OneDrive on the web, and not using File Explorer.

Access your pinned documents

The Pinned list displays those apps that you have “pinned” using the Microsoft 365 app. Pinned documents are similar to favorite documents in File Explorer, but they’re not the same: you can only see your pinned documents in Microsoft 365 and your favorites in File Explorer.

As confusing, the Pinned list on the Microsoft 365 website is called Favorites. It displays the same list of documents at least.

As you mouse-over documents in the Pinned list, you will see the same “Add to pinned/Remove from pinned” and “More options” choices as described above.

Access documents that are shared with you

The Shared with me list displays documents that others have shared with you through OneDrive, in reverse chronological order.

When you mouse-over items in this list, a “More options” (“…”) item will appear. When selected, it presents a single option in a context menu for opening that document in the relevant web app.

The “Show more” link will expand the list to display more documents. You can also use the “More in OneDrive ->” link to access the full list of shared documents in OneDrive on the web.