Office Insider Program (Office 365 only)

- [Instructor] I don't know about you but I hate being the last person to know something. So if there is a club or a group that I can join to get early access or information to preview stuff I am there, sign me up. And that is exactly what the Office Insider Program is. If you are an Office 365 personal or home subscriber who would like to know about new features before they're released to the general public you can sign up to receive early builds of Office and provide feedback to Microsoft about what you like or don't like. You can actually help shape the future of Office. And that's the positive side of being an Office Insider. The other side is that these are early releases of software which haven't been 100% perfected and you've got to use them. And that can be frustrating if or when something doesn't work as expected. So my tip for you is if you're interested in joining the Office Insider Program I encourage you to install the Insider version of the software on a spare computer or one you don't use for work. To join the Office Insider Program just go up to your file menu in Office, down to the account menu down here. And underneath the product information area off to the right side of the screen you'll see a little button right here for Office Insider. Clicking that you'll see a little menu pop up and at the very top a little button that says join Office Insider. Go ahead and click that and a menu will pop up with a lot of information. At the very top check the box marked sign me up for early access to new releases of Office. And then right beneath that it will ask you to choose your Office Insider level. And from that dropdown there's two options. There's Monthly Channel (Targeted) and Insider. Now let me explain these two levels. The Insider level, this is the level formerly known as fast. This level is good for people who want the very earliest builds as soon as they come out. But there is a little bit more risk in that so definitely don't do this on a work machine. Now the other level here, the Monthly Channel (Targeted) formerly known as the slow channel before it got a little bit of a PR makeover. This level is best for those who want more stable updates. Basically Microsoft gets a chance to work out all of the critical kinks and bugs from the Insider channel and then they push out the updates to the Monthly Channel. So with this channel you are still seeing the new features before most people and still have an opportunity to provide Microsoft with feedback but the likelihood of an update just not really working right is pretty slim at this stage. So choose a level that is best for you and I'm going to choose Insider. And that's going to ask you to agree to the terms and conditions. And you can read about those programs' terms and the privacy statement by clicking these links here and that will take you to a web browser to read all about that. And then click OK. And choosing that it's probably going to ask you to run some updates to install that new version. And then you'll see how often you will receive updates for that program back in the backstage view. Now if you don't see this Office Insider button back here there's a couple of reasons why. Number one, you have the perpetual license of Office 2019 and not an Office 365 subscription. Or you have an Office 365 subscription but you have a subscription that is a work or school subscription. If that's the case or either of those cases, you cannot join the Insider Program. The Insider Program is only available to Office 365 home and personal subscribers. If you're an Office 365 subscriber with your work or school there is a different program for you where you can get early builds. It's called the Targeted Release Program and you just need to talk to your IT program about joining that program. And that works slightly different. But that is how you join Office Insider.