Microsoft Insider Program (Microsoft 365 only)

- [Instructor] For Microsoft 365 subscribers, if you are on a family or personal subscription, then you have the ability to choose whether or not to join the Microsoft 365 Insider Program right from within PowerPoint. If you are on a business or education subscription plan, then your administrator who manages your subscription will have the option to enable Insider builds. But before I show you how to enable these Insider builds, let's first talk about what the Microsoft 365 Insider Program actually is. We've already mentioned how Microsoft 365 gives you access to recurring updates and new features as they are released. Well, the Insider Program gets you early access to those features before they are released to the general public. That way, you can test out these new features and provide feedback to Microsoft before the features are finalized. In essence, you have a voice in shaping the development of the software. Now, if that sounds like something you'd like to do, great, but keep in mind, Insider is not for everyone. Once again, you do need to have a Microsoft 365 subscription. Also, I strongly recommend installing Insider builds on a spare computer, meaning a computer that you don't primarily work from. And well, that's because these builds are not finalized and can sometimes be a bit buggy. Believe me, you don't want to be working towards a major deadline and have your software bug out on you. So yeah, spare computers are strongly recommended. If you want to learn more about the Insider Program, just visit insider.microsoft365.com. There, they have complete and up-to-date instructions for Windows, Mac, iOS, and Android, including a Frequently Asked Questions page. But for now, I am going to show you how to sign up on Windows. So opening PowerPoint to just a blank presentation. If you want to join the Insider Program from Windows, simply go to your File menu and all the way down to Account. And over on the right hand side of the screen, under Product Information Microsoft, you should see a button that says Microsoft 365 Insider. If you don't, that might mean you either don't have a Microsoft 365 subscription, or you have a Microsoft 365 subscription that's managed by someone else, like a business or enterprise, and that software is pushed out through group policy. But if you have a personal subscription or a family subscription, like I do, that button should be there. And when I click on it, there is the option to join Microsoft 365 Insider right at the top. clicking that will open a window, and at the very top is a check box to sign up for early access to new releases. Now, from there, you've got a couple of choices. You can join the Current Channel Preview channel, or the Beta Channel. Now, the Beta Channel is the one that is the absolute earliest preview to builds. That one tends to be the most buggy, and definitely that's the one I recommend putting on a spare computer, one that you don't work from regularly. The Current Channel, that's the one that gives you early access to features, but these tend to be a little bit more supported. These have been tested in the Beta Channel and most of the bugs have been worked out before they get to this Preview Channel. So I'm going to choose this one for now. We can choose to go ahead and check for and apply updates, which will download this channel right now. And then of course, we have to agree to the terms and conditions governing my participation in the program. If you want to read through those terms on your own, feel free to click on the program terms, the privacy statement, and all about the data that is collected down below using these links. Let's go ahead and click OK, and it will say, "Congratulations. You have successfully opted into the Microsoft 365 Insider Program." Now, this checkbox here, that will take you to an external website, where you can then subscribe to the monthly newsletter. I am subscribed to that, and that does provide some interesting tidbits about new features that are up and coming. I am going to uncheck that for now, though. And then click OK. And then it will begin checking for updates and downloading those to your computer. Now, you can continue working while it's downloading, but when it's finished, it will ask you to save your work before continuing. And since I just have a blank presentation with nothing in it, I'm going to click Continue. It will apply it, close those apps, and then when it is done applying, we can then reopen PowerPoint. And there we have it, updates we're installed. And if we go back to our File menu, all the way down to Account, you can see under where it says About PowerPoint, it should now say the channel you have chosen. And I chose Current Channel Preview. And that is how you can join the Microsoft 365 Insider Program. Now, if you ever want more information about those Microsoft 365 Insider builds, you can always click on that Microsoft 365 Insider button and click on the About Microsoft 365 Insider to jump directly to that Insider website. And that will take you to a lot more information about Insider, or you can choose the option Visit the Community to be taken to the forum about Microsoft 365 Insider. There you can browse questions or post your own.