9 Microsoft Office Tips That'll Make People Obsessed With Vacation Planning Cry Joyful Tears

*scheduling intensifies*

1. Establish yourself as the favourite friend in the group.

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It’s easy to go from friends to frenemies with the stress of vacation planning. Kick off the planning process right with cloud storage, AND share it with your crew. Office 365 Personal is great for one person, but with Office 365 Home, you can share your subscription with up to five of your friends or family and give them access to all the familiar apps (like Excel and Word) as well as 1TB of OneDrive cloud storage per person. Favourite friend much?

2. Create a shared calendar to avoid scheduling drama.

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It's hard to find group-trip dates that work for everyone. But instead of getting into a heated debate about it, have everyone input their schedules into an Outlook calendar and share it with the group. (Pro tip: You can also @-mention your friends so they don’t miss a message.) You’ll instantly be able to see which weeks work and which don’t. Voilà! Your relationships are still intact.

3. Don't be afraid to call for backup.

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You've got a lot of valuable information on your hands — from pictures and parties to schedules and shopping lists. Once you have everything compiled to experience the vacation of your dreams, treat yourself to the peace of mind of knowing it's all backed up on OneDrive. (Pro tip: Share your folders with the group so that everyone can access reservations, maps, and hotel addresses anywhere at anytime.) What could be more wonderful? *cue running off into the sunset*

4. Pitch destination ideas like a boss.

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With so many awesome vacation destinations to choose from, how will you all settle on where to go? Like this: Put together a PowerPoint presentation with location options. You can include photos, maps, and stats for each one and share your slides over OneDrive to get feedback and suggestions. (Pro tip: If you’re short on time, use the innovative PowerPoint Designer to do the fancy work for you and steal all the credit for that fab, sleek template.)

5. Gather all the group's ideas in a digital notebook.

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Pre-vacation excitement can easily turn into a clutter of ideas spread across texts, emails, and documents. So share your OneNote notebook on OneDrive with your friends! It’s a collaborative space for your squad to organize schedules and to-do lists in one safe place. The anticipation will get real once you start to paste links and pictures of all the cool places you want to go. You can even give handwritten feedback using the draw feature...because sometimes typing can be so 2017.

6. Start the budget spreadsheets early.

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Does your bank account look like a stock-market crash after a vacation? Instead of spending frivolously and hoping for the best, use Excel to create budget formulas ahead of time. You can use OneDrive to update on the go from your mobile device, share your spreadsheets, and co-author with the group to keep track of who owes what. Not sure what formulas to use? Tap the math-savvy friend in the group to help you play around with all of the budget templates Excel has to offer!

7. Make actual conversation with foreign hosts and friends.

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Speaking of translating: Did you know you can have a real-time translated video conversation on Skype? The app can take their audio, translate it, and then read it back to you in the language of your choosing! Meet and talk to the owner of a homestay or short-term vacation rental, or connect with friends of friends to get the hottest local tips for your journey before the plane even takes off. And hey, remember that time you shared your Office 365 Home subscription with your five besties? Each of you gets 60 minutes of international calling a month. Sayonara, long-distance phone plans!

8. Be practically spontaneous.

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Half the fun of a vacation is being spontaneous and letting the unexpected happen. But that doesn't mean you can't plan for it! Download the Office 365 apps on your smart phone for planning on the go — from budgets to bucket lists — and you can update them along the way for whatever comes up. (Pro tip: Save precious space on your phone by uploading your photos and videos to the OneDrive app by tapping the Settings box and camera upload tab.)

9. Create a permanent home for the memories.

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A group vacation is a great way to make memories, and you probably took thousands of photos between all of you. Why let them live in loose, scattered places on social media? Upload all your pics to a shared album on OneDrive, and get your friends to do the same. Worried about storage space? Each Office 365 subscription includes 1TB of cloud storage, which amounts to over 300,000 photos, so you should be okay. Should.

Itching to take a group trip JUST so you can plan it? Ideate, communicate, and collaborate with Office 365, available at Best Buy and other major retail partners.

Images courtesy of Microsoft.