Workarounds for Microsoft Apps and Schoology

So, remember when I said there would be some bugs to work out as we introduced Office 365 to our environment? Here are the first two plus my recommended work-arounds.

NOTE—these comments apply only to the apps, not to the web-based versions of these programs that you can use on the computers.

BUG #1: Students cannot currently submit a document directly from the Microsoft Word app to a Schoology assignment. (Which means you can also not submit directly from Word to Schoology.)

WORK AROUND: Save the document into OneDrive. Open the document in OneDrive—it will open in a viewing window. Click on the three dots that appear in the bottom right corner. Click “Open in Another App.” Choose Schoology and follow the usual pattern. NOTE—the document that gets submitted will be a Word document.

Which brings me to BUG #2:  Unlike Pages, the apps for OneDrive and Word do not currently allow you to save a document as a PDF.

WORK AROUND: When you have a document open in the Word app, click the share button (looks like a little person with a plus sign on the top right corner.) Choose “Email as attachment.” Choose “send as PDF” and type in your school email address. Open the email. Touch and hold on the attachment. Submit to Schoology as usual from there.

Hopefully Microsoft will start adding updates to its apps based on feedback from users (including us) and will eventually fix both of these issues. But the work arounds above should help out for now.