Office add-ins give you all kinds of specialized functionality, and taking advantage of them requires only a few quick clicks. This ebook offers a look at how to get the add-ins you want and put them to work—and it includes a list of 10 of the most useful add-ins to speed your Office chores.

From the ebook:

Everyone wants to work easier and faster, don’t they? If you’re using Office 365, Office and SharePoint add-ins will help you do just that. Add-ins are mini apps that perform a specific task. There are many available, both for free and for purchase. You can even develop your own. In this article, I’ll show you how to find the add-ins you might find useful when working with Office files. Once you’re familiar with the feature, you can look for add-ins before spending a lot of your own time creating solutions from scratch when they might already be built and ready for download.

I’ll be working with Office 365 apps on a Windows 10 64-bit system. You should be able to access the Add-ins feature with Office 2013 or 2016 running on Windows 7 or later on 32- and 64-bit systems. Given the simplicity of the examples, there’s no downloadable demo file.

How to get add-ins
Office add-ins are available from the Office Store, and the accessibility is built right into the Office interface. Click the Insert tab and then click My Add-ins and click Store, as shown in Figure A. In addition, you’ll need a Microsoft account to access the Microsoft Store.

Let’s work through a simple example to find and download an add-in that trims spaces from Excel data. Now, you can do this yourself using Excel’s TRIM() function. But if you do this a lot, you’ll find the add-in quicker, easier, and more flexible.