19 Jun Microsoft Office Now Available To iPhone Users
For the Microsoft Office fans among you, no longer must you make do with Office alternatives such as Apple’s own iWork, Smart office, Google Drive, Quickoffice etc on your iPhone! You can now use Office on your iPhone to start editing Word, Excel and PowerPoint documents natively.
While the app is free to download from the App Store, the only catch is, you need an Office 365 subscription to actually use it.
What Do You Get With The iPhone Version Of Office?
To optimize the small screen real estate, Microsoft have created ‘mini’ versions of Word, Excel and Powerpoint, which like the Office Mobile version for Windows Phone, places an emphasis on the touch interface. When using Office for iPhone, it allows you to edit Word, Excel and PowerPoint documents from your iPhone. You can also create new documents in Word and Excel. Your documents are synced via the Office 365 cloud so you can access your documents on your PC or Mac as well as your iPhone. Documents are stored locally until you save, and only then does the copy in the cloud get updated.
The Office Mobile app is quite minimalist in appearance, with only 4 options in the bottom navigation menu: Recent, Open, New and Settings.
Word
Everyone’s favourite word processing software is stripped back a bit in the iPhone version.
In the desktop version, you have a comprehensive range of formatting options, ranging from bulleted lists to a range of fonts and styles. On the iPhone, the premise is that it will only be used for basic editing rather than document creation.
The version for the iPhone does, however, translate over to the small touchscreen well, with a large default text size, making it easier on the eyes to read through and edit a document. In terms of formatting text, it offers options for highlighting text in a few colours as well as the strikethrough formatting option. You can also comment within a document, which makes editing easier, particularly as the document is saved on SkyDrive so it can be accessed later on a Desktop for polishing.
Excel
Like Word, the version of Excel for the iPhone is also a little bit bare compared to its desktop counterpart.
The app lets you enter in commands into the formula field as you would using the desktop version, as well as retaining the ‘freeze’ cells feature. You can change the width of entire columns, as well as change the formatting of an individual cell. Unlike Word, it has the ever handy ‘undo’ feature, ensuring any accidental deletions or changes can be reversed.
PowerPoint
Microsoft brings it presentation software to the iPhone, with a decent range of features.
Through either one at a time, or a list, you can view slides, edit the slide text and add notes. Of course, the emphasis on the touch screen experience isn’t lost here with swiping and tapping allowing you to navigate through the presentation.You can’t, unfortunately, add or copy slides, create documents or do any serious editing such as adding a picture from your camera roll.
Once again, PowerPoint is more geared towards quick editing on the go rather than serious document creation.
Availability
Microsoft plans to roll out Office Mobile internationally this week.