MICROSOFT OFFICE ANYWHERE
The Good The new Office for iPad
apps give you a rich set of tools for managing and creating documents.
Sharing features let you work with others. The tools work great on the
touch screen.
The Bad The iPad versions don't give access to user-created templates online.
The Bottom Line The
Office for iPad apps are a great middle ground between desktop and
smartphone versions, and are a must-have for frequent Office users.
Finally, we have the Office for
iOS that we've always wanted. Released today, Office for iPad is a much
more robust app than what we got with Office Mobile for iPhone. Packed with tools and elegantly optimized for the touch screen, it belongs on the iPads of Office users.
Instead
of having Word, PowerPoint, and Excel accessible in one app like it did
on the iPhone, Microsoft made them separate apps with far more features
in each. With the bigger screen of the iPad,
there is simply more room to work with, and Microsoft took advantage
with better tools, more templates, and touch-focused controls that are
intuitive, familiar, and work great on-the-go.
Before you rush off
to download the apps, however, it's important to note that you get
limited features with the free versions. All three apps let you connect
to OneDrive to browse your files and read Word, PowerPoint, and Excel
documents for free. But to get the full power of the Office apps that
let you create and edit documents, you'll need a subscription with
Office 365, Microsoft's service that lets you work on your documents
from anywhere.
It's also important to note that this review will cover all three apps, with sections dedicated to each.
Creating documents with Word
Microsoft's word processing software is now iPad-friendly, and has many of the tools you're used to from the desktop versions.
When
creating a new document, you get 15 common templates to help you get
started, with everything from brochures and business correspondence, to
invoices and personal letters. You also can start from scratch with a
blank document, but it's nice to have pre-made options for the more
common word-processing tasks. One thing you don't get with the iPad is
access to online templates created by other users. It's not a big
problem, but it would be nice if Microsoft let iPad users get access to
all the available templates.
Once in a document, you can
immediately see how much more robust the iPad version is over Office
Mobile for iPhone. Across the top of the iPad screen is a sort of
abbreviated Ribbon (known to desktop Office users), with tabs for Home,
Insert, Layout, Review, and View. Just like on the desktop, your Home
view is where you can choose fonts, change text styles, adjust text
alignment, and other common actions as you create your document.
The
Insert tab lets you add images, tables, shapes, footnotes, and provide
links to online sources in your document. Layout lets you set margins,
adjust page size, format your document with columns, add headers and
footers, and more. Already, the features listed so far are much more
than what you get with Office Mobile for iPhone.
The Review tab is
especially useful for editing types like myself, letting you track
changes while editing and view comments from other contributors (more on
this later).
When you save your work, you can store it on OneDrive or directly onto your iPad for offline use.
Touch-screen PowerPoint presentations
With
PowerPoint for iPad, you can browse and edit presentations already
saved to your OneDrive, start fresh with a blank slate, or pick from 19
available templates.
Once in your presentation, you can
double-tap place-holder text to add your own titles, change fonts and
styles, and add more information such as bulleted lists. The templates
here are all very elegant with options for additional slide variations
within each template. In other words, once you start a presentation from
a template, there is a lot of room for customization.
Just like Word for iPad, you also have the abbreviated Ribbon across the top, with tabs for Home, Insert, Transitions, Slide Show, Review, and Shape.
Like
Word, the Home tab is where you'll be doing most of your work, but you
can insert images and tables, choose from a long list of great-looking
transitions for your slides, view a preview of your slide show, review
comments from other contributors, or add shapes to your slides. The
surprising thing here is that you have almost 50 different transitions
to choose from in the iPad app, so your options for presentations are
virtually limitless.
Finally, when it comes time for the big
meeting, you can stream your presentation from your iPad and use handy
tools, like an on-screen laser pointer as well as the ability to draw
arrows to call attention to the content.
Spreadsheet creation in Excel
Excel
for iPad is also head and shoulders above the iPhone version, with many
of the most used features from the desktop version right at your
fingertips. Excel also has a Ribbon, with tabs appropriate to working
with spreadsheets.
But what's exceptional about the iPad version
of the app are the tools for displaying your data and the sheer amount
of formulas you can use.
When you want a visual representation of
your data, Excel for iPad lets you select the data and will give you
several recommended chart and graph types which will best represent it.
Even if you don't like what Excel recommends, there are countless
options in the Charts section and they're organized by type, with graph
categories that include lines, columns, pie charts, and numerous other
types.
When it comes to formulas, Excel for iPad has you covered.
It won't be on par with the desktop version for the sheer number of
formulas, but you can choose from long lists of common formulas by
category. There are common functions for financial spreadsheets, logical
functions, text-focused functions, Lookup and Reference functions, and
several more.
Sharing your work
One of the big selling points for the modern Microsoft Office
for desktops and mobile devices is the ability to work together on
whatever device you're using. The Office apps for iPad continue to make
it easy to connect with others and share documents with a button in the
shape of a person in the upper right which lets you add people to
collaborate.
When you touch the button, you have the option to
send a link via email, email the document as an attachment, or copy the
link to the document on OneDrive so you can send it to a colleague any
way you like. Once they receive it, they can login to your document and
you can work simultaneously and see what your colleague is doing in real
time.
A note about subscriptions
Like I said earlier, you
can only view documents on your OneDrive with the free versions of the
iPad apps. In order to edit and create documents, you'll need an Office
365 subscription for $9.99 per month for home, or $5 to $15 per month for business.
Office for iPad is the missing link
Rather than just a place to view documents and make small edits, Office for iPad actually lets you get real work done on your tablet. That's a big, and welcome, improvement from Office Mobile for iPhone.
While it's still not as powerful as the desktop version (obviously), it
sits right where it should be, which is comfortably between Office on a
computer and a smartphone.
What I'm now realizing is with the
iPad app, the limited Office Mobile for iPhone makes a lot more sense.
Here's why: Microsoft reasonably assumes that you'll start your work on
your desktop, then gives you the tools to make substantial tweaks on
your iPad with many of the most used features. Then, with Office Mobile
for iPhone you can make last-minute edits and fix typos while on your
way to the big meeting. Without this piece of the puzzle, the gap
between the desktop and smartphone versions was too big. But with the
iPad version, it starts to feel like the modern Microsoft Office is a
set of tools that truly works together.
With the last piece of the
puzzle, Microsoft appears to have finally met the challenge posed by
iWork and Google Docs. Both of those competing solutions have their
advantages (for one, Google Docs doesn't require a subscription), but
they bring disadvantages as well (such as fewer easily accessible
templates). We'll be exploring the differences in more detail over the
next days, but for now, Microsoft is off to an impressive start.
pricing :- currently unavailable
