Hot on the heels of the OneNote Double Rainbow, Microsoft announced this morning that the long awaited Office for iPad has been released! Unlike the Office Mobile app for the iPhone, there is a separate app for Word, Excel & PowerPoint.
According to the Office blog post the apps have the robust capabilities and look and feel that is “unmistakably Office”, while at the same time being built from the ground up with the touch experience that a mobile device requires.
A couple of features really stood out to me:
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App parity:
The features and looks of your documents are the same between iPad and Web App or Desktop App. No more wonky formatting, or features that don’t work – including things like spark lines and conditional formatting in Excel.
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Familiar design, but built around touch
This is huge! No more fighting with trying to work in an app designed for a mouse and keyboard on your iPad, these apps will work the way you expect them to… with your fingers.
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Built in collaboration
Share your document through OneDrive, and work on it together with other people… all from your iPad! This one really surprised me, and I think is an amazing feature to add to the platform – I love the co-authoring feature in Office 2013, and to see it come to the iPad app is (in my mind) nothing short of amazing.
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Made for the Cloud and Office 365
No surprises here, but knowing you can access your documents from OneDrive, OneDrive for Business and SharePoint hits me right in the warm and fuzzies.
These apps are free as viewers (with the exception of OneNote that is free everywhere, every time), and require a valid Office 365 subscription to be able to edit documents. This means that every Office 365 subscription except for Small Business and Enterprise E1 will have the capability of using them to their full capacities. Head on over to the app store and get them while they’re hot!
Master & CmdR 
Do you know I’d never really considered this before because I don’t use my ipad for office, but I suppose a lot of people do – trying to picture now using Word or Excel with my fingers! Daunting without the proper formatting for me considering I have issues with my touch phone!!
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I agree – I’ve recently picked up a Surface 2 RT for the very fact that the type cover and the kickstand make it usable for Office programs. I can see using an iPad to view documents, but when I want to sit and get some work done, I’m going to need a keyboard!
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