If you want to use a Microsoft Office app for iPad, you’ve been able to run the individual Word, Powerpoint and Excel apps for many years. But while the iPhone had an Office all-in-one app in February last year, the iPad did not. A year later, Microsoft finally fixed it.
The process of integrating the main Office tools into a single application really started in November 2019 …
Background
Microsoft has released a beta version of iOS 2019 to bring “all your Office documents together in one place”.
The Office app offers a simple, integrated experience that puts the tools you need to work on a mobile device at the forefront of the experience. We started by combining the existing Word, Excel and PowerPoint mobile applications into one application. This brings all of your Office documents together in one place, reduces the need to switch between multiple applications, and significantly reduces the amount of space used on your phone compared to multiple installed applications. Then we added new features that take advantage of the strengths of mobile devices, such as the camera, to allow you to create content in exclusively mobile ways. Finally, we’ve added a new action panel that helps you accomplish many of the common mobile tasks you need to do in one place.
It was officially launched in February 2020, when Microsoft explained that it was making better use of its iPhone storage.
This app retains all the functionality of existing Word, Excel and PowerPoint mobile apps, but requires much less storage on the phone than using three separate apps.
The only problem was that there was no iPad version – and running the iPhone app on an iPad was just as ugly as you expected.
Microsoft Office iPad app now available
Version 2.46 finally offers us a native iPad app.
Office is now available on the iPad: we are combining the Word, Excel and PowerPoint applications you know into a single application optimized for iPadOS. In addition, you’ll see additional tools to keep you more productive than ever. For example, you will be able to create and sign PDFs quickly and turn images into documents.
Promptly access image-based workflows: Tap ‘Share’ in the phone gallery outside the Office app, for various actions like Create PPT, Create PDF and more. In addition, if there are recent screenshots when you open the Office application, they appear as a suggestion to convert to PDF or PPT.
Insert date, shape, image and notes in PDF: Now you can easily insert date, shape, image and notes in PDFs using new features.
The app can be downloaded for free from the App Store, but requires a Microsoft 365 subscription priced at $ 6.99 / month for an individual or $ 9.99 / month for a family.
Two of the individual iPad apps received updates last month, including trackpad support in Word.
Francois Hoang no Unsplash photo
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