Microsoft is this week launching a new Office app, which brings together Word, Excel, and PowerPoint in a re-imagined form for mobile users.
As Microsoft's Bill Doll explains on the Microsoft Tech Community blog, the new Office mobile app is meant to offer a more mobile-centric experience for Office users. It takes into account "how people's expectations differ when using a phone versus a computer," with the end result being an app optimized for "simplicity, efficiency, and common mobile needs." It also caters to how input happens on mobile devices while at the same time remaining familiar to existing Office users.
The feature likely to get the most attention and positive feedback from users is the ability to access Word, Excel, and PowerPoint documents all from the same app. Opening documents has also been streamlined making it easy to locate recent documents as well as being shown a recommended list. The documents can be stored anywhere, be that on device, in the cloud, or on your company's network. Sticky Notes users will be happy to hear they are also available to use in this new app.
Microsoft has thought about the types of data we want to access and work with without having to jump through hoops to make it easily editable. With that in mind, the Office app was designed to allow users to take a picture of a document and automatically turn it into a Word file. A picture of a table can be turned into an editable spreadsheet, and Office Lens integration means it's easy to create digitally enhanced images of documents and whiteboards.
Finally, there's a new Actions pane giving quick access to the most common tasks. Examples Microsoft gives include creating a PDF, signing a PDF using your finger, scanning a QR code to open files, and easily transferring files between different devices, be that someone else's phone in the same room or your PC located somewhere else in the world.
If you'd like to play around with this new Office mobile app, Microsoft launched a public preview for Android and iOS today. iOS users may have a harder time gaining access, though, as Apple limits public previews to 10,000 users.