When Apple announced that its iWork suite would be bundled , free of burster , with new Io and Mac devices , it seemingly slammed the room access on Microsoft ’s Office ambitiousness for the iPad . How could Microsoft bring its pricey Office suite into a world of free ( and almost free ) apps ?
The answer : Outdo iWork in both variety and role . Apple aims to make Pages , Numbers , and Keynote the most beautiful office software for iPad and other Apple gadget . With Office for iPad , Microsoft bids to slip that crown .
PowerPoint on the iPad is light , bold , and easy to habituate .
Microsoft ’s Office for iPad is a collection of three apps : Word , PowerPoint , and Excel . ( OneNote for the iPadhas been usable since 2011 , and Microsoft ’s Lync , Skype , and Yammer are also available . ) drug user can download each for free from the App Store to an iPad running iOS 7.0 or above . And each of those gratis apps can be used to view document that have been produce elsewhere .
What makes Office for iPad so of import , course , is that one can actuallydosomething with the document , rather than hunt and peck at it , as one must in Office Mobile on a smartphone .
Built for touch from the ground up
According to Michael Atalla , director of Cartesian product direction for Office , Office for iPad represents neither a “ mess up - up ” Office Mobile for iPhone nor a stripped - down Office for Windows , but rather a custom version of Office designed expressly for the iPad .
work with docs in Office for iPad is a far outcry from editing in Office Mobile for iPhone .
I wholly agree . bureau for iPad symbolize the distilled Office experience , pour into an iOS glass . Quite candidly , I choose it to working in Office on the desktop , if only because Microsoft organizes the most usually - used functions so intuitively , using an icon - driven ribbon at the top of the screen . In Word , for example , Office for iPad preserves the footnoting capability but cuts out the Mailings and References headings . prospect are you wo n’t miss them .
Working with text in Office for iPad should be visceral to anyone who has used iOS : tap once on a word go the cursor to that emplacement ; tapping twice creates the slipper bars for spotlight a occlusion of text edition . Pressing and releasing brings up a set of options to take or insert text . bear down your finger brings up the rapid growth or spyglass icon . ( Atalla suppose that Microsoft develop an stretch , widened zoom that highlighted a word . All I saw was the default orbitual view , however . )
Images can be resized and moved at the tactual sensation of a finger .
For most of my examination , I paired an iPad Air with aPi Dock - It Pro keyboard casefrom Parle Innovation , but I also discover myself banging away on the tablet itself . Touch is simply so nonrational for moving images around and resize PowerPoint slide head , especially as the text realigns itself to flow around the newly - sized art . It ’s not perfect : I ran into situations where I almost had to intercept randomly to select a field , then edit the text within it . But eventually I was able to accomplish what I set out to do .
redaction text should be familiar to anyone who has used iOS .
Functionality preserved, mostly
once in a while Microsoft will get too cute , however . Take find - and - replace , a fairly common function . In the desktop variation of Word , typing a nimble keyboard shortcut automatically brings up the regain and Replace menu . In Office for iPad , however , there are no keyboard crosscut . And to regain a tidings , you ’ll require to tap the magnifying - glass Search icon at the top right field , then tap the configurations gear to the far left . Only then will you recover the replace affair you were expect for . It ’s not totally unintuitive , but it is a bit awkward nevertheless .
In general , Office for iPad retain some of the value - tally features that have become colligate with Office , include the power to track changes and to co - author document . Tracking change , for its part , takes up the bulk of the Review fare in Word for iPad and seems especially well implemented .
Excel comes with a custom computer keyboard for easier data entry .
And in Excel Online , the default choice for Home appear to surmount what Microsoft has build into Excel for iPad , including the “ tell me what you want to do ” lookup box . In fact , there ’s no obvious aid functionality in Office for iPad at all . ( It ’s there , though : Click the autosave button in the top left corner to see a assistant and Support choice . )
But from a feature perspective , comparing Microsoft ’s Office Web Apps and Office for iPad break that the tablet app is just a few gradation up from the World Wide Web - found app . In the online version of Word , for example , you have the power to sum a form or a footnote to a selected piece of text . This mathematical function is n’t uncommitted in the iPad adaptation , but everything else persist the same between the two . Like Word Online , there ’s spell - checking , but no grammar checker or thesaurus . Power substance abuser will find that some of the more sophisticated surgical incision - format selection are n’t useable .
On the other hand , some lovely small touches countervail those omission . For example , Microsoft build a custom keypad into Excel to smoothen data entry and speed the launching of formulas . For that matter , the formulas ( not functions , as Excel Online calls them ) are neatly organized by class , similar to how the desktop version of Excel organise them . Again , the templet ( 16 in Excel for iPad ) prove exceedingly useful , as do the default option for charts and graphs .
Microsoft includes legion utilitarian templates for Excel for iPad .
A solid tablet tool
Traditionally , Office entanglement Apps(now Office Online ) feel a routine like Charlie Brown trying to kick the football : Just when a special feature was urgently needed , Microsoft would try out to upsell you to its full - fledged Office rooms . I never ran into that in Office for iPad , nor did I function into too many situation where it simply could n’t do a basic but lively task .
I have n’t yet spent enough time with Office for iPad alongside the Apple iWork suite to definitively give one suite the boundary over the other . My initial printing , however , is that you ’ll prefer Word for iPad over Pages , with perhaps a slight edge to Excel over Numbers , as well . I ’ve always been very impressed with Keynote , however , and I suspect that most iPad users will prefer to cling with it .
A number of transitions ship with PowerPoint for iPad .
Nevertheless , kudos to the Office for iPad team . I think they ’ve produce a cortege of “ free ” apps as unspoilt or better than anything Apple has created .
Correction : An Office 365 subscription is needed to produce as well as edit documents on Office for iPad .
update at 7:15 p.m. PT with a video report from IDG News Service .
