iPad gains much-improved Microsoft Office

iPad gains much-improved Microsoft Office app

Microsoft has at last introduced its all-in-one Office app for the iPad, giving enterprise professionals using the Apple tablet access to its well-designed mobile productivity app.

What is Microsoft Office (mobile)?

The mobile app version of Office combines the company’s triumvirate of mobile productivity solutions — Office, Excel and PowerPoint — in one well-designed app.

These core apps are supplemented with extremely useful additional features (see below) and the combined software has the benefit of requiring far less space on your device than all three individual apps.

The app was made available to iPhones and Android devices in 2019, but has only now made it to the iPad.

I think it hits the zeitgeist for mobile professionals, with a bunch of sensible feature and design decisions that remove a great deal of friction from getting work done while on the move.

Focus, ease-of-use, and enhancements

If you’ve been using any of the company’s current standalone productivity apps, you’ll be accustomed to how they work on mobile; nothing much has changed. However, by integrating all three into one place, the company has made it much easier for mobile professionals to remain focused by presenting all of them within a single app experience.

That’s really important for maintaining focus and attention, often in distracting environments. How many of us are attempting to write vital business proposals while also juggling child care right now? That’s the kind of environment in which even microscopic distractions from focus can set productivity back.

Many of the better facets of the software come from the built-in support for Microsoft’s Lens technology, which lets Office use your iPad or iPhone camera for such massively time-saving tasks as converting images into editable Word and Excel documents, scanning PDFs, and capturing whiteboards with automatic digital enhancements to make the content easier to read. It’s also easier to navigate to the document you want as these are all made available in the Home screen.