Microsoft
Office fans who've spent the last nine months using the software's
suite of apps on their tiny smartphone screens are probably thrilled
that they can finally create and update documents on the iPad's
significantly bigger display surface.
The
new version of Office for Apple's tablet is not likely to be a big deal
for anyone else. While the apps are beautiful, intuitive and include
many familiar functions from the popular desktop version of Office,
typing and maneuvering the cursor within documents remains awkward and
inefficient.
Microsoft
released Office for the iPad on Thursday; nearly four years after Apple
launched the groundbreaking tablet. It includes the Word, Excel and
PowerPoint apps that will be familiar to both business and everyday
people.
Up
until now, Office users had to make due with a very basic version
designed for smartphones that first launched in June 2013. Competitors
like Apple and Google also created similar software for the iPad, but
those apps have very basic features and don't always mesh perfectly with
Microsoft documents.
Microsoft's
new apps are free, but you need an annual subscription to Microsoft's
Office 365, which costs between $70 and $100 depending on the version,
to do more than just read documents.
(Also see: Microsoft makes editing documents free on Office for iPhone, Android)
By
Friday afternoon, the trio of apps occupied the top three spots on the
App Store's real time list of most downloaded free apps.
Honestly,
the free versions may meet the needs of a lot of people, because
displaying documents is one of the most useful functions of the apps.
Pulling
up documents is quick and easy, especially if they're stored on a
user's OneDrive account, which comes with 20 gigabytes of cloud storage
space as part of the Office 365 subscription.
You
can shrink or enlarge the type to fit as much or as little of it as you
like on your screen. I could fit my entire one-page resume, which is
largely written in an eight-point font, on the iPad's screen and still
easily read it.
But
the iPad Air's super-clear retina display probably helped. And it's
worth mentioning that I don't wear glasses. People with impaired vision
might have a tougher time. Either way, it's still a big upgrade from
looking at the same document on an iPhone screen.
Excel
spreadsheets, especially the large ones I viewed, required a little
more pinching and stretching to view, because of their larger size, but
were still fairly easy to scroll through.
For
people who want to take notes or presentation materials into a meeting
without dragging along a stack of printouts or a laptop, this is going
to be really handy. And if you use OneDrive, it's nice to know you can
always have access to your files on a relatively compact and lightweight
device.
Unfortunately, other cloud-based services like Dropbox aren't compatible.
But is it worth the effort to try to create or edit Office documents on an iPad?
Rather
than stripping down Office to a super-basic version, like it did with
the smartphone software, Microsoft created a version of Office that's
customized for the tablet user and includes many of the bells and
whistles of the desktop version.
The
app is relatively easy to use and its layout is clean and simple.
Word's toolbar at the top lets you do things like change the typeface of
fonts and size, highlight text and customize margins and columns. You
can also insert page breaks and pictures from your iPad's camera roll or
photo stream. There's also a nice selection of compatible fonts to
choose from -even Wingdings, if you like that sort of thing.
In
order to cut and paste and make other changes to text in Word, you have
to tap twice on the area you want to update, which brings up a set of
scrolling bars, much like in other iOS applications. You can move the
bars to select text, then cut copy or paste the selection. It's a little
cumbersome and slow, but pretty easy to figure out.
Sadly, the iPad version lacks the speedy keyboard shortcuts of Office's Mac and PC versions.
One
nice feature is a built-in AutoSave function, which can be disabled if
you're worried about data usage. There's also a basic spell checker,
with those familiar red and green lines to warn you of potential
mistake, but no thesaurus.
Excel
functions are also somewhat pared down, but the app displays documents
created elsewhere very nicely. All three of the apps come with sets of
templates that speed up the creation of basic documents.
On-the-go
business types will probably love the functionality of the Office apps
and eagerly add their iPads to their existing Office 365 subscriptions.
But I'm curious how much even people like that will use the apps. Even
if you buy a nice keyboard to use with your iPad, it's much faster to
create and edit documents on laptop.
Meanwhile,
typing on an iPad itself should be reserved for quick edits and
desperate situations, no matter how nice an app you're using.
