Microsoft Bundles Word, PowerPoint, Excel, PDF Tools Into 1 Super Productive App
Video screenshot via Microsoft Office 365
Word, PowerPoint and Excel for mobile are now a single Microsoft Office app. While the idea of it might sound a bit messy, Microsoft has found a number of ways to make your workflow run even more smoothly while saving memory space to boot.
By bringing everything into one place, it “reduces the need to switch between multiple apps and significantly reduces the amount of space used on your phone compared to multiple installed apps,” the company explains in a blog post. Within the same app, you’ll be able to access recent or recommended documents, as well as look up files across your organization.
The company re-envisioned the Office app as if it were first created for mobile devices, turning the use of your smartphone from a liability into an advantage. Most excitingly, you can now use your phone to transform pictures and physical documents into editable files.
Using your phone’s camera, you can turn whiteboards at meetings as well as documents into images. Taking a photo of a document turns it into an editable Word file, while snapping a table turns it into a workable Excel spreadsheet.
By simply selecting pictures from your camera roll, PowerPoint will “help you design a presentation” based on the given visuals, Microsoft says. In addition, you’ll have the option of immediately converting a photo or document into a PDF file.
You can also sign PDF documents wherever you are, as the Office app lets you create signatures with your finger.
Microsoft believes that it’s done all these without compromising the high expectations of longtime users and feel of the classic Microsoft Office suite.
“This solution should feel familiar to the people that know and rely on them today and instill a sense of confidence that they can accomplish their work with the high degree of quality and security that they have come to know,” it adds.
A preview version of the new Office app has been made available for iOS and Android users. However, as Apple’s test platform only allows 10,000 users, trials for the iOS app are now closed since all 10,000 slots were snapped up quickly.
[via TNW, video and images via Microsoft]
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