It took Microsoft 4 years to decide to develop an Office version for iPad, (different from the already existing Office Mobile). Office applications on iPad are a set of work products that integrate seamlessly with their PC counterparts and offer enough functionality to work independently and to work seriously on documents.
Although not perfect, Microsoft has really done an admirable job finding a middle ground between the traditional Office suite and the iPad touchscreen interface.
READ ALSO: Office Mobile free for Phone and Android phones with Word, Excel and Powerpoint
Office for iPad is made up of three distinct applications that can be downloaded for free from the Apple App Store :
- Word for iPad
- Excel for iPad
- PowerPoint for iPad
Office for iPad requires iOS 7 or later and is in Italian.
As said, they are free apps with very limited functionality, however, if you are not a Microsoft Office paying user.
From free applications it is only possible to review documents and open files, but you cannot edit or create new ones .
If you want to create new documents or edit and save others, you need to buy a Home Office 365 subscription for 10 Euros per month.
You can take a 30-day free trial of Office365.
By subscribing to Office 365 you can get 20GB of online storage to keep documents, the ability to access OneDrive files directly from Office on any device and computer, via cloud applications.
To those who often start to write a document on the PC, and then continue to edit it on the laptop or, from now, on the iPad, then this subscription could be very advantageous.
Speaking of how Office for iPad works we say that it is extremely familiar: Word for iPad is almost the same as Microsoft Word, Excel for iPad as Excel and PowerPoint for iPad identical to the PC program of the same name.
Word for iPad is the most important app that is used the most for writing and reading .doc and .docx documents.
Microsoft uses iCloud for password management if you use the Office365 subscription.
The menu is similar to that of Office 2013 on PC, with the ability to open a new file and open a recent file.
Files can be shared via email via attachment for reading or for editing.
If you open a new document, you can start writing, but this is only possible by paying for your Office 365 subscription.
The document creation screen has far fewer options than the original Word PC program, but they are basic enough to write.
Word for iPad is designed to be used without mouse and without physical keyboard on iPad so you can write by touching the screen both in landscape and portrait mode.
The advantage of portrait mode is that you have more visible space on the document, even if you have to write with your thumbs.
Under each of the main menu items there is a submenu that includes all the key control options you need to create any type of document.
"Home" is the section where the font options are located (including, for the first time on iOS, there are the Microsoft Fonts) and the options to format the text.
You can also insert images and photos tables on documents that can be dragged to the points you want.
Office for iPad supports automatic saving and spell checking of text.
PowerPoint for iPad is a highly graphical tool with a significant amount of image control.
Of the three Microsoft Office programs, none seem more suitable for iPad than PowerPoint.
It is possible to create a fairly rich and complex PowerPoint presentation that includes text, graphics, bulleted lists, images and photos from the gallery.
I can't add a video to PowerPoint on iPad.
Excel for iPad looks a lot like the PC program, perfect for inserting numbers into the cells of a worksheet.
The application includes the whole series of mathematical formulas of the original program and supports many functions such as intelligent automatic filling.
Overall, the Office suite for iPad works very well and offers almost all the features of the original programs, adapted to work on a touchscreen.
There is no possibility to print documents from the iPad (hopefully it will be added soon) and some other more advanced functions.
As seen in the past, Office on iPad could already be used thanks to CloudOn which brings full Microsoft Office to iPad as a free cloud app .
This is the video trailer
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