The new Office for iPhone is everything it should have been on day one
by
, 11-13-2014 at 04:55 PM (1576 Views)
I remember when Microsoft first came out with Office for iPhone. It was actually kind of exciting. Here was this thing that for years had only existed in the form of rumors and leaked documents. And there it was, at last: the killer iPhone app, ready to download. Or so I thought. Maybe I was expecting too much, but I came away feeling underwhelmed. That first version of Office Mobile was a watered-down gimp of a program, with pitifully few editing tools and an occasionally confusing layout (imagine having no way of knowing what size font you were using). Compared to some apps, like Google Drive, it wasn't that bad, but it still wasn't as feature-rich as Apple's own iWork suite. Worst of all, the software has received few feature updates in the 17 months since it debuted. Is this what we waited so long for?
At last, however, Microsoft seems to have come to its senses. The company is getting rid of Office Mobile and replacing it with three standalone iPhone apps for Word, Excel and PowerPoint, just like on the iPad. In fact, because these apps share code with the iPad version, they arrive with the same robust feature set, along with a couple tricks designed specifically for the iPhone. In short, then, the new apps are everything the original Office for iPhone should have been.
If you've spent any time with Office for iPad (or if you read my review), you'll notice right away that these new iPhone apps have generally the same UI as the tablet version. The icons are the same, as is the layout of the home screen, where you can create new documents, view recently opened files or poke around any storage accounts you may have linked. Speaking of the sort, whereas you once needed a Microsoft OneDrive or SharePoint account to open something stored in the cloud, you now have the option of connectingyour Dropbox account as well. It's a brilliant solution when you think about it: Dropbox doesn't have built-in office tools like OneDrive or Google Drive, and meanwhile Microsoft has caught flak for not supporting enough storage services. Everybody wins, especially users.
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