Office Comes to the iPhone

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On Friday, Microsoft quietly released a version of Office for iOS. For now, it’s only available for the iPhone, not the iPad, and it requires a subscription to Office 365.

PCMag’s Adario Strange reported, “After more than a year of rumors, Microsoft today finally released a version of its Office suite for the iPhone. The app, available for subscribers of Redmond’s Web-based Office 365, includes iPhone versions of Word, Excel, and PowerPoint, which allow you to create, edit, and update all of your documents and sync them with Microsoft’s SkyDrive cloud storage service.”

The Washington Post’s Hayley Tsukayama noted, “The app has its limitations. It’s free to download but only works for those who subscribe to Microsoft’s Office 365 service, which costs $10 per month or $100 per year. It isn’t meant for the iPad, whose larger screen would make it easier to work with documents.”

According to The Verge’s Tom Warren, “The editing controls are actually a lot better than Windows Phone’s Office version, once you get used to them. You can quickly undo changes and see them update in real time within documents. On the Windows Phone version it’s difficult to undo your changes as the editing options display in a separate section. Apart from the initial confusion, I was quickly updating documents on my iPhone and seeing those changes reflected on Office Web Apps and the desktop version of Office.”

Macworld’s Philip Michaels observed, “Microsoft’s Office-for-iPhone announcement couldn’t have been more low-key than if it had sent company representatives door to door to quietly spread the news. Microsoft broke the news on a Friday—that’s the day in the news business when you typically let people know that you’ve been indicted, or that those rumors about you are true and that you and the intern hope everyone respects your privacy—posting the announcement in its Office 365 blog and not, say, at a high-profile press event. That’s a significant choice by Microsoft.”