A few months agowe introduced a new mobile app called Office—a whole new experience designed to be your go-to app for getting work done on a mobile device. It combines WordExceland PowerPoint into a single app and introduces new capabilities that enable you to create content and accomplish tasks in uniquely mobile ways to help you achieve more. Todaywe’re proud to announce the Office app is out of public preview and now generally available worldwide for anyone on Android and iOS phones.
Download for Android | Download for iOS
Hundreds of millions of people use Office to achieve more at workhomeand school. We know many people save rich document creation or editing for their computer or laptop and work on their phones in limited ways. We took this as a challenge for Office to find a better overall productivity experience that would change perceptions of how you could work on a mobile device to create an experience that was simplermore integratedharnessed the unique strengths of mobile devicesand truly put mobile needs at the forefront.
The Office app delivers several key benefits including:
- Combining WordExceland PowerPoint in a way that simplifies the experience with fewer apps to download or switch between. It requires far less phone storage than installing individual apps while maintaining virtually all the capabilities of the existing mobile apps people already know and use.
- Integrating our Lens technology to unlock the power of the camera with capabilities like converting images into editable Word and Excel documentsscanning PDFsand capturing whiteboards with automatic digital enhancements to make the content easier to read.
- Adding new functionality for common tasks people often encounter when working on a phone—things like making quick notessigning PDFsscanning QR codesand transferring files between devices.
Altogetherthe Office app is a powerful tool that is intuitive and familiar yet still uniquely different.
We’ve been thrilled and humbled to see the response to the public preview of the Office app since introducing it at the Microsoft Ignite conference last November. After the announcementtens of thousands of people immediately rushed to get the Android and iOS appscausing us to hit the 10,000-user limit in Apple’s TestFlight program in just a few hours. The feedback we received through customer conversationssocial mediaand the press has been very positive and encouraging— with the Office app seen as part of a new wave of innovation for Office and Microsoft. This inspired us to work hard to get this app ready for full release as soon as we could.
We have made several enhancements since the public preview—such as support for third-party storage services including BoxDropboxGoogle Driveand iCloud; templates to help you create new documentsspreadsheetsand presentations; and general performance improvements.
Today’s release is also available for download on Android tablets with limited support. The Office app for Android is fully optimized for tablets when working with WordExceland PowerPoint documents and we are committed to making the rest of the Android app as well as the iOS app fully optimized for tablets soon.
More features coming soon
But we’re not stopping here. We’re constantly thinking about ways to enrich the Office mobile experience to help people be more productive on a phone. We want people to think of the Office mobile experience as a tool they would turn to for content creation and more sophisticated work—not just for light editing and information consumption.
In the next few monthswe’ll add three new exciting features that will help us deliver on that promise:
- Word Dictation—Let Word turn your voice into written text and use voice commands and simple toolbars to easily apply the right formatting and punctuation you need.
- Excel Cards View—View and edit data in an Excel table row in a simpledigestible card format so you do not have span across columns that extend beyond the limits of the screen.
- Outline to PowerPoint—Write your presentation content as a simple outline and let PowerPoint Designer turn it into presentable slides with the proper stylingformattingand iconography of your content.
Get started with the Office app
Anyone can now download the Office app on phones for Android and iOS. The app is free to useeven without signing in. Howeversigning in with a Microsoft Account or connecting to a third-party storage service will enable you to access and store documents in the cloud. An Office 365 or Microsoft 365 subscription will also unlock various premium featuresconsistent with those in the current WordExceland PowerPoint apps.
Download the Office app now and discover a whole new way to organize your work and get things done for workfor homeand for school.
