Features of Microsoft Office for IPad

Microsoft continues to make subtle improvements to all of its mobile Office apps, such as adding the capability to open files in the OpenDocument format, which is utilized by the open-source office suites LibreOffice and OpenOffice. These features have long been available in Microsoft's desktop versions of Office for Windows and OS X.

The application, which is also compatible with the iPhone, Android, and Windows Phone, does not yet include all of the functions that power desktop word editing software users, such as myself, regard as absolutely necessary. However, it is by far the greatest word processing program on the iPad, and the more you use it, the more you are sure that it is a worthy and developed piece of software that should have a place of honor on the iPad of anybody who writes. If you use a tablet, you should check it out.

Latest Updates

We wrote the majority of this review using Word on the new iPad Pro. Everything else I've tried on a tablet running Android, iOS, or Windows pales compared to the experience. It is important to note that during Apple's keynote event introducing the new iPad Pro, Microsoft Office demonstrated Office on the iPad Pro by showing the Apple Pencil being used to mark documents. However, this feature has not yet been released, although it is expected to arrive sometime early this year.

Pros and Cons

Pros

• The word processor with the greatest power available on the iOS platform.
• Utilizes both the Apple Smart Keyboard and the expansive screen of the iPad Pro in an effective manner.

Cons

• Even on an iPad Pro, you are unable to edit two different documents simultaneously.
• The shortcuts for the keyboard are not compatible with those of OS X.
• There is no access to iCloud Drive on Apple's devices.

Microsoft Word (for iPad)

The same toolbar has icons that allow you to emphasize a word by making it bold, italic, or underline. Other applications, such as Apple Pages, employ similar foot-of-the-screen toolbars but with different functionality. For instance, although Pages does not have the Copy button that is included in Word, it includes an icon that allows the user to enlarge or reduce the text size.

The Less Good

Word on the iPad Pro has uneven keyboard shortcuts, meaning that certain shortcuts for OS X don't function while others do. This is one of the downsides I encountered while using Word on the iPad Pro. For instance, pressing Option and Remove simultaneously on OS X will delete the previous Word, but on iOS, pressing those two keys simultaneously would delete the preceding letter. In OS X, pressing Command-Down will advance you to the next paragraph. However, in iOS, using Command-Down will send you to the end of the page. If you want to proceed to the following paragraph, you need to use Option-Down instead. These features have long been available in Microsoft's desktop versions of Office for Windows and OS X.

Word for iOS does not show a word count, not even in the Properties panel, which can be accessed from the top-line menu. This is true even if the iPad Pro has tremendous computational power. Many other writing apps provide word counts. Thus this seems like an unnecessary omission here. Because of a peculiar bug that only manifests itself sometimes, the cursor may appear on a line different from the one you are now typing in. As a result, pressing the Erase key may cause you to delete letters you had no intention of deleting.

Familiarity Breeds Respect

The most significant issue with Word for iPad is that it does not consistently apply keyboard shortcuts; nevertheless, this is not a significant problem for casual users and only affects power users. Although there are a few issues that might be improved, none of them are even very close to being deal breakers, and that is one thing that we would like to see Microsoft work on. You sneakingly suspect that Microsoft will have no trouble finding solutions to these issues.

The more you use Word on the iPad, the less frustrating the difficulties have become. With the iPad Pro and the Smart Keyboard, it is now feasible to write on a tablet in a manner you could see using for many hours at a period if you did not have access to a laptop. It is important to note that during Apple's keynote event introducing the new iPad Pro, Microsoft demonstrated Office on the iPad Pro by showing the Apple Pencil being used to mark documents.