After many circulating rumours, following the launch of Office Mobile app for iPhone last summer, Microsoft has finally released Office for iPad, featuring Word, Excel and PowerPoint.
Consistent with the iPhone version, the Office apps are available to download for free. However, this time around users will be able to both view documents and give presentations for free, without any subscription payments. For editing or creating documents an Office 365 subscription is required; costing £7.99 per month or £79.99 per year.
Satya Nadella, who was appointed chief executive 52 days ago, said at Microsoft's press conference that "We are not bound to one device, one place or one time. Job number one is to empower people to be more productive, to do more, across all these devices," according to the Financial Times. "A great idea shouldn’t have to wait for you to get back to a particular device," he added.
Taking advantage of its larger mobile screen, Office for iPad contains a lot more features than the iPhone version's basic editing tools, including support for re-flowing, formatting and touch handles. Full file fidelity with the desktop version of the suite components is also promised by Microsoft.
A video below shows you a quick demonstration of how each app works. These iOS tablet apps are specially designed and "definitely not the Windows app ported to the iPad," asserted Microsoft Office general manager Julia White.
To retrieve documents, users will need to sign in with a OneDrive or SharePoint account, unless they already have them stored on their iPad internal storage.
Office 365 was described by Nadella as Microsoft's cloud platform taking Office from the desktop to every device. Stating that the company's "real commitment to Office 365" is "everywhere." This could be construed as a hint that a version for Android devices is likely to arrive too, a move which would deliver the Office 365 suite to the vast majority of tablets.
