Is Microsoft Office Worth Having on Android? An Android version of a “unified Office” mobile app was rolled out by Microsoft in early 2020. The app includes Word, Excel, and PowerPoint all in one mobile application.
Before this rollout, you have to install individual mobile apps for word, Excel, and PowerPoint. This makes things better because you can get all three in one Microsoft Office app for Android as well as iOS.
If you’re curious about installing Microsoft Office Mobile, the following review should help you decide whether or not it’s right for you.
Navigating Microsoft Office for Android
Once you have installed and opened the Microsoft Office app, you’ll notice how quickly it runs. The app opens in seconds, and tapping items changes the window almost immediately. Above the small footprint of the app, you’ll also get to know that it’s intuitive.
Finding your way is simple. You will see any previous document you were working on from the home screen, as well as a list of any older files in your OneDrive account. To begin with either Word, Excel, or PowerPoint, you have to tap the + icon at the bottom of the screen. This brings up three icons.
- Notes: Quickly capture text or images in the Microsoft Notes app
- Lens: Capture a phono to save in your OneDrive account
- Documents: Access the mobile version of Word, Excel, or PowerPoint
You can get to the Browse window with the folder icon at the upper right of the home screen. In that place, you can locate files in your OneDrive account. Google Drive, or items stored locally on your mobile device. You can also see any document other users have shared with you or add a new cloud storage account that you want to use with Microsoft office mobile.
If you click on the personal OneDrive account, you’ll notice that it may look familiar if you’re a Google Drive user. Navigating OneDrive directories and files inside this app is similar to navigating Drive using the Google Drive app. Then, you click folders to drill into them and tap files to lunch them, the three dots at the right of file names provide an option to share or see the file properties.
Using Word in the Office Mobile App
Once you click on Documents from the main screen, you will see the option to Open word Excel, or PowerPoint. You will get to see an icon to Scan text for the opening word. If you click Scan tech, it’s switched to the camera. As the app attempts to recognize text on the page, you’ll notice a red box around the outside of the text block.
When it’s in focus, press the white button at the bottom of the window. The office mobile app will use optical character recognition (OCR) to convert the printed text document into word. In the Office mobile app, OCR is surprisingly accurate. It’s an excellent way to capture documents that you can edit later.
Making use of the mobile word app is surprisingly easy, even on a small mobile screen you’ll see all of the common word functions normally in the ribbon by tapping the up arrow at the bottom of the window.
These include the things you’d expect, like:
- Text formatting: Bold, italics, underline, colour, and highlighting
- Paragraph formatting: Text alignment, tab, bullets, and numbered lists
- Document formatting: Headers, footers, and lists
- Search help: Tap the light bulb icon to search for how to do specific tasks
The free version of Microsoft Office mobile has far fewer features than an Office 365 subscription. Moreover, even the free version is useful for all your standard document needs.
Using Excel in the Office Mobile App
Excel inside this office mobile app is just as intuitive, all of the features you expect to find in Excel are available. It’s also easy to navigate and edit spreadsheets with just your fingers and the on-screen keyboard. Click on any cell and type “=” to start using the function as you type, you’ll see a list of functions that start with those letters.
If you’re not sure what function you want, click, and tap fx at the upper left corner of the screen and search through the function’s directory. Microsoft has made doing certain tasks you’d think would be difficult very easy. For example, resize multiple cells, drag your finger to highlight them, and use the circles on each side to resize the cells.
Word, Excel, and PowerPoint all come with useful templates you can use to save time when creating new documents. Excel includes the most useful ones like budgets, task management, and organizers.
Functions on the Desktop you can Find in the Mobile Version
Functions from the desktop app that you can as well see in the mobile version of Excel include:
- Text formatting
- Text alignment and wrapping
- Adding photos to spreadsheets
- Creating data filters
- Merging and centring cells
- Inserting and deleting columns and rows
- Formatting cell colours and borders
You won’t see the advanced VBA or macros in this online version, but for most Excel users, it’ll have everything you need. however, you can also add multiple tabs to your spreadsheets by tapping the tabbed folder icon at the lower-left corner. Then, click the + icon on the right of the tabs. Click the tab and select Rename in order to rename the tab. You can also change its colour, duplicate it, hide, move, and delete tabs.
You can easily share your spreadsheets with others by tapping the three connected dots share icon at the window’s upper right. This will bring up a share window. You can share the file as a link or as an attachment via email. Or, type email addresses into the Invite people to this file field. Those people will need to use their Office 365 account (free or paid) to access your shared file.
Again, this looks very similar to how google handles file sharing in Google Drive. It seems that Microsoft is taking a few pages from googles playbook
Notes and Other Features
The fact that there has never been an excellent note-taking app available for the platform is seen as one major issue with Android. Microsoft Notes in the mobile Office app changes all of that. Note-the taking is easy and very fast with Notes. It also lets you change the background, edit and format the text, make quick bullet lists, and more.
It’s also straightforward to share those notes with other users by using the same sharing feature as the other apps. You’ll see a list of other useful features if you tap the Actions icon at the bottom of the main screen.
These features include:
- Quickly convert images to a text document or a spreadsheet
- Easily transfer files to your computer or other nearby phones
- Sign a PDF document someone sent you
- Scan or convert images to PDF format
- Convert existing Word documents to PDF format
- Use the built-in QR scanner utility
Those are the features.
Conclusions
Users have noticed that the Microsoft Office mobile app is like six or seven apps, all built into one. For a Microsoft product, it’s surprisingly intuitive and easy to learn. You just have to give it a try if you haven’t. you may find yourself self-using it more than you expect.
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