In a bold move yesterday, Microsoft, lead by their new CEO Satya Nadella, launched Microsoft Word, Excel, and PowerPoint for the Apple iPad.
I’m not talking about watered down, half-hearted, sort-kinda Office applications, I’m talking about the real, full blown, well featured, iOS native Office applications for the iPad. Did I mention this is Microsoft’s Office on the iOS platform?!
To see Office in action on an iPad, you can watch Microsoft’s introductory video.
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=frpsGFQ4AIY?rel=0]
I’m really excited about having Word, Excel, and PowerPoint on my iPad. The apps look and feel great! Taken together with the already released OneNote and OneDrive (formerly known as SkyDrive), Microsoft has seemingly overnight, empowered millions of iPad owning Office users around the world.
So what do you get? Available now in the iOS App Store, users can download, free of charge, Word, Excel, and PowerPoint for the iPad. The apps are free and will enable anyone who installs them to read Office documents. If you just happen to be an Office 365 customer, you can sign in to your account from the Office apps on your iPad and instantly have the ability to edit your documents.
You will need to have an iPad running iOS 7.0 or later and to edit documents, a Microsoft Office 365 Home subscription.
Microsoft’s Office Apps for iPad are available now on the App Store, or you can use these handy download links.
You can read more about Microsoft’s Office Apps for the Apple iPad on the Microsoft blog.