
In Microsoft’s apps, they look like they did when I created them, and even features such as frozen panes in Excel spreadsheets work. With Apple’s iWorks apps, I usually get an error message about missing fonts when I open even the most rudimentary of Word and Excel files. Judging from the various documents I’ve tried out so far, the iPad apps already do an excellent job of handling documents created in other versions of Office – fancy formatting, oddball fonts and all. Julia White, the Microsoft product manager who did the demos at Thursday’s press event, told me afterwards that there will be updates with more features if Microsoft is serious about supporting the iPad, it’ll fill in the more obvious holes quickly. Overall, the philosophy behind these apps seems to be that when they support a feature, they support it either well, or not at all. While the apps don’t support these sorts of options, they do bring in documents created in other versions of Office that include them you just can’t add them from scratch or modify instances that are already there. Other significant missing features I’ve stumbled across so far include the ability to create charts in Word and animate objects in PowerPoint. (The OneDrive app does let you open up your Office docs in a printing program.)
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Nor do the apps support iOS’s “Open in” feature, which would be a simple way to get documents into a third-party utility such as Printer Pro for printing. Word is especially rich, with support for multiple columns and the ability for several people to collaborate on a document, complete with redlined revisions and threaded comments.Īt the same time, there are some omissions - most notably the ability to print your documents, a weird no-show given how much advanced stuff all three apps sport. Instead, it has plenty of features beyond the basics.
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Given how bare-bones Microsoft’s existing versions of Office for the iPhone and Android are, I was prepared for the iPad one to be similarly minimalist. (Alternatively, you can choose to save them only on your iPad, although I’m not sure why you’d want to do that.) Other current versions of Office do that, too, so you don’t need to go through any fancy logistics to get to your documents to and from any device that runs Office. Just as you’d assume, the three apps save everything to your Microsoft OneDrive online storage by default. The level of polish and performance is high: Actions such as dragging, dropping and resizing objects feel as if they were designed to work well with the touchscreen, which isn’t always true of the more conventional version of Office that comes with Microsoft’s Surface 2 tablet. The Ribbon toolbar, for instance, is skinny and streamlined, freeing up more of the iPad’s limited on-screen real estate for content. They look very much like Office as it exists elsewhere, but Microsoft didn’t just cram the existing interface onto the iPad’s screen.
Once I was up and running, I found a lot in all three new apps that’s impressive.
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(I haven’t seen any reports of anybody else running into the same problem.)

Whether the glitch is Microsoft’s fault or Apple’s, I’m not sure, and I hope it’s not too hard getting $200 in charges on my Amex card reversed. I tried again, and iTunes told me I’d subscribed a second time, for an additional $100.Įventually, I got in by subscribing yet again, this time in a browser on the iPad. (I had a subscription, which had lapsed.) I paid up though iTunes on the tablet, and found that I still couldn’t sign in. After I’d downloaded them and fired up Word for the first time, I got an explanation that in order to do anything beyond viewing documents, I’d need to buy a year’s Office 365 subscription for $100. The biggest problem I’ve had with Office on the iPad so far came before I actually did anything with the apps.
