Office Applications Arrive on iPad

Office mobile applications for the Apple iPad, released Mar. 2014, provide users with the ability to view Office documents and to engage in online or offline document creation and editing if connected to an Office 365 subscription. The applications are important in that they allow users to create and edit Office documents while traveling, with less likelihood of corruption than third-party Office document editors for the iPad when exchanging documents with colleagues. An Office 365 subscription is required for editing, and no option exists to enable that functionality for traditional volume on-premises Office licensees at this time.

Offline Editing, but Requires Office 365

In Mar. 2014, Microsoft announced stand-alone Excel, PowerPoint, and Word applications for the Apple iPad. Prior to this, iPad users could edit most Office documents from SharePoint or OneDrive, Microsoft’s consumer cloud storage service, using the Office Web Apps/Office Online, but could only do so while online. Now Excel, PowerPoint, and Word for the iPad allow for viewing of Excel, PowerPoint, and Word documents stored in SharePoint or OneDrive, e-mail, or other third-party applications on an iPad. Documents can also be saved locally for offline viewing. But the free applications can only view documents; editing documents requires the user to have a qualifying Office 365 subscription.