Arik Hesseldahl

Recent Posts by Arik Hesseldahl

Microsoft Brings Office 365 to Apple’s iPhone

Office for iPhone

Software giant Microsoft released a version of its Office application for Apple’s iPhone today. It has been the subject of a lot of speculation, and apparently there were some contentious issues between Apple and Microsoft regarding the split of revenue.

A few things to know about this app: First, in order to use it, you must have an existing Office 365 subscription — so you can’t just use it as a one-off app — and you can access documents stored in SkyDrive and SharePoint, and you can only save documents to those services. Second, you can create and edit Word and Excel documents, but not PowerPoint decks, including PowerPoint decks, and there is a feature for displaying them and showing them off in “presentation mode.” It also opens Office documents attached to email messages. (Update: Microsoft says you can edit PowerPoint decks. My mistake there.)

Microsoft is positioning this as the optimal way to see and use Office documents on the iPhone; this is, for now, an-iPhone only app. Charts, animations and other elements are supported. There’s no iPad version yet, though obviously it will run on the iPad. Offline editing is supported.

Two features only work if you have Office 365 running on a Windows PC: Recent Documents shows documents you’ve read recently on your computer, and Resume Reading keeps track of where you left off reading a document on your computer, and brings you back to that point.

Here’s the official screenshot from iTunes:

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— Gitesh Pandya of BoxOfficeGuru.com comments on the dreadful opening weekend box office numbers for “The Fifth Estate.”