Microsoft Inc.g has followed through on its promise of a unified Office mobile app — for some people, anyway. After months of beta testing, the company has finally released the all-in-one productivity app for Android phone users. Like before, this lets you edit Excel, PowerPoint and Word documents without having to switch apps.
The new app also lets you scan real-world documents with Office Lens, read QR codes, sift through OneDrive files and synchronizes with the Windows 10 notes application.
The combined Office app which went into testing early last year and was initially unveiled for public preview in November is now officially out for download.
Tablets, chromebooks and iOS users will miss out
Android users seem to be getting the best app deals because the all-in-one Microsoft Office app appears to work on just android for the moment. According to Android Police, the unified Office app currently has no support for tablets or Chromebooks.
READ ALSO: Google ends Free Public Wi-Fi Program
This is because, unlike the stand-alone Word and Excel apps which are optimised to work large-screen devices including Chromebooks, the new app seems locked to portrait mode.
Also, the iOS equivalent of the all-in-one office app is currently unavailable.
Nonetheless, the launch of the all-in-one app could be a major step towards increasing mobile productivity. For years, the two most popular office tools: Google docs and Microsoft, have only provided separate apps for each of their products on mobile.
This makes working tedious on mobile, especially when the document you are working on needs different types of office products.
However, with the new Microsoft office app, you can save time and phone memory because you need just a single app when working on either a report, data analysis or presentation.
Yetunde Adegoke
