Microsoft has slowly been making their Office suite available on Android, first on tablets and more recently moving to the hugely popular phone platform. Microsoft has been making the apps available via their beta program, but as of today, you can grab Word, Excel and Powerpoint on your Android phone without having to resort to joining any Beta programs.
During their five week testing period which began just prior to Google I/O last month, Microsoft tested the apps on more than ‘1,900 different Android phone models in 83 countries’ a pretty sizeable sample. That testing phase has obviously gone well with the apps now available to what appears to be a large portion of my Android devices (sorry Nexus Player).
There have been improvements since the beta began, with updated access to ‘popular third-party storage offerings like Google Drive and Box’ being added.
Kirk Koenigsbauer, corporate vice president for the Office Client Applications and Services team who announced the general availability of the apps shared his favourite features of Office:
- On the go reviews and edits—I often need to squeeze in quick reviews in between appointments during the day. I can review documents in full fidelity, read comments and then easily add my own.
- Presenting from my phone—I love just bringing my phone to a meeting to present wirelessly. PowerPoint for Android phone gives me the same transitions, animations and design that I would have from my desktop, and I can even use inking to highlight important points while presenting.
- Quick access to my documents—I can quickly find the document I was working on in the office from my phone. It even shows me where I was last working. Additionally, while I am a faithful OneDrive user, I can also access documents stored in Dropbox, Google Drive or Box with our support for third-party cloud storage providers.
- Easy to get—We’ve partnered with over 30 global, regional and local OEMs such as Samsung, Sony, LG and many more, to pre-load these apps on Android devices. Many of these devices will be landing in retail stores later this year.
The apps are live now on Google Play and there will be incompatabilities, but for the most part the apps seem fairly available. You can download Word, Powerpoint and Excel on your Android phone now. Let us know what you think.
Yikes. Word, Excel and Powerpoint are 100MB each. Google Docs and Sheets are about 35MB each, and Office Suite Pro is 39MB for an entire suite. Perhaps Microsoft apps don’t belong on Android devices!
MS office software has never NOT been a large dent in storage capacity. This misbehaviour goes back to the days of DOS and Win3.1