Word, Excel, and PowerPoint Add Handoff Support on Apple Devices

Microsoft’s Word, Excel, and PowerPoint now support Apple’s Handoff continuity feature on iPhones, iPads, and Macs. This means that users can now start working on an Office document on an Apple device and seamlessly switch to another one and carry on with their work.

“Handoff is an Apple feature that allows you to continue working on content while switching from one Apple device to another. For example, if you’re working on a PowerPoint presentation on your iPhone and want to switch to your Mac, Handoff makes it possible with just a couple clicks,” the Office team explained.

To use this new Handoff feature across Macs, iPhones, and iPads, users will need to sign in with the same Apple ID across their Apple devices and make sure that their Word, Excel, and PowerPoint apps are up to date. The feature works by bringing the Apple device where the Office document is open close to another device, which will receive an notification showing that the document is ready to be picked up.

Handoff is a really nice feature for people in the Apple ecosystem, though it’s up to app developers to take advantage of it. It’s also something that has no proper equivalent on the Windows side, and it remains to be seen if Microsoft will ever be able to work with Google to replicate that seamless experience using Android devices.