Microsoft Introduces Unified Office App on the Phone

Microsoft is announcing a major step forward for Office on phones. The company is finally combining the three core Office apps into a single app, meaning you can now get Word, PowerPoint, and Excel — all in a single, unified experience.

Microsoft says the company started building the new Office app by combining the standalone Word, PowerPoint, and Excel apps and then added a number of new features that significantly improve the experience.

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The new app, which is available both on Android and iOS as a preview, includes a home screen where users can find all their documents. You can also see your recent media or your notes from Sticky Notes on the app. And then there’s a new Actions section where Microsoft has introduced a lot of smart new features — you can create PDFs by simply scanning a whiteboard, for example, or sign PDFs right from the app, or easily transfer files between your phone and computer or other nearby phones.

It also puts things you are likely to need pretty often on the page — like the ability to turn an image of a table into an actual table, for example. The new app is definitely a really nice addition to the Office family, and it will be interesting to see if Microsoft will eventually phase out the standalone Word, Excel, and PowerPoint apps in the future. For now, you can sign-up for the public preview on Android here, and for iOS users, the public preview is already full because of the limit Apple puts on TestFlight programs.

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Conversation 8 comments

  • Informed

    04 November, 2019 - 4:09 pm

    <p><span style="color: rgb(32, 33, 36);">This is a great idea as a single app for people to have available to them if helpful, especially if they're not heavy users of Office, but sounds like a terrible idea if it were to become a replacement to the standalone apps. iOS and Android can only open single instances of apps, so whereas with separate apps you'd be able to multitask with all three Word + Excel + PowerPoint (even having 2 simultaneously in split screen), with one app you'd only be able to use one document at a time.</span></p>

    • rbgaynor

      04 November, 2019 - 5:10 pm

      <blockquote><em><a href="#486394">In reply to Informed:</a></em></blockquote><p>Meh, iPadOS does let you open multiple instances of apps, if I was going to multitask I would rather do it on a tablet.</p>

      • dontbeevil

        04 November, 2019 - 10:51 pm

        <blockquote><em><a href="#486408">In reply to rbgaynor:</a></em></blockquote><p>Lol… I'd rather do it on pc</p>

        • Jeffsters

          06 November, 2019 - 2:44 pm

          <blockquote><em><a href="#486468">In reply to dontbeevil:</a></em></blockquote><p>Of course you would. Bless your heart.</p>

  • ZeroPageX

    04 November, 2019 - 6:40 pm

    <p>Why was this necessary? Can I have a Word document and an Excel document open at the same time? Is anything else changing? Are they rewriting it again or removing functionality I wonder? I just got really excited at the OneNote 2016 news, now this. It's always a roller coaster with Microsoft.</p>

    • slbailey1

      05 November, 2019 - 9:47 am

      <blockquote><em><a href="#486428">In reply to ZeroPageX:</a></em></blockquote><p>I think this new app is being optimized for the Surface Duo. </p>

  • dontbeevil

    04 November, 2019 - 10:50 pm

    <p>Funny there is one app and people wants separate apps</p><p><br></p><p>There are separate apps and people wants one app</p><p><br></p><p>(btw i prefere one) </p><p><br></p><p>P.s.</p><p>it remind me how Windows Phone was so ahead of time with office hub</p>

  • Jeffsters

    06 November, 2019 - 2:43 pm

    <p>Did they rename it Microsoft Works?</p>

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