Office Remote Comes to Android

Microsoft has quietly added Office Remote—previously a Windows Phone exclusive—to the Google Play Store, allowing users of that platform to remotely control PowerPoint 2013 presentations on a Windows PC. There’s no official announcement about the app yet, so it’s possible that an iOS version of the app is coming as well, perhaps as soon as today.

(Actually, Office Remote lets you remotely control Word and Excel, too, but I tend to think of this app in terms of PowerPoint presentations.)

You can download Office Remote from the Google Play Store for free. It works with both Android handsets and tablets, and comes with the same basic requirements as the Windows Phone version of the app (which I ironically just recommended on Windows Weekly, noting that it was one of the few Microsoft apps for Windows Phone that hadn’t yet been ported to other platforms. Great timing.)

Those requirements include:

Microsoft Office 2013 only. You can only remotely control Word, Excel and PowerPoint 2013 only, on Windows PCs and tablets. This app does not work with Office 2013 RT or earlier versions of Office, nor does it work with Office for Mac.

Add-in. You must install the Office Remote desktop add-in for Office 2013 on your PC.

Bluetooth. Your PC must include Bluetooth capabilities.

Once you get past all that, however, Office Remote is pretty sweet. It offers the following features:

PowerPoint:

• View current slide and laser point using touch on your phone
• Next slide preview
• Play and pause embedded audio and video files
• View slide thumbnails and jump to a slide
• View speaker notes on your phone
• View presentation timer and slide numbers

Excel:

• Change worksheets by swiping
• Use Slicers, PivotTable, and Filters
• Jump to any named object in your workbook
• Move up or down the worksheet
• Change the zoom level

Word:

• Jump to headings
• Jump to comments
• Screen up/down
• Line up/down
• Change the zoom level

Again, you can download Office Remote from the Google Play Store for free. I’ll update this post if the iOS version shows up today too.