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Microsoft Officially Launches Office for Android Phone
- amyjess 11y agoShouldn't this be "re-launches"? Office Mobile for Android phones has been around for a year or two.
- ocdtrekkie 11y agoI thought the earlier launch was just for tablets.
- currysausage 11y agoUsing it on my Nexus 4 for a week or so. Edit: Now it's telling me to install the standalone apps so I "don't miss out."
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- BinaryIdiot 11y agoI think it's mostly because the previous versions were considered a preview / beta.
- amyjess 11y agoWasn't a beta; it was a totally different app. It was a Holo app... here's what it looked like: http://www.gsmarena.com/microsoft_releases_office_mobile_for_office_365_android_app-news-6495.php http://www.gsmarena.com/microsoft_releases_office_mobile_for... It originally required an Office 365 subscription, but they later lifted that requirement.
- frankiem_fm4 11y agoI replied to Microsoft's tweet asking if they fixed the credentials issue. Waiting to hear back. Tweet: https://twitter.com/Microsoft/status/613753678453846016 https://twitter.com/Microsoft/status/613753678453846016 Original issue: http://bit.ly/1646Fkp http://bit.ly/1646Fkp
- bentcorner 11y agoDoes this credential issue apply to Word/Excel/Powerpoint? It seems like this is something that the Outlook app is doing.
- frankiem_fm4 11y agoAFAIK Outlook App, but if you have sharepoint, it might extend into it. Note though that the issue above is for iOS not Android, but I don't have any reason to believe that its any different until told otherwise.
- AaronFriel 11y agoI doubt it, the credential issue is due to the acquisition of Acompli. The Outlook app is actually inherited from their app, and the architecture Acompli used required you to provide the app (and their web service) with your credentials. The Office apps, I believe, all hook into Azure Active Directory, which means they'll use your Windows Live credentials, ADFS credentials, or otherwise to sign in. If your business uses ADFS, your password won't go to Microsoft.
- o0-0o 11y agoI can't believe they are still storing my Acompli username after cancelling my account months ago. Accompli is a joke, and was developed in China. I wonder if my user info is still stored there. Sigh.
- frankiem_fm4 11y agoI guess I will try to get to installing and testing this tonight or tomorrow. I'll post back here with my findings.
- timelined 11y agoThis is one step closer towards an effective full Office Suite on Linux, which I would be very happy about.
- Alupis 11y ago> This is one step closer towards an effective full Office Suite on Linux Are you referring to Microsoft Office specifically? LibreOffice is a full-fledged office suite, is feature-complete for just about 99% of things you can do in MS Office, is free (both, as in beer and freedom), and runs very well under Linux.
- bduerst 11y agoI've noticed a considerable performance difference between Excel 2013 and the latest LibreOffice Calc, on my dual boot Ubuntu + Win8 PC. While I'm not saying a Linux port of Office would be just as fast as on Win8, it is a noticeable difference.
- Alupis 11y ago> While I'm not saying a Linux port of Office would be just as fast as on Win8 Why would it not be as fast on Linux?
- timelined 11y agoYes, I was referring to Microsoft Office in the comment. I've used LibreOffice for years while running Linux before. I noticed perfomance issues compared to Microsoft Office on Windows that were especially bad for spreadsheets. I consider myself to be a power-user of MS Office. Last time I used LibreOffice, it did not have many of the features that I used extensively (especially in their PowerPoint analog). In addition, the interoperability between MS Office and LibreOffice was not great. Lastly--there isn't an adequate OneNote replacement on Linux. Evernote doesn't cut it for me. This is really my killer app--if there was a good OneNote on Linux (non-browser, a native desktop app), I could deal with the other issues as they came up.
- paymeyoumofo 11y agoInstall wasn't too bad - it required three reboots then I noticed it was the home starter edition so spell check was not included.
- jusben1369 11y agoI applaude them for finally doing this but I do wonder if it's too late in that I've gotten hooked on GDocs and Drive based on their ease of use. I suppose for corporate users of Office this is great news.
- fsloth 11y agoFor google docs, sharing is easy, collaboration is stupidly easy. My org has moved to google tools from office and I would say it's for the better. Previously everything was handled through emails and windows network drive (and this from an org with tens of subsidiaries and presence on every inhabited continent). Docs get lost a lot less nowadays. One can scream that content management is old stuff but google made it easy enough for corporate users just to jump aboard without expensive retraining. That said - oh for the love of god, google docs writer editor is so bloody horrible for anything but simplest of documents and even structuring larger document bases through hyperlinking is awkward.
- frik 11y ago> google docs writer editor is so bloody horrible You can thank it to the broken ContentEditable HTML API. Google Docs v1 used it, for v2 Google reinvented the wheel by coding a word processor render engine using one DIVs per line. If only the browser vendors would fix the ContentEditable API, then a Google Docs implementation would need just a few lines of code. Multi column, multi page would be no problem with contenteditable. http://caniuse.com/#feat=contenteditable http://caniuse.com/#feat=contenteditable Sadly, three of the big four browser vendors have a competitive advantage if their own cloud office suits cannot be reimplemented with a few lines of code.
- TazeTSchnitzel 11y ago> If only the browser vendors would fix the ContentEditable API, then a Google Docs implementation would need just a few lines of code. Google Docs, by nature of its real-time collaboration features, cannot "just" use contentEditable.
- 11y ago
- RyanZAG 11y agoDefinitely the best spreadsheet implementation available today when running on a Galaxy S6 - beats out other Android options as well as Office on Windows Phones or iOS, etc. It's actually really usable which is the first time I've thought that for a mobile spreadsheet. Very nice.
- hackuser 11y agoWould you kindly provide details?
- kstenerud 11y agoReally? These are "premium" features requiring a subscription?? • Change page orientation • Insert page and section breaks • Highlight table cells with custom color shading • Enable columns in page layout
- skrowl 11y agoI was about to go looking for "what stuff do I need office 365 to do" but you saved me the time! Sounds like it's best to just keep using google drive.
- NeutronBoy 11y agoWhile Google Docs is good, it's not a replacement for Office if you need to do anything more than basic documentation unfortunately.
- kstenerud 11y agoNeither is Office for Android when they disable basic functionality like page breaks.
- dewiz 11y agoWhat? Microsoft is asking money for a product so that they can pay their employees ? </sarcasm>
- TazeTSchnitzel 11y ago> Office was once tied largely to Windows PCs, but the company today is working to make sure its flagship productivity suite works anywhere its users are – even on competitors’ OS’s. Huh? Office has been on the Macintosh for decades. This isn't really new. Heck, Office was on the Mac before it was on Windows.
- Oletros 11y agoIf I remember right, Excel was released first for Mac
- agumonkey 11y agoRight, Apple was already a market when Microsoft started to grow. That's maybe how Bill Gates got to have a peek at the GUI effort and PARC source. They have a special relationship.
- scholia 11y agoApple was big, rich and famous, because of the Apple II. So little Microsoft became the Mac's biggest backer and biggest supplier of software, and Bill Gates was featured at the Mac launch. Excel and the graphical version of Word were written for the Mac, and PowerPoint -- a Mac program -- was bought in to make the first Microsoft Office suite, which was launched on the Mac. Gates also offered to help Apple license Mac OS widely to make it an industry standard. Apple didn't see the point of selling $100 software when it could sell $2,500-$3,500 computers. That world started to change after 1990, when Windows 3 began to take off.
- eli 11y agoAnd Microsoft has been pushing their browser-based Office suite for several years now. I believe it officially support IE, Chrome, Firefox and Safari on all desktop platforms.
- mrmondo 11y agoWe've tried using it at work but found that it's really full of bugs on anything other than IE.
- davidgerard 11y agoThis is because of the impending LibreOffice for Android. https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Android https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Android
- segmondy 11y agoI highly doubt that. Microsoft has been embracing a lot of things lately. Moving towards Open source and open platforms. I don't believe it has anything to do with LibreOffice but everything to do with change in their attitude.
- pmontra 11y agoI'd say that competition prompted that change of attitude. LibreOffice is part of it. We've been raised with Word and Excel, then we discovered that LO and GoogleDocs were enough in the vast majority of cases and Windows was not necessary. Microsoft could be late with going were people moved to. Not too late, but they can count they money they didn't get.
- quanticle 11y agoTo say that LibreOffice was anything more than a very marginal part of Microsoft's decision to refocus is laughable. The real threat to Microsoft is the movement towards BYOD for corporate customers. If users are bringing their own devices, then Office has to work on whatever devices those users have. Corporate customers aren't switching from Microsoft Office to LibreOffice. They're switching from Microsoft Office to Google Apps, or other hosted systems. Bringing (a better) Office experience to Android is Microsoft building a bulwark against Google Docs, not LibreOffice.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- cwyers 11y agoIf for no other reason, I doubt that because Office for iOS came first, and there's no impending LibreOffice for iOS. (I doubt it for a lot of other reasons as well.)
- robogimp 11y agoI've been using google docs instead of office on PC and android for 6 months now, no regrets.
- chronic32 11y agoIt's only a matter of time before Google shuts public docs down as well.
- fsloth 11y agoWhat? Google is pushing it's drive and docs heavily to corporate users. I don't see how shutting docs would help those sales.
- brixon 11y agoHe is referring to the fact that Google has closed a lot of apps it made in the past. If you start a Google app, make sure you have a path to get off it.
- fsloth 11y agoHmm, are there any that were actually sold as corporate tools . Wave etc. were freemium experiments as far as I can recall...
- andybak 11y agoThat's becoming a rather cliched comment unless you have a solid justification for bringing it up. I don't think it really applies in this case.
- Chronic31 11y agoIt's only a matter of time before Google shuts down Google docs as well.
- sirkneeland 11y agoAnd now the worst Office version is on Windows Phone. I'm sure Windows 10 will improve that...eventually.
- Aleman360 11y agoTo be fair, the version coming for Windows Mobile 10 will adapt to provide a desktop-like experience when you connect your phone to a monitor or TV. The release cycles are just out of phase.
- Bud 11y agoYes. Because Microsoft is so likely to nail that user experience well, for a market that is 2% of the mobile market on its best day.
- sirkneeland 11y agoAnd now the worst Office version is on Windows Phone. I'm sure Windows 10 will improve that...eventually.
- higherpurpose 11y agoThese are still crippled and written from scratch "mobile" apps, that don't share many of the desktop Office's features, right?
- computer 11y agoNo. They actually share >95% of the desktop code-base: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3HROqnw-nf4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3HROqnw-nf4
- darkr 11y agoI'm not sure which is better
- DiabloD3 11y agoOf all the comments so far on this, this is maybe the coolest. You can really see how Office on OSX has shaped up (if you follow the beta; identical Windows and OSX support on launch day instead of OSX getting it 2 years later like it's been for the past decade), but I'm surprised Android also shares a significant amount of the code base. It cuts down on bugs, and also makes sure the bugs that are on the desktop are also the same ones on my phone (principal of least surprise at work).
- bitmapbrother 11y agoThe apps are pretty bloated coming in at over 100MB for each app. Although, it looks like they finally figured out that you don't release a tablet only app for Android, but an app that adapts to the device you're using. It's still disappointing that they allow dropbox saves and not Google drive, though. But, this is easily remedied by saving the file locally.
- andybak 11y agoNot integrating with Google Drive isn't really the main issue - it's not integrating with the system-wide file dialog that would automatically enable Google Drive support. If this is the casualty of politics then it's a big thing to throw under the bus.
- cryptophreak 11y agoSilly Microsoft, it's just called "Android", not "Android Phone".
- lrem 11y agoYou may be surprised that a number of apps for Android work only on tablets, while some others have separate versions for phones and tablets.
- RyanZAG 11y agoSure, but that's not Android's fault. It would be like blaming Microsoft if developers released 'Windows 17" screen' and 'Windows 24" screen' versions of applications instead of just putting both UI layouts in the app and switching. Although I guess on Windows you have the 32bit and 64bit versions of applications available for download half the time... Android actually makes it easier to do that (define custom UIs for different device settings) than any other platform I know of, so it's definitely the developers fault if you see that.
- urda 11y agoIt's called "android market fragmentation", thus why they are indeed correct saying "Android Phone".
- takeda 11y agoOk, I don't know maybe it was a big deal in the past, but as an Android user for past 5 years and don't remember this affecting me at all. I feel like it was some kind of FUD.
- vetinari 11y agoThey had version running on Android tablets out for months now. Now they released version for phones.
- lam 11y agoHas anyone given presentations directly from your phone or tablet? I'd love to hear your experience with the process -- setting up, projecting, navigating, presenting. More generally, I'd like to know if we have gotten to the point where work (maybe not yet for coding and other heavy-duty stuffs) can be done on phones and tablets, so you don't need to lug around your laptops. What are the main hindrances? Screen size?
- unsignedint 11y agoSomewhat related to screen size, but the biggest problem (at least for my use case) is multitasking. For instance, sometimes I translate documents, which requires an editor (displaying original / result texts), a dictionary, a browser (for reference, etc.) and maybe other texts and images open at the same time -- and switching between those, let alone seeing them side by side is nearly impossible. (And this is probably specific to Android's limitation, but when I switch back and force between apps, there is no guarantee I will be getting back to where I was -- I might have to open the app again, open the document, which makes it a lot more disruptive than working on PC for most simple translation projects.) Maybe this will improve, but simple copy and paste across different apps on the phone is frustrating enough that I wouldn't personally do anything beyond simple quick tasks on my phone.
- lam 11y agoThis is just an FYI. The Android issue you pointed out is actually an app issue. In Android, there is a mechanism for saving the state of your app, so that you can get back to the same place when you switch away from and then back to the app. Some apps don't implement that (as a good practice), and it is quite annoying when you run into it. I've seen that issue often, even in apps built by large well-known companies. I know what you mean regarding copy/paste. Maybe it is due to the touch-based interface, but it is annoying regardless of whether it is on iOS or Android.
- methou 11y agoiirc there was an official MS Office for Android way before this, at least was planned/developed.