Microsoft Introduces Unified Office App for iOS and Android

Microsoft today announced a new Office app for iOS and Android that brings together the functionality of Word, Excel, and PowerPoint in a single app. The new app, currently available as a preview, simplifies working with different types of documents while also bringing in some new features to enhance productivity.

The Office app provides a simple, integrated experience that puts the tools you need for working on a mobile device at the forefront of the experience. We started by combining the existing Word, Excel, and PowerPoint mobile apps into a single app. Doing so brings all of your Office documents together in one place, reduces the need to switch between multiple apps, and significantly reduces the amount of space used on your phone compared to multiple installed apps. We then added new capabilities that harness the strengths of mobile devices, such as the camera, to enable you to create content in uniquely mobile ways. Finally, we added a new Actions Pane that helps you accomplish many of the common mobile tasks you need to do all from one place.

Camera integration lets you easily convert photos of documents and tables into Word and Excel files, while PowerPoint presentations can easily import photos from your camera roll. The new Actions pane supports a number of common tasks like creating PDFs from documents or photos, signing PDFs with your finger, scanning QR codes, and file transfers.

Office for mobile is available in public preview today, with the iOS preview running through Apple's TestFlight program and limited to the first 10,000 users. Users can gets basic access to the preview with no sign-in required, but if you log in with a work, school, or personal Microsoft account you'll get access to all of your cloud-based documents. The new Office app is currently only avaliable for phones, but it will be extended to tablets in the future, and Microsoft says it will continue to support and improve its existing standalone Office mobile apps.