Wednesday, 31 July 2013

Mobile Office for Android review: Basic Office tools, for subscribers only - CNET

The good: Office Mobile for Android has an intuitive interface for making quick edits to Word, Excel, and PowerPoint documents on the go.

The bad: You're not getting the power of Office 365 on your Android device, so you shouldn't have to be a subscriber to use the app. Can we get some tablet support, please?

The bottom line: Office Mobile is worth downloading if you're a current Office 365 subscriber, but with only basic editing features, this app should be free for all.

Microsoft's new Office Mobile for Android lets you access and create Office documents from SkyDrive and make basic edits on the go. Sounds great, right? The only catch is, you'll need a subscription to Office 365 to use the app. That would be fine if Office Mobile were a robust mobile version of Office 365 on your Android, but limited editing features (while useful to subscribers) make me think it should have been released as a companion to the free Web apps at Office.com rather than tied to the subscription service. Another huge disappointment is that it's not compatible with Android tablets.

Diving into the interface
Focusing on documents made in Word, Excel, and PowerPoint, Office Mobile for Android opens up to show your documents in a list, with the ones you've worked on most recently at the top. Microsoft Office icons on the left of the list tell you which type of document you're looking at.

At the top of the screen there's a button to connect to your SkyDrive or SharePoint, so you can pull up cloud-stored documents for editing. Next to that, there's a button for creating new documents. Unlike in the iOS version, you have to hit your device's Menu button to get to your settings.

Office Mobile lets you make quick edits to Word, Excel, and PowerPoint documents while on the go.

(Credit: Screenshot by Jaymar Cabebe/CNET)

When you open up any type of document, you'll see tools across the top of the screen. In Word you can swipe to read through the document, conduct a search within your document, or jump to a nifty outline view using the Outline button at the top. Also up top is the Edit button, which lets you start making changes to your document.

Most likely to conserve screen space, all of the formatting options are tucked into a Format bar, which you can access by hitting your device's Menu button. There are formatting options to bold, underline, or italicize text, and you can select from three different colors for text or when you want to highlight words or sentences in a doc. You can also make comments on shared Word documents. When you're finished, just save to SkyDrive, and your document will have your changes and be available to edit from your other devices.

In Excel you can tap on cells and pinch to zoom, just like you would expect. If you want to jump to a specific chart or go between sheets, there's a button up top, which pulls up a useful outline view. Next to that there's a Search tool, an AutoFilter toggle (for filtering a subset of data within a range of cells), and a Formula button, which gives you access to a few simple, often-used formulas.



via Technology - Google News http://news.google.com/news/url?sa=t&fd=R&usg=AFQjCNFTGtZxFOZiKEAbY0jMRFvShflMPg&url=http://reviews.cnet.com/software/office-mobile-android/4505-3513_7-35825893.html




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