Microsoft's Office for iPad Apps Gain New Picture Tools, Third-Party Fonts, and Ability to Send Files as PDFs

MacRumors · Jul 31, 2014

Microsoft's Office for iPad apps, including Word, Excel, and PowerPoint received a major update today that adds several new user-requested features to each app. All three apps have gained the ability to export files as PDFs, and each one has also gained new Picture Tools that let users crop to focus on the right part of an image. Third-party fonts have also been added to each app.

Excel now includes improved external keyboard support to make the experience of using Excel on the iPad more like a desktop usage experience. There are more print options available, and a new "Flick to Select" feature lets users flick to select all data in a row or column.

Excel is all about interacting with, consuming, and manipulating your data. When it comes to interacting with data, PivotTables are key to helping explore that data. With Excel for iPad you can now sort, filter, expand and collapse, show details, and even refresh PivotTables whose data is all contained within the workbook. You can even change how your PivotTables look and feel by changing both their visual style and layout.

We've also made it easier to consume workbooks and select data, including a large data range, with the introduction of a new flick gesture. Simply grab the selection handle, flick it in any direction, and Excel will automatically select from where you started to the next blank cell. Say you're at the top of a column of data and want to select all the way to the bottom. Just flick down and the column is selected automatically.

Word didn't gain new features beyond the Picture Tools, Fonts, and ability to send PDFs, but PowerPoint has seen some improvements. The app has a new Presenter View that lets users view and edit speaker notes, see next slides, and jump to other slides while presenting. Presenter tools allow for highlights and drawings to be erased within presentations, while new media features make it possible for users to play videos, sound effects, and background music while presenting. There are also new tools to insert videos from the Camera Roll and add/edit hyperlinks.

With this update you can also make your presentations more rich and interactive than ever by more easily including video and sound to help get your point across. Not only do all of your embedded videos and sound recordings now play right from PowerPoint for iPad, but you can insert video directly from your Camera Roll as well. This allows you to quickly record, embed, and present interactive content more quickly than ever, and all from one device.

Today's update is the second major update the Office software has gotten since its March release. Back in April, the three apps gained some important features that had been missing since launch, including the ability to print directly from the apps.

Microsoft's Office for iPad apps have proven to be highly successful for the company. During its Q4 earnings call in July, Microsoft announced that its Office for iPad software had been downloaded more than 35 million times.

Microsoft has committed to continually improving its Office for iPad apps, which now directly compete with Apple's own iWork suite including Numbers, Keynote, and Pages. "As this wave of updates hopefully shows, we're making good on our commitment to delivering continuous updates and improvements to the Office for iPad apps," read's the company's blog post on the new update.

All of the updates to the new Office apps are currently available and can be downloaded from the App Store for free. While the apps can be accessed for free, unlocking full capabilities, including editing and creating documents, requires an Office 365 subscription.

- Microsoft Word for iPad [Direct Link]
- Microsoft Excel for iPad [Direct Link]
- Microsoft PowerPoint for iPad [Direct Link]

Article Link: Microsoft's Office for iPad Apps Gain New Picture Tools, Third-Party Fonts, and Ability to Send Files as PDFs

sp3k0psv3t · Jul 31, 2014

Great additions.

Office is a nice add on the iPad actually.

saxman1969 · Jul 31, 2014

still not enough for me

I really need it to sync to Dropbox before taking the plunge and buying a subscription. For now, I'll stick with other apps that allow me to do this.

archimonster · Jul 31, 2014

I love that they are working so hard on these. It is great to see some competition to iWork. Understandably, Office can't be free, but so far, I am sure many people have been able to justify springing for the subscription just for their iPads

Menopause · Jul 31, 2014

LOL they didn't have these before and Microsoft has been charging people an Office 365 Subscription for them??

Amazing Iceman · Jul 31, 2014

saxman1969 said:
I really need it to sync to Dropbox before taking the plunge and buying a subscription. For now, I'll stick with other apps that allow me to do this.

Use OneDrive in the meantime... I know, it's a pain, but this is for the time being.
iOS 8 will bring integrated File Storage (or whatever is going to be called), and it may solve your sync issues in a better way.

Also, on your Mac or PC you may be able to embed your Dropbox shared folder inside your OneDrive shared folder or viceversa, so it would sync between both of them. Just an idea that may work.

slffl · Jul 31, 2014

Are people still using Office? Everyone I know has moved on and only the most conservative of businesses I've seen still use it.

mohdamerul · Jul 31, 2014

yeahhh yeah yeahhh yeahhh yeahhh

-Steve Ballmer

RightMACatU · Jul 31, 2014

Office 365... no thanks. [moving on]

sprezz · Jul 31, 2014

Amazing Iceman said:
Use OneDrive in the meantime... I know, it's a pain, but this is for the time being.
iOS 8 will bring integrated File Storage (or whatever is going to be called), and it may solve your sync issues in a better way.

Also, on your Mac or PC you may be able to embed your Dropbox shared folder inside your OneDrive shared folder or viceversa, so it would sync between both of them. Just an idea that may work.

Shadow Stream (Mac App Store) takes care of all those kind of issues, just map your documents folder to dropbox and you'll have a doc version saved to dropbox every time you hit save in word/excel/ppt, etc...

iMerik · Jul 31, 2014

Knowing you can use very capable Microsoft Office Applications on the iPad has to be a huge selling point for iOS in corporate America. I mean, we've always had the cool factor where Execs want iOS or the security factor around Sanboxing, but Office is something everyone can appreciate, because they're likely using it on their PC or even Mac (I really hate Office for Mac). Seeing Apple teaming up with IBM to get more corporate penetration, you can make a safe assumption Apple is silently praising the release of Office for iPad to help them with that deep penetration.

Morky · Jul 31, 2014

slffl said:
Are people still using Office? Everyone I know has moved on and only the most conservative of businesses I've seen still use it.

Yep, millions of us. Even us non-conservative types. Could easily live without Word and Powerpoint (I'd take even iCloud Keynote over Powerpoint), but Excel is still awesome and indispensable.

Boatboy24 · Jul 31, 2014

RightMACatU said:
Office 365... no thanks. [moving on]

Exactly. I have no desire to rent my software for eternity. Numbers does all I need it to for my personal use.

paulsdenton · Jul 31, 2014

If they simply sold this I'd buy it in a heartbeat. But no subscription, thanks!

Rog210 · Jul 31, 2014

slffl said:
Are people still using Office? Everyone I know has moved on and only the most conservative of businesses I've seen still use it.

I've yet to find a task Pages/Numbers/Keynote can't do. Admittedly, I'm not a power user for this kind of work but I'd bet the vast majority of users aren't either.

kodos · Jul 31, 2014

Yes, many of us use Office. It is great, especially compared to that atrocious Google Docs.

OneNote, Excel, and Word in that order (for me) -> are some of the best productivity tools currently out there.

Alphabetize · Jul 31, 2014

I'm really glad Microsoft finally made these apps, but I'm not a big fan of the subscription. Rather pay one larger price for them, than an annual one.

skaertus · Jul 31, 2014

What about Office for Mac now? Office for iPad is nice and all, but Office for Mac is still getting dust after almost four years without a meaningful update.

Thunder82 · Jul 31, 2014

Morky said:
Yep, millions of us. Even us non-conservative types. Could easily live without Word and Powerpoint (I'd take even iCloud Keynote over Powerpoint), but Excel is still awesome and indispensable.

This. Every business I know relies on Excel to some degree. Unfortunately, there is no acceptable alternative. The other apps within the office suite are easily replaced, but excel is not. Even the Mac version is not truly acceptable. I have to run a VM just for the windows version to manipulate larger spreadsheets.

Saturn1217 · Jul 31, 2014

saxman1969 said:
I really need it to sync to Dropbox before taking the plunge and buying a subscription. For now, I'll stick with other apps that allow me to do this.

While I completely agree I am still finding office on iPad helpful (and they give you 1TB of storage with the personal subsciption. Onedrive syncing is also not as terrible as it used to be on my mac (although dropbox is still better).

I kind of don't understand why, when they are giving away so much storage for so little AND you need a subscription anyway for the app they don't just let you use any cloud service. How can this possible be making them any more money?

PocketSand11 · Jul 31, 2014

skaertus said:
What about Office for Mac now? Office for iPad is nice and all, but Office for Mac is still getting dust after almost four years without a meaningful update.

Four years? I never see any reason to update Office. Excel still works well. It's more like 6 years without a meaningful update. Would be 10 if they didn't change all the file formats after Office '04.

Piggie · Jul 31, 2014

slffl said:
Are people still using Office? Everyone I know has moved on and only the most conservative of businesses I've seen still use it.

80% of companies are supposed to be using some version of office.

You don't know many people then it seems

TXCherokee · Jul 31, 2014

paulsdenton said:
If they simply sold this I'd buy it in a heartbeat. But no subscription, thanks!

While I'd like to see the prices come down some, the subscription model is where software if headed, especially on phones and tablets. It makes sense in that staff can be dedicated by a company to continually improve a piece of software knowing that a certain amount of revenue is coming in to pay for that development. It also can quicken the update cycle allowing for incremental updates that no one would pay full price for as a new version.

Col4bin · Jul 31, 2014

iPhone 6 is said to be in mass production and all of a sudden, the rumors and mockups have all stopped being reported. Yet, where are the Foxconn manufactuing line blurry pics??? We haven't seen any "legit" leaks.

It's as if all iPhone 6 leaks being reported by MacRumors have suddly stopped.

Interesting…

pubwvj · Jul 31, 2014

It is ridiculous that we even have separate Apps between iOS and MacOS. It should all be one unified OS. Apps should be able to run on all the hardware, doing as much as the hardware allows and working within the interface of the hardware be it a MacPro, iMac, MacBook, iPhone, iPad, iPod or iWatch. Scale gracefully and automatically load only the necessary components onto the hardware as needed for a unified look, feel and operation so we always have access to our data. The more power the hardware has, the more you can do. Very basic.

While we're at it, full legacy support for past software and data is also needed.

Microsoft's Office for iPad Apps Gain New Picture Tools, Third-Party Fonts, and Ability to Send Files as PDFs

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