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Apr 12, 2001
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Microsoft today updated its suite of Office apps designed for the iPhone, adding finger-drawing support to Word, Excel, and PowerPoint.

In January, the company added inking support to its productivity suite for the iPad Pro to take advantage of the Apple Pencil, but now iPhone users can also make use of the feature using their digits.

microsoftoffice.jpg

A new Draw tab can be found in each of the three apps. The drawing tools in this tab allow iPhone owners to use a stylus or finger to write, draw, highlight, and annotate various Microsoft Office documents.

The thickness and color of the pen can be changed, while hand-drawn shapes can also be transformed into customized shapes. Excel users can annotate over cells, while those who use PowerPoint can draw freeform over slides.

Microsoft Word [Direct Link], Microsoft Excel [Direct Link], and Microsoft PowerPoint [Direct Link] are all available for iPhone on the App Store. While the apps are free to download, users need a qualifying Office 365 subscription to create and edit documents.

Article Link: Microsoft Office Apps Update Brings Drawing Support to iPhone
 
This is for those annoying people who like to review documents and point out changes that need to be made instead of just making them and telling you.
 
This is for those annoying people who like to review documents and point out changes that need to be made instead of just making them and telling you.
They are the same people who would respond to your quote by saying, "If I have to do your job, why am I paying you?":D

On topic: MS, post Balmer, has been improving their offerings on a fairly consistent basis. Good on them.
 
I keep a copy of the O365 apps on my iPhone and iPad, but rarely use them. Its cool that they're bringing more advanced touch/pen features to the apps, but I have to wonder about how much user demand there is for it. I mean, are there a significant number of people who want and do use those features? It doesn't bother me that they're there and I'm not saying it shouldn't be there, just wondering how popular it really is.
 
This would be awesome apart form the fact it still requires a 365 account so effectively a subscription service.

I wish Apple would get their act together with iWork and completely overhaul Pages and Numbers so it can operate the same as Word and Excel. Annotating is a really useful thing for my line of work and the ability to mark web pages, documents etc would be a great tool.
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Pencil is coming to the iPhone.

Mini pencil hopefully as it is a big stylus and could be cumbersome to use with a phone. The iPhone Pro if it did have proper integrated stylus support would be a good option to a Samsung Note who at the moment has an entire market all to itself.
 
I wish Apple would get their act together with iWork and completely overhaul Pages and Numbers so it can operate the same as Word and Excel. Annotating is a really useful thing for my line of work and the ability to mark web pages, documents etc would be a great tool.
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There is a way to add comments in Pages on iOS device.
https://support.apple.com/kb/PH17141?locale=en_US
 
… Seriously, M$? I want [nay, I NEED] hyphenation support in Word for iOS, damn it!

What's the use of having consistent annotation across devices when you can't even get consistent formatting?
 
Strange that sketching is part of most of the 365 apps (iPhone), but not OneNote. I'd have thought it was the app that would most benefit from this.
 
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