Microsoft Office on iPad Spotted, Coming Soon to App Store

[Avatar74]

I may be hard pressed to remember the last day I didn't open Word...and that is why technology is so great. You need Excel functions (nice formula) that many will never use and many people need Word every day. Making them both usable on an iPad is a win for everyone.

I get you. But the question I'm having is... Is Word really indispensable in general? I think many people don't leverage the things that are unique to word. But I guess the same is true of Excel... I know CPAs who have no idea how to do a pivot table (which from my vantage point makes you slightly higher than a novice in Excel)...

But I think that even the more basic functions within Excel are unmatched, whereas a lot more users (perhaps not those in your line of work) could get by with Pages or even email instead of Word. There really isn't an integrated equivalent of Excel (a UBIQUITOUS one) for internet-based document sharing, relative to the way email has largely replaced word processing for the vast majority of users.

 

[Doombringer]

All I want is OSX and iOS Office to plug into iCloud. Then I can get the best of both worlds.

 

[Rizzm]

Microsoft Office is far far better than iWork.
Microsoft Office is industry standard.
Microsoft Office is familiar to people raised on it over many years.
Microsoft Office is heavily discounted for students to buy
Microsoft Office has many books and training resources available
Microsoft Office file formats are known and used widely

^ This.

I'm excited at the prospect of using an iPad exclusively as my mobile machine. I would only need it for simple tasks, and now I could fulfill all of MY current student needs as well, which I would sum up as internet browsing and word processing.

 

[Michaelgtrusa]

Comp for iWork.

 

[Marx55]

MS Office is compatible between older and newer versions as well as between PC and Mac. I have Win 7 machines and OS X 10.7 machines with office on them all. The latest versions of Office product compatibility to a whole new level as well.

Sure there are minor issues with compatibility, but those are far and few between; it's no where near the dire conditions you made them out to be in your post.

Unfortunately, that is not true. Just use tables, pictures, formatting, audio, video, backgrounds, colors, animations, transitions, special fonts, tracking changes, spell checking, etc and you will be in a nightmare. We know that very well at our University.

 

[rhett7660]

Word is a very bloated application with more functions than the average user needs (especially in light of every communication done in email; I can't recall the last time I created a standalone word processing document instead of just writing in the body of an email).

Pages is more streamlined, less expensive.

If one wanted to make an argument for Office, Excel would be it... particularly for very advanced users (no I'm not talking about pivot tables).

Good luck doing this in Numbers:


=IF(AD2=1,"PTO Bundle",IF(AND(AD2=0,AE2=1),"PTO PPU",IF(G2="PROLINE TAX IMPORT",IF(SUMPRODUCT(($G$2:$G2=G2)*($B$2:$B2=B2))>1,"","PTI"),IF(G2="PROLINE TAX RESEARCH",IF(SUMPRODUCT(($G$2:$G2=G2)*($B$2:$B2=B2))>1,"","PTR"),""))))

This I couldn't agree more with. Excel is the king for this type of work. Couldn't agree more.

 

[scottsjack]

After I converted to Mac I really missed Office 2003. I tried Office for Mac 2008 and it was such a mess that I bought iWork. Typical of Mac software iWork is very easy to use, looks great and does a lot of things simpler than Office.

Unfortunately iWork also conforms to the Apple philosophy of being way too simple in order to make it easy to use. I was always fighting the lack of Office functions in Pages and Numbers.

When Office for Mac 2011 came out I tried it and totally fell in love with it. iWork is gone and I now use Office exclusively. It's great to be using the real deal again. If someone is going to still use Mail, Calendar and Contacts then the Home version that can be used on three systems is only about $100.

I also use Office 2010 on the Windows 7 installation and have yet to find any incompatibilities between the Win and Mac versions of Word and Excel. Documents open properly regardless of system. Due to UI differences I like working in Office better under Windows but the Mac version is still great to use.

My guess is that Office for iPad will be Microsoft's first Metro commercial test since they're writing a Metro Office for ARM and a Metro Office for x68.

 

[mw360]

Microsoft Office is far far better than iWork.
Microsoft Office is industry standard.
Microsoft Office is familiar to people raised on it over many years.
Microsoft Office is heavily discounted for students to buy
Microsoft Office has many books and training resources available
Microsoft Office file formats are known and used widely

Sounds like Microsoft Office is the new Flash

I see far fewer doc and xls files in my inbox these days. I haven't loaded Office, or one of it's sluggish open source alternatives for a couple of years. PDF is a far better distribution format because it allows us all to use the content creation suite of choice, and Google docs is far quicker for quick collaboration between remote parties. Of course I don't do any serious work ever - I get told that when I sneer at legacy 'standards' - so who am I to judge?

 

[Nunyabinez]

I am excited, with reservation at this point. I would really love to be able to do minor editing of documents on the go with my iPad. The big thing for me is going to be how the iPad version handles complex features.

For example, I use an add-in called Endnote for citations. I often am sharing a document with a co-author that may or may not have Endnote. My co-author can make changes to the document on their version of Word without the Endnote add-in and when I open it in my system the Endnote content remains intact. If Office for iPad works the same I will be thrilled. I don't need to have the ability to use the add-ins, I just don't want it broken.

Contrast that to using Pages. I have a document that that has a generated table of contents. I open it in Pages on the iPad and Pages "flattens" it, turning it into just text. When I open it on my Mac it has been seriously downgraded, losing the capabilities that didn't exist on the iPad.

So, I would be happy with a somewhat limited feature set that makes sense for the capabilities of the iPad as long as it doesn't screw up my document when I open it up in the full version of Word. I'm crossing my fingers because this is the one area where I have felt the iPad wasn't living up to its potential.

 

[Misaki]

Oh, I have no doubt that offices see OFFICE as the "gold standard", but the question is "why?" Price is huge (compared) and function is similar to iWork. The offices I have worked in could have easily used iWork, especially since many people used Macs, but they were using OFFICE instead... for Mac.

It just seems like most corporate people are locked into a perception or fear of prudent change because it could send them off the rails on a crazy train. Or something.

Prior to Office 95 was (Novell) Wordperfect Office (Now owned by Corel.) You can blame Novell for basically fumbling Wordperfect 5.1 for DOS transition to Windows 3.1 and then version 7 to Windows 95. Wordperfect is now pretty much used only by lawyers. I distinctly remember that an entire government office switched to Office because they were previously using Novell Wordperfect 6 and the 16bit version was fraught with compatibility problems. They stuck with Office ever since, and I've never seen any office environment use anything else.

Except the library. The public library uses open office.

 

[jouster]

Huge! Most office functionality thus far has been mediocre at best, especially for spreadsheet functionality.

Yes. Numbers is a complete cluster**** on iOS. Almost entirely useless.

 

[miamialley]

I'll use this for sure. I don't use Pages and whatever because it's so stupid they don't allow Dropbox compatibility. Surely MS will put in Dropbox syncing.

 

[Mr. Retrofire]

What's next? Windows 8 for iPad??

VMware Fusion for the iPad. ;-)

 

[MartiNZ]

All I want is OSX and iOS Office to plug into iCloud. Then I can get the best of both worlds.

Yes! As long as they stick with their own superior autosave and don't force Lion's debacle upon us. To echo the sensible in this thread, this is going to be huge.

The only things I can see going wrong here are pricing and mad-slow updates/bugfixes, of which we can be sure many will be required.

I have tried using iWork for work, but despite the name, it just doesn't. And compatibility with the real world remains a joke. This actually makes the iPad more than a toy, if it is done right. 2011 ain't bad, but the MBU has always left something to be desired . Time for them to show what can really be done ... or just fail - come on!

 

[tido2012]

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; CPU iPhone OS 5_0_1 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/534.46 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.1 Mobile/9A405 Safari/7534.48.3)

If this allows syncing with Dropbox I'm in. I was using google docs but that sucks for the iPad, glad to have a different option on the iPad.

 

[iEvolution]

This could single handedly make the decision for me as to what full fledged tablet to go with. Especially since there is apparently no Android version in the works.

 

[tido2012]

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; CPU iPhone OS 5_0_1 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/534.46 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.1 Mobile/9A405 Safari/7534.48.3)

That would be great but I don't see them doing this. Hopefully they do it within the next couple of months but if not I've decided to purchase the 50gb dropbox option. I understand why apple doesn't do it, just wish they would so I could use their service.

 

[cvs]

Office is good for me, all collaborators use office, hard to avoid using it.
So, it comes with no compatibility issues, dropbox and sugarsync integration, and it's a winner, imo.

LinkedIn social connection would also be great...

 

[Mr. Retrofire]

I'll use this for sure. I don't use Pages and whatever because it's so stupid they don't allow Dropbox compatibility. Surely MS will put in Dropbox syncing.

Why should they use Dropbox?

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/09/02/icloud_runs_on_microsoft_azure_and_amazon/

 

[themexicant]

Dropbox?

Any details about dropbox/box integration?

 

[Isherwood]

And the licensing is easy too:

1 device CAL for the iPad
1 device CAL for every PC you sync too.
- if you sync to a Mac you need a Windows 7 Pro CAL, an additional
sync CAL for the VM, a Virtual Desktop CAL for iPad in the VM
1 Windows Mobile Virtual License Competitive Upgrade CAL
Office 365 Live subscriptions for each user, with a valid credit card on file
1 user CAL for each human that touches the iPad
1 SharePoint access CAL, unless you don't use Sharepoint in which case
you need a downgrade access CAL to connect the iPad to the internet
6 different Software Advantage agreements, each with different terms
And your AppleID has to be registered with Windows Passport or
Hotmail. T&C's giving MicroSoft access to all data on your iPad.

 

[JAT]

This doesn't really make sense to me. The primary reason that Microsoft is including the traditional Windows desktop for Windows 8 on ARM is to accomodate Office.

That will be the question. Unlike many in this thread, I'm impressed with Pages on the touchscreen. Not as many features as OSX version, but works very well for fingers.

Redlining on an ipad???????

This feature better make it in. This is something all of us lawyers have been waiting for.

Annotations exist in many apps, esp for PDFs, and are very good. Or do you mean keeping the changes each person makes?

Rather the other way around: Apple needed the money to survive. 5 years later they switched for the simple reason that their own achitecture was not going to be able to comptete anymore with the PC architecture. At that point, the x86 structure had so many developers working that the switch was necessary (and came 2005-06 if I am correct). MS took his money back in 2000. So no direct link there - but without the MS money, Apple would have never made it to this switch - which was publically announced in 2005(?).

You are so far wrong it is ridiculous. M$ bought $150m worth of shares. In the 90s. Apple was facing the potential for losing billions and going bankrupt. That pittance had nothing to do with the Intel switch. The iMac saved Apple, the iPod solidified their financial situation, and the iPhone turned them into a juggernaut.

Since we’re speculating about price

I’m going with $19.95 each, with the “suite” of the three core apps (Word, Excel and Powerpoint) for $49.95

That is exactly what I think they will do. I'd like half that, but doubt it.

Good luck doing this in Numbers:


=IF(AD2=1,"PTO Bundle",IF(AND(AD2=0,AE2=1),"PTO PPU",IF(G2="PROLINE TAX IMPORT",IF(SUMPRODUCT(($G$2:$G2=G2)*($B$2:$B2=B2))>1,"","PTI"),IF(G2="PROLINE TAX RESEARCH",IF(SUMPRODUCT(($G$2:$G2=G2)*($B$2:$B2=B2))>1,"","PTR"),""))))

Actually, I think Numbers can do this, it does have sumproduct. But there is plenty it can't. Every time I try to use it, I find something missing.

 

[UnSainted]

Why?

Oh, I have no doubt that offices see OFFICE as the "gold standard", but the question is "why?" Price is huge (compared) and function is similar to iWork. The offices I have worked in could have easily used iWork, especially since many people used Macs, but they were using OFFICE instead... for Mac.

It just seems like most corporate people are locked into a perception or fear of prudent change because it could send them off the rails on a crazy train. Or something.

Because iWork can not tie into your corporate SQL server to gather information.It lacks the ability to connect to external data sources.

 

[Colpeas]

Yeah, only for $149.99 per per license. If you have multiple iPads in your family, you have buy more licenses. Corporate extortion level: Microsoft.

But seriously, I would love to see the real Office suite running on the iPad. Hope it will have some alternative to iWork.com and iWork iCloud sharing.

 

[Renzatic]

But seriously, I would love to see the real Office suite running on the iPad. Hope it will have some alternative to iWork.com and iWork iCloud sharing.

You probably will see it eventually. Though I'm thinking it'll be after the release of WOA, which, if I remember correctly, will come with Office standard.

It's MS's trump card against the iPad, after all. I doubt they'll be willing give up that one big advantage so quickly.