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AppleStart2013

macrumors member
Original poster
Feb 6, 2013
32
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Does anyone know or heard rumors that Microsoft will support this feature on their word/excel/powerpoint apps? I do a lot of word document typing and editing and this would be a handy feature to have on my iPad.
 
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It hasn't been announced yet. They released a dark mode compatible update for iOS 13 so there have been big releases since. I'd say they're working on it. They want Office for iPad OS to be the best on the platform, Office is one of Microsoft's most valuable assets so refraining from features like this like Google would do with its services isn't as viable for Microsoft to do.
 
Nothing has been said, and I don't expect to hear anything until (and if) it's released.

Microsoft Office on iOS has been a mixed bag for me. On the one hand, it's WAY better than the options we had available to us prior to Microsoft finally releasing their software for iOS. And it works great in a lot of ways. On the other hand, they are slow to adopt many iOS features and their file management interface is wonky and limited in several ways. Also, there are still many advanced Office features that you can view but not modify without a PC or Mac.

I would like to see them get their iPad software equivalent to Mac. It's time.
 
Nothing has been said, and I don't expect to hear anything until (and if) it's released.

Microsoft Office on iOS has been a mixed bag for me. On the one hand, it's WAY better than the options we had available to us prior to Microsoft finally releasing their software for iOS. And it works great in a lot of ways. On the other hand, they are slow to adopt many iOS features and their file management interface is wonky and limited in several ways. Also, there are still many advanced Office features that you can view but not modify without a PC or Mac.

I would like to see them get their iPad software equivalent to Mac. It's time.

You mentioned all my concerns. I don’t care for CPU or GPU performance at this point. It’s all software now. Microsoft: please release a desktop worthy version of Office for iOS!!!
 
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We need to address some of the terminology in this thread. First off, Split screen IS supported already and has been since at least 2017. What is sorely missing right now (as of November 2019) is the ability to have multiple windows aka App Exposé. That is to say you still can't have two or more Word documents side-by-side despite the fact that Apple themselves showed this on a slide during the WWDC 2019 keynote.

It is beyond stupid and probably it's sheer spitefulness from Microsoft's side especially since they have added dark mode support before adding this essential productivity feature. Truly hand smack forehead worthy development.
 
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We need to address some of the terminology in this thread. First off, Split screen IS supported already and has been since at least 2017. What is sorely missing right now (as of November 2019) is the ability to have multiple windows aka App Exposé.

I actually created a thread discussing the lack of updates for MultiWindow Support, I tend to multitask a lot on my iPP and not too many developers are supporting this feature. I mean, I do understand that it’s a niche feature and to put time/resources... Developers need to know its worth it.

And who’s to know what’s happening behind the scenes... as far as Apple approving these updates. But I am confused why it’s missing, so far OneDrive has support it. It’s only a matter of time that Office apps will support MultiWindow.
 
I actually created a thread discussing the lack of updates for MultiWindow Support, I tend to multitask a lot on my iPP and not too many developers are supporting this feature. I mean, I do understand that it’s a niche feature and to put time/resources... Developers need to know its worth it.

And who’s to know what’s happening behind the scenes... as far as Apple approving these updates. But I am confused why it’s missing, so far OneDrive has support it. It’s only a matter of time that Office apps will support MultiWindow.

I will check it out as this is a major issue with iPadOS right now. App developers need to support all of iPadOS’s new features for it to truly become a OS that makes one creative. It also applies to Apple actually, some apps, sure, are more important in terms of supporting MultiWindow support, but App Store.app and Settings.app for example, do not support this feature. Settings.app doesn’t even support Split View at all for Christ’s sake!

I mostly work all day with editing text and reading PDFs on my iPad Pro. I use Microsoft Word (because work/university requires it) and Pages (Pages is a zillionth times better than Word right now) and occasionally Google Docs for collaboration. Pages is the only app that supports all new iPadOS features which makes it the best of the three at the moment. What I mean with ”iPadOS features” is MultiWindow AND putting down the marker at one point in a document and then holding shift on the hardware keyboard and then tapping another point in the text. This selects all the text between those two points in Pages but it doesn’t work in Word or the Google Docs app (it works in Safari desktop Google Docs view though). These two features are dealbreakers. I am currently forced to use Pages now because all others suck.

I also use PDF Expert to read PDFs and it was recently updated by Readdle and it works superbly and with MultiWindow support it eliminates the need for multiple PDF apps (for side-by-side PDFs) like I used to need to have prior to this update.
 
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It also applies to Apple actually, some apps, sure, are more important in terms of supporting MultiWindow support, but App Store.app and Settings.app for example, do not support this feature. Settings.app doesn’t even support Split View at all for Christ’s sake!

Yeah the Settings app not supporting multitasking is definitely irritating and doesn't make much sense other than them not wanting to reprogram it. It makes total sense for one to want to dive into settings quickly without completely losing focus on something else.
 
Yeah the Settings app not supporting multitasking is definitely irritating and doesn't make much sense other than them not wanting to reprogram it. It makes total sense for one to want to dive into settings quickly without completely losing focus on something else.

I think Setting supporting SplitView/SlideOver will cause some type of disarray among PadOS. Because it's so much intricacies in regards to changing a setting. I mean, just the idea of changing a setting... that the Setting app is completely off-limits when I use another app in SlideOver.

I think it's something very significant behind the reasoning of not allowing Settings as SplitView/SlideOver.
 
I think Setting supporting SplitView/SlideOver will cause some type of disarray among PadOS. Because it's so much intricacies in regards to changing a setting. I mean, just the idea of changing a setting... that the Setting app is completely off-limits when I use another app in SlideOver.

I think it's something very significant behind the reasoning of not allowing Settings as SplitView/SlideOver.

I don't think there's anything significant behind it. I mean on macOS which is built on the same core the Settings app can be opened while having any other app opened. It believe it is like muzzy said, they do not want to reprogram it.
 
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