{"id":2825,"date":"2014-10-27T08:45:44","date_gmt":"2014-10-27T13:45:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.poweradmin.com\/blog\/?p=2825"},"modified":"2015-04-24T14:59:12","modified_gmt":"2015-04-24T19:59:12","slug":"how-useable-are-word-and-excel-for-ipad","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.poweradmin.com\/blog\/how-useable-are-word-and-excel-for-ipad\/","title":{"rendered":"How Useable are Word and Excel for iPad?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"WordMicrosoft\u2019s Office for iPad was a long time coming, and indeed the delay has allowed plenty of alternatives<\/a> to get their foot in the market door, some of which are now thriving and are fully integrated into some larger organizations\u2019 mobile and cloud service strategies.<\/span><\/p>\n

The debate surrounding how useable Office for iPad would end up being as compared to its competitors naturally grew and grew in lieu of an actual release. But, now that it\u2019s here, how do the two most frequently used applications of the Office suite fair? Well, actually quite well.<\/span><\/p>\n

Microsoft Office For iPad<\/b><\/span><\/h2>\n

There are 3 apps available for Office on iPad \u2013 PowerPoint, Word and Excel. The actual apps are in fact free \u2013 however, if you actually want to be able to edit your presentations, documents and spreadsheets with them then you will need to set up an Office 365<\/a> account. The set up is very straightforward \u2013 although it should be noted that if you subscribe via one of the apps directly then only an annual subscription is available, whereas a month-by-month alternative can be organized if you prefer through the Microsoft site.<\/span><\/p>\n

MS Word<\/b><\/span><\/h2>\n

\"MSMicrosoft Word is not only the most widely used of the three Office apps but is also the one fending off the most competition. The biggest and fiercest of these competitors is of course Apple\u2019s Pages<\/a>, which supports a huge range of file types, along with images and media, layout capabilities, style elements, templates and of course a full range of interesting fonts.<\/span><\/p>\n

However, Word really is still the industry leader, both in popularity as well as usability. So how well does it transfer across to the iPad?<\/span><\/p>\n

Very well, actually. It looks like Word, it feels like Word, it behaves like Word \u2013 it is Word, for most intents and purposes. The core features are all still there, and what\u2019s more, they\u2019re in exact places that you\u2019d expect to find them (provided, of course, that you\u2019ve used Word before \u2013 which is surely everybody, right?). The toolbar ribbon at the top of all documents is still there, albeit a little stripped down so as to accommodate the smaller screen.<\/span><\/p>\n

But the similarities to its desktop bigger brother don\u2019t end there. The Track Changes feature, perhaps the most useful to business users of Word, with its ability to review, accept\/reject changes to a document is pretty much identical. The ability to insert comments is the same too.<\/span><\/p>\n

Word \u2013 What\u2019s Missing?<\/b><\/span><\/h2>\n

There are a few features, however, that you won\u2019t find on the iPad version of Word. There is no option, for instance, for creating new styles \u2013 you are limited to the default Word style for all documents. There is also no option to print directly from Word.<\/span><\/p>\n

So, all in all, Word for iPad is very similar indeed to Word for desktop, so in the end it will just come down to user preference. If you\u2019ve been using Pages for some time now (and it\u2019s been available in iOS for four years already) then you\u2019ve probably got used to it \u2013 however, newcomers who\u2019ve always used Word and Office will find themselves right at home here.<\/span><\/p>\n

MS Excel<\/b><\/span><\/h2>\n

\"MS<\/span>Again, the similarities between Excel for iPad and the classic Excel for desktop are what gives the iPad version its greatest advantages. Indeed, familiarity is what\u2019s key to working with spreadsheets, and so for the regular desktop user of Excel, when it comes to the iPad version, you\u2019re already fully equipped.<\/span><\/p>\n

The ribbon is again there, stripped a little to accommodate the screen size, however the core functions remain intact. The whole feel, actually, is very similar to Excel for desktop and it performs in a very intuitive manner.<\/span><\/p>\n

There is a slight issue \u2013 albeit one that can\u2019t really be avoided \u2013 in that the onscreen keyboard does unfortunately obscure quite a lot of the spreadsheet. This is always going to be a problem for such a program on the iPad, as the keyboard has to go on the screen somewhere, and it has to be big enough to be of use. However, there is an optional keyboard that can be summoned which is actually very functional. Along with the numeric keypad, it contains all the common symbols used, arrow keys and a dedicated tab key. It is well designed and allows you to enter data very quickly and intuitively \u2013 as with all things on the touch screen, it just takes a little getting used to.<\/span><\/p>\n

Excel \u2013 What\u2019s Missing? <\/b><\/span><\/h2>\n

Again, it\u2019s the more advanced features that unfortunately haven\u2019t found their way onto the iPad version. Macros and pivot tables aren\u2019t supported, and again there is no way to print directly from Excel \u2013 although one suspects that as the updates come through this may well be one of the first issues that get addressed. You cannot track changes either like you can on Word for iPad, which is quite a significant let down, and comments are only partially supported \u2013 you may only view and delete comments and not create and edit new ones.<\/span><\/p>\n

All in all Word and Excel for iPad are very useable apps indeed, and there are really only a limited amount of advanced features that haven\u2019t made the transfer. The designs have been very well thought out to accommodate the touchscreen and the overall experience is very intuitive and user friendly \u2013 if you can stomach the Microsoft 365 subscription ($69.99 \u2013 $99.99 a year) and you want to work in Office then this may well be the option for you.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Microsoft\u2019s Office for iPad was a long time coming, and indeed the delay has allowed plenty of alternatives to get their foot in the market door, some of which are now thriving and are fully integrated into some larger organizations\u2019 mobile and cloud service strategies. The debate surrounding how useable Office for iPad would end […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2838,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,6,8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2825","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-general-it","category-tech","category-windows"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.poweradmin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2825","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.poweradmin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.poweradmin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.poweradmin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.poweradmin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2825"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.poweradmin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2825\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3451,"href":"https:\/\/www.poweradmin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2825\/revisions\/3451"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.poweradmin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2838"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.poweradmin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2825"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.poweradmin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2825"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.poweradmin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2825"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}