Microsoft releases its unified Office app for Android
Microsoft has followed through on its promise of a unified Office mobile app — for some people, anyway. Following months of beta testing, the company has released the all-in-one productivity app for Android phone users. Like before, this lets you edit Excel, PowerPoint and Word documents without having to switch apps. You can also sift through your OneDrive files, scan real-world documents with Office Lens and read QR codes.
There are some catches. As Android Police warned, the current Android app isn’t optimized for tablets or Chromebooks. You can’t even use it in landscape mode. The iOS equivalent to the app is also nowhere to be seen at this point. We’ve asked Microsoft if it can elaborate on its plans.
This could still be a significant step forward for mobile productivity, so long as you’re willing to invest in Microsoft’s ecosystem. For years, both Microsoft and Google have insisted on separate apps for each task, requiring you to juggle those apps to get things done. This all-in-one approach might save you time if you’re working on both a report and the presentation to sell that report to your boss.
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