Microsoft Office Comes to the iPhone - East Idaho News
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Microsoft Office Comes to the iPhone

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Getty B 102010 Microsoft?  SQUARESPACE CACHEVERSION=1371231232083Justin Sullivan/Getty Images(NEW YORK) — This article was written on an iPhone. And not just in any app, but in Microsoft Office.

After a long wait, Microsoft has released Office Mobile for the iPhone, which allows users to edit and view their Word, Excel and PowerPoint documents right on Apple’s popular phone. It is the first dedicated Office app the company has released for Apple’s iOS devices.

But writing this article wasn’t as simple as downloading Office Mobile from the App Store and getting started. The app requires you to sign in with an Office 365 account and then requires that you have a Office Home Premium or a Microsoft Pro Plus subscription.

Microsoft charges $99.99 a year for the newest version of Office 365, which includes new updates to the new Word, Excel and PowerPoint software, 20GB of extra cloud storage space in Microsoft’s Cloud SkyDrive service, and access to the software on up to five computers.

When you log in, though, the app is what you might expect from a smartphone-based productivity suite.

Sign in with your account and you can access any of the documents you have in Microsoft’s SkyDrive and then select one to view or edit. You can also create new documents and then save them to your SkyDrive so it is easily accessible from Microsoft’s web based office apps or your desktop programs. You can also easily email a document from the interface.

While the iPhone app is now available, there is still no iPad app. Microsoft has long dodged questions about bringing its popular Office suite to the iPad. While there are plenty of word processing apps for Apple’s tablet and phone, many users have looked for Microsoft’s own software on the popular devices.

“Microsoft does not have anything to announce on the iPad,” Microsoft’s Jevon Fark told ABC News in January when the company released Office 365. Microsoft is set to release the next version of Office for Mac this year.

Earlier this week Apple showed off its iWork for iCloud at its WWDC event in San Fransisco. The new service makes it easier for users to write, edit and access their iWork documents, spreadsheets or presentations through a web browser and across iOS or Mac devices. At the event, Apple even demonstrated the service on a Windows 8 computer in a Chrome browser. Apple has not announced pricing on iWork for iCloud, but it will be out later this year.

Microsoft’s Office Mobile for iPhone is available now in the Apple App Store.

Copyright 2013 ABC News Radio

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