First look: Hands-on with Office Mobile for iPhone
By now, you’ve no doubt heard that Microsoft Office Mobile for iPhone is now available for iPhone. (Yup, you read that right: It’s iPhone-only.) The question is: Should you care?
That depends largely on whether you’re already a subscriber to Microsoft’s Office 365 and Skydrive services, which (for personal use) cost from $100 to $120 annually. (If you want to give the app a test run, Microsoft offers a 30 day free trial of Office 365, which you can set up at the Office 365 website.) Because, really, Microsoft Office Mobile is a front-end to that service, not a standalone productivity suite.
Getting connected
Office Mobile does give you access to the three legs of the Microsoft Office suite: Word, Excel, and PowerPoint. Each of the three iOS apps is able to read and edit documents created using their related PC, Mac, or Web applications; if you want to create new documents on the iPhone, Office Mobile lets you do so with Word and Excel, but not PowerPoint.
When you sign in with your Office 365 account from the mobile app, you should also have access to your SkyDrive folder and be able to see any of the files you have stored there. But, after installing the app on two different devices, I found that only one automatically connected to my SkyDrive. For the second install, I needed to use the app’s Add a Place tool and choose SkyDrive. Add a Place is also the way you connect to your business’ or school’s Office 365 SharePoint.
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