When you want to edit Microsoft Office documents on your iPad, you’re not limited to Apple’s iWork, Google Docs, and third-party office suites.Three apps, in conjunction with their respective. Like the 12.9-in. IPad Pro introduced in late 2015, the resized iPad Pro gets dumped into the iOS Office apps' pay-to-use bucket. Microsoft relies on screen size to separate what it considers. There is no single inclusive MS Office suite for iOS. If you already have an Office 365 subscription, you can use that subscription with them as well. There are also other cloud-based services integrated with MS Office apps for iOS, such as Dropbox.
If you’ve wanted to use a Microsoft Office iPad app, you’ve been able to run the individual Word, Powerpoint, and Excel apps for many years. But while the iPhone got an all-in-one Office app in February of last year, the iPad didn’t. A year later, Microsoft has finally fixed that.
The process of integrating the main Office tools into a single app actually began in November 2019 …
Background
Microsoft launched a 2019 iOS beta to bring “all of your Office documents together in one place.”
The Office app provides a simple, integrated experience that puts the tools you need for working on a mobile device at the forefront of the experience. We started by combining the existing Word, Excel, and PowerPoint mobile apps into a single app. Doing so brings all of your Office documents together in one place, reduces the need to switch between multiple apps, and significantly reduces the amount of space used on your phone compared to multiple installed apps. We then added new capabilities that harness the strengths of mobile devices, such as the camera, to enable you to create content in uniquely mobile ways. Finally, we added a new Actions Pane that helps you accomplish many of the common mobile tasks you need to do all from one place.
That was officially launched in February 2020, when Microsoft explained that it made better use of your iPhone’s storage.
This app maintains all the functionality of the existing Word, Excel, and PowerPoint mobile apps but requires far less phone storage than using three separate apps.
The only problem was, there was no iPad version – and running the iPhone app on an iPad was as ugly as you’d expect.
Microsoft Office iPad app now available
Version 2.46 finally gives us a native iPad app.
Office is now available on iPad: We’re combining the Word, Excel, and PowerPoint apps you know into a single, iPadOS-optimized app. Plus, you’ll see additional tools to keep you more productive than ever. For example, you’ll be able to quickly create and sign PDFs, and transform pictures into documents.
Get to Image-based Workflows Readily: Tap ‘Share’ in the phone gallery outside the Office app, to get to several actions like Create PPT, Create PDF and more. In addition, if there are any recent screenshots when you open the Office app, these are surfaced as a suggestion to covert to PDF or PPT.
Insert date, shape, image and notes in PDF: Now you can easily insert date, shape, image and notes in PDFs using new capabilities.
The app is a free download from the App Store, but requires a Microsoft 365 subscription priced at $6.99/month for an individual, or $9.99/month for a family.
Two of the individual iPad apps got updates last month, including trackpad support in Word.
Photo by Francois Hoang on Unsplash
FTC: We use income earning auto affiliate links.More.
-->If your add-in uses only Office APIs that are supported on the iPad, then customers can install it on iPads. (See Specify Office applications and API requirements for more information.) If the add-in will be marketed through AppSource, then there are some practices you must follow for add-ins that can be installed on iPads, in addition to the best practices that apply to all Office Add-ins.
The following table lists the tasks to perform.
Microsoft Office For Ipad
Note
For information about designing Outlook add-ins that look good and work well on Outlook Mobile, see Add-ins for Outlook Mobile.
| Task | Description | Resources |
|---|---|---|
| Update your add-in to support Office.js version 1.1. | Update the JavaScript files (Office.js and app-specific .js files) and the add-in manifest validation file used in your Office Add-in project to version 1.1. | Update API and manifest version |
| Apply iOS design best practices. | Integrate your add-in UI seamlessly with the iOS experience. | See note below. |
| Optimize your add-in for touch. | Make your UI responsive to touch inputs in addition to mouse and keyboard. | Apply UX design principles |
| Make your add-in free. | Office on iPad is a channel through which you can reach more users and promote your services. These new users have the potential to become your customers. | Certification policy 1120.2 |
| Make your add-in commerce free on the iPad. | When it's running on the iPad, your add-in must be free of in-app purchases, trial offers, UI that aims to upsell to a non-free version, or links to any online stores where users can purchase or acquire other content, apps, or add-ins. Your Privacy Policy and Terms of Use pages must also be free of any commerce UI or AppSource links. | Certification policy 1100.3 Your add-in can still have commerce on other platforms. To do so, test the Office.context.commerceAllowed property and suppress all commerce when it returns false. |
| Submit your add-in to AppSource. | In Partner Center, on the Product setup page, select the Make my product available on iOS and Android (if applicable) check box, and provide your Apple developer ID in Account settings. Review the Application Provider Agreement to make sure you understand the terms. | Make your solutions available in AppSource and within Office |
Note
Your add-in can serve an alternate UI based on the device that it is running on. To detect whether your add-in is running on an iPad, you can use the following APIs.
- var isTouchEnabled = Office.context.touchEnabled
- var allowCommerce = Office.context.commerceAllowed
Can Ipad Run Microsoft Office
On an iPad, touchEnabled returns true and commerceAllowed returns false.
/ManworkingoniPadPro-96b5f6f4ba0b4d968c7fcdddb8749b87.jpg "Use")
Can You Use Microsoft Office On Ipad Air
For information on the best UI design practices for iPad, see Designing for iOS.
Best practices for developing Office Add-ins that can run on iPad
Apply the following best practices for developing add-ins that run on iPad.
Download Microsoft Office On Ipad
Develop and debug the add-in on Windows or Mac and sideload it to an iPad.
You can't develop the add-in directly on an iPad, but you can develop and debug it on a Windows or Mac computer and sideload it to an iPad for testing. Because an add-in that runs in Office on iOS or Mac supports the same APIs as an add-in running in Office on Windows, your add-in's code should run the same way on these platforms. For details, see Test and debug Office Add-ins and Sideload Office Add-ins on iPad and Mac for testing.
Specify API requirements in your add-in's manifest or with runtime checks.
When you specify API requirements in your add-in's manifest, Office will determine if the Office client application supports those API members. If the API members are available in the application, then your add-in will be available. Alternatively, you can perform a runtime check to determine if a method is available in the application before using it in your add-in. Runtime checks ensure that your add-in is always available in the application, and provides additional functionality if the methods are available. For more information, see Specify Office applications and API requirements.