Microsoft Office Mobile for Android brings the power of Microsoft Office on your desktop to your Android device. Although Word, Excel, and PowerPoint for Android are all now available as separate downloads, if you want the entire suite in one package, Microsoft Office Mobile for Android provides everything in one place for those using Android 4.4 and higher.
Office is hugely popular still in the business world, but is facing competition as SaaS-based applications gain popularity. For instance, a cloud accounting application such as FreshBooks or Xero offers a more powerful way to do your accounts than a spreadsheet does, since it can integrate closely with your bank and with other business systems you use – and can be accessed from your mobile device.
That said, the Office app for Android is good enough for day-to-day viewing and editing of spreadsheets, documents, and presentations.
Office everywhere
Microsoft Office Mobile for Android allows you to access, view and edit your Word, Excel and PowerPoint documents from virtually anywhere pretty much as if you were using the desktop version. If you make edits or add comments to a document, the formatting and content remain intact when you reopen them on a PC or Mac.
Documents opened in Microsoft Office Mobile for Android look exactly like the originals as it supports charts, animations, SmartArt graphics and shapes and is fully optimized for tablets, phablets and mobiles.
Documents display exactly like the desktop version in Microsoft Mobile for Android, with all formatting preserved.
Microsoft Office Mobile for Android conveniently allows you to edit, present and access documents on the move anywhere. It supports reviews and edits on the go with edit history, and allows you to add and read comments by other colleagues.
If you need to present a PowerPoint presentation, you can wirelessly project PowerPoint presentations from your phone onto a screen. It includes all the same transitions, animations and templates that you get in the desktop version (including the possibility to use inking to highlight important points while presenting). In addition, the Slide Navigator view in PowerPoint lets you browse slides faster while speaker notes help you practice your presentation.
Access all areas
Microsoft Office Mobile for Android provides quick and easy access to your most recently accessed documents on desktop and can even show you where you made your last edit on the desktop version.
To make sure you can access your documents on the go you can open documents that are saved in Dropbox, Google Drive, Box, OneDrive, OneDrive for Business or SharePoint. However, it’s a bit annoying that you can’t actually save files to your mobile device – there’s no way that you can save files to your phone since Microsoft Office Mobile for Android forces you to save or upload all files to cloud services.
Microsoft Office Mobile for Android allows you to see recently-accessed documents from your PC or Mac.
The clever thing though is that the recently viewed document list on your desktop also appears on Microsoft Office Mobile for Android, making it easy to pick up where you left off working in the Office or at home. Similarly, Microsoft Office Mobile for Android has a resume reading feature for documents opened via OneDrive which means that if you open a document from OneDrive or OneDrive for Business on your phone, it automatically resumes where you left off reading, even if you last viewed the document on a PC, Mac or other mobile device.
Microsoft Office Mobile for Android also supports adding email attachments, including the viewing and editing of Office documents attached to email messages. Whatever edits you make, the formatting of your documents remains the same whether its in Word, Excel or PowerPoint. You can, of course, also start completely new documents by creating new Word and Excel documents on your phone.
Conclusion
You can download and install Microsoft Office Mobile for Android for free and and sign in with a free Microsoft account to create, edit and save documents for home use. However, you need a qualifying Office 365 subscription to create, edit and save documents for business use. It’s well worth the investment for anyone that uses both Microsoft Office and Android devices regularly.
Microsoft Office Mobile for Android is generally easy to use, very well integrated with the desktop version, and it displays documents extremely well. The inability to save files to the phone itself is probably the most important limitation but for those that are happy to upload and download files from the cloud, it makes Office accessible anywhere, anytime.
Do you use Office on your mobile? How do you find the experience? Have you tried using a SaaS accounting app as an alternative to Excel? What did you think? A lot of questions, I know, but we’d love to hear from you!
