Reprinted from TidBITS by permission; reuse governed by Creative Commons
license BY-NC-ND 3.0. TidBITS has offered years of thoughtful commentary
on Apple and Internet topics. For free email subscriptions and access to the
entire TidBITS archive, visit http://www.tidbits.com/


   Microsoft Addresses Primary Complaints with Office for iPad Update

   Julio Ojeda-Zapata

   Microsoft Office for the iPad, released four months ago to generally
   positive reviews (including mine, see '[1]Office for iPad: A Deep
   Look,' 3 April 2014), but lacking obvious and important features, got
   [2]a solid round of upgrades this week.

   New features in all three of the suite's apps ' Word, Excel, and
   PowerPoint ' include export to PDF, support for third-party fonts, and
   an image-cropping tool with a reset control. PDF exporting is available
   even to those without an Office 365 subscription, which is required for
   most Office for iPad functions.

   [3][tn_Word-iPad-export-PDF.jpg]

   The other updates focus on Excel and PowerPoint. Excel for iPad gains
   pivot tables, a flicking gesture for selecting data across a row or
   column, support for external keyboards, and augmented printing options.

   [4][tn_Excel-iPad-pivot-table.jpg]

   PowerPoint for iPad has added a Presenter View for seeing and editing
   notes, previewing the next slide, and jumping to other slides, all
   while running the presentation. The app also lets you play video or
   audio during a presentation, insert videos from the Camera Roll, add
   and edit hyperlinks, and use new pen and eraser settings for making and
   removing annotations during a presentation.

   [5][tn_PowerPoint-iPad-Presenter-View.jpg]

   Overall, these updates to the various Office for iPad apps are entirely
   welcome, and address many of the criticisms in my original review.
   There are still areas where Office for iPad needs to catch up with its
   desktop siblings, but the gap isn't nearly as wide as it was
   previously.

References

   1. http://tidbits.com/article/14647
   2. http://blogs.office.com/2014/07/31/office-ipad-now-presenter-view-pivot-table-interaction-export-pdf-top-requested-features/
   3. http://tidbits.com/resources/2014-08/Word-iPad-export-PDF.png
   4. http://tidbits.com/resources/2014-08/Excel-iPad-pivot-table.png
   5. http://tidbits.com/resources/2014-08/PowerPoint-iPad-Presenter-View.png

.