Microsoft releases Office for iPhone. Yawn - Público.pt

Office for iPhone is big news, but not because the software is exciting. No, it is essentially important for the political aspect of the situation – the optics, as they say in public relations.

For Microsoft – the once queen global and all-powerful software, which for years has been trying unsuccessfully to produce a smartphone that has – has created an application that lets you edit Word, Excel and PowerPoint on the device that defeated this same smartphone: the iPhone. It is as if, at some point, Microsoft executives have begun to wear T-shirts saying “If you can not beat them, join them”. Microsoft, of course, does not see things that way.

The company announces slight but noticeable increases in sales of its Windows Phone (which, incidentally, is a fantastic phone). So why is it that created the Office Mobile for iPhone?

I’ll give you a hint: it’s that you can not buy Office Mobile directly. It’s free if we subscribe to the Microsoft Office 365 plan, which costs $ 100 per year, a service that allows you to transfer Word, Excel and PowerPoint for a maximum of five computers Mac or W indows.

Since the arrival Office 365, Microsoft has been keen to sweeten the offer. The subscription of Office 365 offers one hour free calls per month using Skype. It also offers 20 gigabytes of additional storage on SkyDrive, a hard drive to transfer documents online or make backups. (The subscribers do not receive seven gigabytes free.)

And now launches this application to iPhone (iPhone 4 and later) and iPod Touch (5 or later). That’s why your compridíssimo full name is Office 365 is Office Mobile Subscribers. (Office Mobile is now available on Windows Phone and requires no subscription.)

You can run this application on a maximum of five iPhones. If you fail to pay the 365 Office, the application crashes. But nothing happens to your documents, you are on the phone (to delete the application) and its free SkyDrive.

To use it, we introduce our name and password for Office 365. Once we enter, we see a list of all files Word, Excel and PowerPoint t hat we’ve saved our SkyDrive. When we select the name of a document, it is quickly transferred to the phone and we can work on it without internet connection. Next time we access net, the changes are sent to the original which is on SkyDrive. We may also use Mobile Office to edit documents sent as attachments in Mail app on the iPhone.

But when you click a document to open, quickly discovered that this application has nothing to do with Microsoft Office complete, more looking like a Microsoft Hall. It is a greatly reduced version that offers only the features that Microsoft thinks we actually use on the bus or in the waiting room of the doctor’s office, not having anything else to entertain us unless the phone.

The Word module miniature, for example, have comments, outline view, styles bold, italic, underline and strikethrough, colors for font and background, and highlight. Digita up, cut up, copies and pastes up using variations of the usual finger ges tures on the iPhone. And, when you open a Word document, he jumps to the point where we’ve been reading for the last time on our computer. Smart.

Absences notorious: style sheets (normal, Title 1, etc..). Spellchecker. The Undo command. The ability to change the font or insert a graphic. We can increase or decrease the font, but can not specify a size by a number. Sometimes the layout-intensive documents – many boxes, graphics, etc. – do not come to the phone in full.

The Excel module is, by far, has the most features. Presents most of the elements of a spreadsheet, including charts and graphs. You can slide your finger, zoom in with two fingers to lock rows or columns do not slide, rotate the phone to get bigger image, edit comments, switch to outline view, edit formulas, create tables, alter numbers, sort, find, filter and format text and numbers. If the sheet has multiple pages, you can move to another page using the tabs at the bottom, as in t he computer. And there is an Undo command. (Why here and not in Word?)

notorious Absences: You can not change the order of rows and columns (although you can modify the row height and column width) and insert new.

Then we have the PowerPoint module, which is only a shadow of an echo memory PowerPoint seriously. You can not even create documents in Office PowerPoint Mobile, but only open files. And yet, it is not possible to insert new slides or duplicate existing ones.

You can move slides, hide them, edit text, edit notes or run the presentation to practice. (The notes are visible if you put the phone vertically. If we put aside, the notes disappear and slide fills the entire screen.)

Absences notorious: everything else. Microsoft seems to think that no one will do much creative work in a slide show on a tiny phone screen and the only work that is practical to do with it is to improve and test our speech.

And here’s something that is noticeably absent from any of the three modules: the ability to edit files. doc,. xls and. ppt, those that everyone in the world used to introduce new Microsoft file formats a few years ago. Office Mobile only works with the new fo rmat, whose file names have the extension. Docx,. Xlsx or. Pptx. If someone send files of types that were formerly more common, we can open them, but we can not change them.

Also missing in the three application modules: the ability to view changes. Macros. A version for Android. An iPad version. (You can run Office Mobile for iPhone an iPad, but without the benefit of the larger screen area.)

The Mobile Office is a nice extra perk for subscribers of the Office 365. It has a simple and fluid. And it is very easy to learn. Never imagined that it is a distant relative of a software suite that is as beautiful and elegant as Jabba the Hutt. But as iPhone version of Microsoft Office, is almost ridiculously limited.

Surprisingly, the Internet is buzzing with Office applications for iPhone – made by companies other than Microsoft. Better, more complete, without requiring subscription.

For example, applications Apple’s own Pages, Numbers and Keynote ( 8.99 euros each) can edit Office documents, such as the free application Google Drive ( only text and spreadsheets).

more serious applications such as Documents to Go Premium ($ 14.99), Polaris Office (12.99 euros) and QuickOffice Pro ($ 13.99) can create and edit all types of Office documents, including files and PowerPoint file formats older.

And do not gird to SkyDrive. These applications access the services of the most popular online storage, like Dropbox, SugarSync, Box.net and Google Drive.

Besides, that are much more complete. Their applications for Word, for example, offer the functions of find / replace lists with bullets and numbering, command line spacing and paragraph alignment (but, however, style sheets limited and unable to see changes) . And all this without cluttering the screen too.

Finally, we can always use the online versions of Word, Excel and PowerPoint – for free – offered by Office Web Apps. Do not give too much like a tiny screen but at least they’re free.

And you do not need additional software to open and read, but not edit Office documents. The iPhone can do it all yourself.

In short, therefore, the Office Mobile for iPhone is too little, too late. Your competitors do not have Microsoft-are much more useful. And unless, in any way, want to subscr ibe to Office 365, other applications are also more advantageous in terms of price.

It is so anticlimactic fans, the wait is over. The question is why we waited?