Microsoft has announced that it is removing the need for Office 365 subscription to edit Office documents from Office Mobile for Android smartphones. The Office Mobile is now completely free and can be used to view and edit Word documents, Excel spreadsheet or PowerPoint presentations.
Earlier, Office Mobile still used to be a free application but only allowed users to view Office documents and the consumers needed Office 365 subscription to edit the documents.
To remind you, Office Mobile works on smartphones running Android 4.0+ or above and you will need a free Microsoft account to create, edit or save documents. Here is a quick recap of Office Mobile for Android features.
- Access Office documents that are stored on OneDrive, OneDrive for Business, or SharePoint.
- Recent Documents: Office Mobile is cloud-connected, so your recent documents panel is always synced.
- View and edit Office documents attached to email messages.
- Support for charts, animations, SmartArt Graphics, and shapes.
- Optimized for phones
- Resume Reading: Automatically resumes at the place where you left off reading, even if you last viewed the document on your PC or tablet.
- Presentation Views: The Slide Navigator view in PowerPoint lets you browse slides faster, while speaker notes help you practice your presentation.
- Make quick edits and share
- Documents Remain Intact: Formatting and content remain intact when you edit Word, Excel, or PowerPoint documents on your phone.
- Create new Word and Excel documents on your phone.
- Review comments that have been made in Word and Excel documents on your phone and add your own comments.
Is this not compatible with android tablets? It got installed to my phone but tab is showing not compatible.
Article heading says “for Android phones completely free”, so it is not for tablets yet.!
Only for phones, it seems. What kind of idiot thought of supporting only phone? Don’t they know it is easier to edit on tablets? FAIL!
Well, Microsoft Office Mobile (formerly Pocket Office) was launched in 1996 to support even smaller devices, so I’d say that such an old and successful office suite knows it better than some random commenter.