Microsoft unveils Office for iPad, free for reading and presenting

[Arthur]

Download: Word (VPP), Excel (VPP), PowerPoint (VPP), OneNote (VPP) / Sources: Office Blog, Engadget, The Verge

 

After years and years of rumours, Office for iPad is finally here. At a press event in San Francisco this morning, Microsoft Office general manager Julia White has unveiled the company’s latest mobile Office app. While Office for iPad was originally rumoured for a release in 2012 and 2013, it will be available in Apple’s App Store today at 2.00 P.M. ET / 11.00 A.M. PT. Just like Office for iPhone, the iPad version will make use of Microsoft's Office 365 subscription for editing features and will be available to subscribers at no extra cost. However, the iPad version will be free for reading and presenting purposes. That's a significant change from the iPhone version, and one that will allow millions of iPad users to make use of Office for viewing documents.

 

Word, Excel, and PowerPoint will all be included with Office for iPad, with a ribbon interface that's similar to the Windows and Mac desktop versions. While Office for iPhone included some basic editing, the iPad version contains a lot more features. Microsoft is promising full file fidelity with the desktop versions, and Office for iPad includes support for re-flowing, formatting, and touch handles. In a demonstration, White showed how text will automatically re-flow around a picture once it's inserted in a Word document.

 

Though the product is called Office for iPad, it's actually a trio of individual apps (Word, Excel and PowerPoint) listed separately in the App Store. As with Office Mobile for iPhone, each of these core programs is free to download, and you can use them in read-only mode without a paid subscription. If you wanna edit or create documents, though -- and let's face it: You definitely will -- an Office 365 subscription is required. In particular, we're told it will even work with Microsoft's upcoming 365 Personal plan, which will cost $7 a month when it launches later this spring. And if you happen to be a student using Office 365 for University ($80 for four years), the monthly cost of ownership drops to just $1.67.

 

All told, this subscription model isn't a problem if you already have an Office sub; in fact, your iPad download won't even count toward the usual five-PC/Mac limit. Unfortunately, too, this is also one of the only mobile office suites that works with Microsoft OneDrive and SharePoint, so if that's where you store your documents, you're best off sticking with Office. That said, Apple offers its iWork suite for free, so long as you purchased your device on or after September 1st, 2013. And, it works with popular services like Google Drive, which Office doesn't, so depending on what ecosystem you use, Office might immediately seem like a weak proposition.

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=frpsGFQ4AIY

 

 

 

 

Requirements

A qualifying Office 365 subscription is required to edit and create documents. Qualifying plans include:

 

• Office 365 Home
  
• Office 365 Small Business Premium
  
• Office 365 Midsize Business
  
• Office 365 Enterprise E3 and E4 (Enterprise and Government)
  
• Office 365 Education A3 and A4
  
• Office 365 ProPlus
  
• Office 365 University
  
• Office 365 trial subscriptions
  

Edited March 27, 2014 by Arthur
Added big red arrow for Sylv3r ;-) plus VPP links

[Arthur]

Office Mobile is now free for home users too.

 

Download: iPhone, Android

 

Just like Office Mobile for Windows Phone, we are making Office Mobile for iPhone and Android phones free for everyone. With Office Mobile, you have the ability to view and edit your Office content on the go. Office Mobile is available in the App Store and Google Play. (Source)

[Sylv3r]

Does anybody know when it will appear in the UK?

[Arthur]

Does anybody know when it will appear in the UK?

It's already available.

 

Edited March 27, 2014 by Arthur

[Marshall_IT]

What I dont quite get with ms and office 365 is that they now have student advantage which will allow student to edit, but staff don't get this access...

[Sylv3r]

Odd. Doesn't appear for me on my iPAD or Mac using iTunes.

[Marshall_IT]

Odd. Doesn't appear for me on my iPAD or Mac using iTunes.

 

I've downloaded them too.

 

Three apps, word PowerPoint and excel.

 

They don't turn up in searches very well.

 

I opened another ms app and showed the developer apps.

[Sylv3r]

Managed to find them. I am guessing they are keeping them from the search to avoid the mad rush.

 

I got the links from here if anybody else is looking.

 

Where To Download Microsoft Office For iPad

[Devontechie]

Managed to find them. I am guessing they are keeping them from the search to avoid the mad rush.

 

I got the links from here if anybody else is looking.

 

Where To Download Microsoft Office For iPad

 

The links are in the first post as well

[Arthur]

I got the links from here if anybody else is looking.

The download links were at the top of my first post (highlighted in red). They've been there since 6.06 P.M.

[speckytecky]

How cope there's no Thanks button on this thread. Thanks anyhow @Arthur

[tj2419]

What I don't quite get with ms and office 365 is that they now have student advantage which will allow student to edit, but staff don't get this access...

 

My thoughts exactly. Wish there was some way to enable it if you have an EES agreement or something.

[Sylv3r]

Thanks guys for pointing out the links! The big red arrow helps

[Marshall_IT]

Thanks guys for pointing out the links! The big red arrow helps

 

Lol.. The big red arrow is helpful... I wish it was there earlier!

[tj2419]

Can only get powerpoint in VPP :S

[Arthur]

Can only get powerpoint in VPP

I have added the VPP links for each app to my first post now.

[seawolf]

Managed to find them. I am guessing they are keeping them from the search to avoid the mad rush.

 

I got the links from here if anybody else is looking.

 

Where To Download Microsoft Office For iPad

 

There might be a mad rush to download these apps, but once users realise they barely work without an Office 365 subscription...game over.

 

Microsoft is estimating that they will add 4 Billion in revenue with the release of Office or the iPad. I imagine they would if they worked reasonably well without an Office 365 account. They could even tie it to a OneDrive account and offer 5GB of free space like iWork for the iPad and iCloud and that would be fine. But, requiring an Office 365 subscription - FAIL!

[dan400007]

Err, so these aren't going to work with a standard Office 365 for Education subscription...come on Microsoft.

[Quackers]

So an Office 365 Education A2 or just being able to buy each app for say £5 would have been fine. But no, MS want us to spend £4000 on ESS, then another £12,000 a year just for Office 365 so we can edit Office docs on our iPads? Thanks for nothing MS!

[abillybob]

Ah that's really crap! I would of liked this to have been just a paid for app, we don't use Office 365 so I guess we will be sticking with Pages, Keynote & Numbers then! Really disappointed!

[jamesbmarshall]

So an Office 365 Education A2 or just being able to buy each app for say £5 would have been fine. But no, MS want us to spend £4000 on ESS, then another £12,000 a year just for Office 365 so we can edit Office docs on our iPads? Thanks for nothing MS!

 

Those numbers are interesting, I'd like to know where you've got them from?

 

If you have 100 staff then to licence them for Office 365 ProPlus for Faculty through Office 365 Education would cost (100*£1.70)*12 = £2040.

 

If you licence all of your staff for Office 365 ProPlus then you could conceivably remove Office from your EES agreement and just keep Windows and Core CAL. (I don't know how much money that would save, but speak to your reseller).

 

Let's put this in context. If you wanted to roll out the full Office suite that installs across PC and Mac on up to 5 devices per user (etc. etc.) and you didn't have Student Advantage at your disposal then you'd be looking at licensing every user.

 

If you take an average secondary school that has say 100 staff and 900 pupils then you're looking at:

 

(100 * £1.70) * 12 = £2,040

 

AND

 

(900 * £1.27) * 12 = £13,716

 

Which gives you a grand total of £15,756.

I think when you factor in Student Advantage (i.e. saving £13,716) it's a pretty good deal.

 

Not to mention the fact that the iPad apps are free to review and present... so it's not like they can't use the apps at all. I don't think it's unreasonable to expect people to pay for some functionality.

 

 

(Caveat: I'm quoting the prices that are showing in my Office 365 Education admin portal right now, without any discount that might be available through a volume license agreement. I'm also assuming that just Office 365 ProPlus for Faculty is enough to qualify you for Student Advantage. You'd need to confirm all of this with your re-seller to be 100% sure. I'm not a licensing expert... ).

 

(P.S: You don't need to run Office 365 for Exchange Online, Lync Online or SharePoint Online in order to be able to take either Office 365 ProPlus for Faculty or Student Advantage. You can sign up just to access the Office 365 ProPlus benefits and continue to use your existing mail, UC and collaboration platforms.)

 

(P.P.S: Even if you still had to pay for Office through your EES or OVS-ES VLs, you're still only looking at an additional £2K in this example to add the functionality for staff. I guess it really depends on your usage scenarios but that's still not very much. How many of your users both have an iPad and would need to be creating content on it; given that they're not likely to only have an iPad? You could choose just to enable the "full use" experience for the subset of staff that actually need it which brings cost down even further...)

Edited March 28, 2014 by jamesbmarshall

[Quackers]

Those numbers are interesting, I'd like to know where you've got them from?

 

 

From here Compare Office 365 Education plans - Office.com

 

We have 600 pupils, so £1.90 x 600 = £1140 x that by 12 months and you get £13000 and i have not added in staff yet.

 

When i first saw it i thought maybe now is a good time to start seriously looking at the cloud maybe get all the kids to use One Drive. But at that cost i just do not see it happening. We have ESS so have paid for Office site wide, why can we not have it on our iPads?

[uke]

Someone will correct me, but I think if you have Office on EES licence you qualify for Student Advantage, so you do not have to buy any licences for the Children, just the staff...

And if you did not have the EES licence, then buying the staff licences would qualify you for Student Advantage anyway (as I understand), so in the example that James gave it would cost you £2,040

[Quackers]

I take it we need to setup Azure Active Directory too if we want single sign on?

[jamesbmarshall]

I take it we need to setup Azure Active Directory too if we want single sign on?

 

If you want either Office 365 ProPlus for Faculty or Student Advantage you need to set up an Office 365 Education tenant (and therefore, Windows Azure AD which is the ID framework underneath).

 

You don't need to deploy SSO (Deploying Office 365 Education? You don't need single sign-on, and here's why!) to enable those services. You can literally just upload a CSV file, or if you have some spare server capacity deploy DirSync + Password Sync.

 

It is easy. Honestly.