In 2013, Microsoft introduced the Microsoft Office Mobile app for iPhone. It was the first official Microsoft app that allowed you to view Word, Excel, and PowerPoint documents on an iPhone. Unfortunately, it was so incredibly limited (for example, it didn't support redline edits) that I concluded my review by saying that the app was unsatisfying and making a wish that it was the first step towards something better. Fortunately, that's exactly what happened. A year later in 2014, when I was attending ABA TECHSHOW in Chicago, Microsoft surprised me and countless other attorneys by releasing a powerful version of Microsoft Word for the iPad (along with Excel and PowerPoint). Later in 2014, Microsoft updated the app to work on the iPhone as well. Since 2014, the Microsoft Word app has been one of the most useful apps on my iPhone and iPad, and I know that many other attorneys feel the same way. I use it all the time to review documents sent to me by others, revise my own documents, convert Word files to PDF, review redline edits made by others, and countless other tasks. It is an important part of my law practice.
A few months ago, Microsoft announced that it was once again bringing an Office app to the iPhone. The app was officially released a few weeks ago — once again, around the same time as ABA TECHSHOW. When I first heard about this app, I wasn't very enthusiastic. In part, this was because I had not forgotten about the disappointing 2013 version of Office for iPhone. But also, I was confused about the purpose of this app. We already have a Microsoft Word app for the iPhone; why do we need an additional Microsoft Office app that combines Word, Excel, and PowerPoint into a single app? However, now that I've used this app for a while, I see that there are some nice features in this app. And it doesn't cost anything extra for you to use the app, so I encourage you to download it and try it out.
Why one app?
I'll address what I like about this app in a moment, but I'll begin by saying that, even after using this app for a while, I still don't understand the value of having a single Office app that handles Word, Excel, and PowerPoint documents. Microsoft says that it takes less space on your iPhone to have a single app, but given the capacity of modern iPhones, nobody will ever notice that small file size difference.
Microsoft also says that having a single app "simplifies the experience with fewer apps to download or switch between." That doesn't make any sense to me. If I want to work with a Microsoft Word document, it is 100% obvious that I want to use the Microsoft Word app to work with that document. I'm never confused about whether I should use the Word app or the Excel app or the PowerPoint app to open a Word document. Moreover, if I'm working with a Word document, how does it help me to have that exact same app also be the app that I use to work with an Excel document? Indeed, it makes it worse to use a single app for these different types of documents. With separate Word and Excel apps, I can switch back and forth between the apps to consult a spreadsheet while working on a Word document. But with a single app, it takes many more steps to close and then open another document.
While I don't understand the advantage of combining multiple apps into one, I suppose I don't see any major disadvantage. Microsoft says that its new Office app has "virtually all the capabilities of the existing mobile apps people already know and use." As noted below, so far I've only discovered one missing feature.
Working with Word, Excel, and PowerPoint documents
The new Office app works well when you want to work with a Microsoft Word, Excel, or PowerPoint document. Much like the stand-alone apps, the Office app has a main screen that lists apps that you have recently opened, plus a file browser that you can use to access documents saved on your iPhone or on a cloud service such iCloud, Dropbox, SharefFile, OneDrive, Box, NetDocuments, etc.
When you open up a document, you can review the document or edit it. I had no trouble opening up and editing a PowerPoint file that I created back in 2001 for a presentation on how to make the most of a Palm organizer in a law practice. (I've been using Keynote on the iPad for all of my presentations for such a long time that I had to dig back into ancient history to find one of my PowerPoint documents.) I also worked with a spreadsheet that I created to compute legal interest.
But most importantly for me, the Office app works well with Microsoft Word documents. Documents automatically open in the mode that formats the text so that you can more easily read the words on a small iPhone screen, but you can switch back to a full-page mode if you want. You can edit the document, search for words in a document, create or review redline edits (if you subscribe to Office 365), etc.
So far, I've only discovered one difference between working with a Word file in the Office app versus the Word app. In the Word app, when you tap on text to start editing it, the bottom half of the screen shows editing options. When you are done editing, you can tap the icon showing a keyboard with a down arrow to make the editing features go away so that you can use all of the screen to view the document. In the Office app, that icon is missing. Once you start editing a document, the only reliable way I could figure out to go back to a full-page mode is to close the document and then open it up again. It is also possible to zoom out the document and then tap at the bottom to return to a full-page view, but that approach fails to work far more often than it works. I'm not sure if this omission is a bug or if Microsoft somehow considered this feature unnecessary and intended to remove it, but for now, it is a reason that I plan to stick with the Word app on my iPhone. In the following pictures, the Word app is on the left and the Office app is on the right:
By the way, for now, the Microsoft Office app only works on an iPhone (or the iPhone app mode of an iPad), but Microsoft says that it is working on a version of the Office app that is designed for the iPad.
Use of the camera in the Office app
The new Office app doesn't just incorporate the features of Word, Excel, and PowerPoint. It also makes good use of the camera on the iPhone by incorporating features of the Microsoft Office Lens app, which has been available for iPhone since 2015. The Lens app allows you to take a picture of a document, and then it performs an OCR to read the text and then allows you to export to another app such as Word. With the new Office app, you can choose to create a Word document by first taking a picture of a paper document. Office then creates a Word document with that text so that you can start editing the document that you just scanned. This is a situation in which I do like having multiple functions (the Lens app + the Word app) in a single app, and it is very nice.
In my tests, the OCR feature was far from perfect, so I needed to clean up the text after scanning. Obviously, you get better results with better quality documents. But I like that if someone hands you a paper version of a proposed contract, you can use the Office app to scan the document, convert to Word, and then you can modify the document and create a new version that contains the additional terms that you need.
The Office app also includes a function that lets you take a picture of a table and then turn that into an Excel spreadsheet. The Excel app has the same feature, but for it to work you need to already have a spreadsheet open and then you can insert what you scanned into that document. I prefer the approach of the Office app in which you start by taking a picture and then use that as the basis for a new spreadsheet document. (In theory, you can also insert what you scan in to an existing spreadsheet in the Office app, but for some reason the feature never seemed to work for me when I tapped the button. I presume that this is just a bug that will be fixed.)
Notes
The new Office app also gives you the ability to create a note. When you do so, that note will be listed along with your other recent documents. I myself don't see any value in creating notes in the Office app considering that it lacks many of the features in Apple's own Notes app that is built-in with the iPhone. But the feature is there in the Office app if you see some value.
Price
The Office app is free, and the free version allows you to do many things including view and edit a Word document. But for more sophisticated features, such as the ability to create and approve redline edits in a document (the track changes feature), you (or your law firm) needs to have an Office 365 subscription. The price of a subscription varies depending upon the features; you can get a personal version for $69.99/year, or for $99.99/year you can get a family plan that works for up to 6 people. If your law firm or other company already subscribes to Office 365, then you should not have to pay to unlock the app on your iPhone, but even if you do, you may be able to take advantage of the Microsoft Home Use program, which offers a discounted price.
All of this is no different for the Office app than it is for the stand-alone Word, Excel, and PowerPoint apps.
Conclusion
I don't know if Microsoft intends to continue to maintain the stand-alone Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Lens apps while also supporting this new Office app. If it does, then the existence of this new Office app is nothing but good news. You can now decide whether you prefer to use different apps depending upon the type of document you are working with, or whether you prefer to use a single Office app for all of your Microsoft document needs.
If Microsoft plans eventually get rid of the stand-alone apps and focus only on the Office app, I suppose that would be fine as long as we don't lose any features. As noted above, the main difference I've noticed so far is that icon to hide the keyboard. (I noted above that it is missing when you are working with a Word document, but Office is also missing the same icon when you are working with an Excel or PowerPoint document.)
Whether you are a subscriber to Office 365 or you just use the free version, every single attorney should have either the Word or the Office app on your iPhone, if for no other reason so that you can quickly review a Word document that someone else emails to you. You might as well get both the Word app and the new Office app since there are some differences. That way, you can use the one that you prefer depending upon the task at hand.