Skip to main content
  1. Home
  2. Mobile
  3. News

Microsoft releases a new preview version of Office on Android

By

microsoft office android preview news for phone now available 1
Image used with permission by copyright holder
What do you do after you drop the subscription requirement for the mobile version of your productivity suite and downloads skyrocket to 100 million? If you’re Microsoft, you bring disparate versions of that mobile app — iOS, Android, and Windows Phone versions, in this case — to parity. That’s the goal of the new preview version of Office for Android the company unveiled today, an extension of the tablet-targeting release last November.

If you’re even peripherally familiar with Office on the Web or desktop, you’ll feel right at home.

Recommended Videos

The revamped Excel, Word, and PowerPoint apps mostly achieve the goal of mirroring the iPhone and Windows Phone releases — if you’re even peripherally familiar with Office on the Web or desktop, you’ll feel right at home. The iconic navigation and menu ribbon lives at the bottom of the screen, as do the review and formatting buttons. Many of the features on PC, like real-time edits and chart, text, and table insertion in Excel, make the jump to the mobile apps.

Related

The apps are hardly pure ports, though. They’ve been augmented to leverage Android in logical ways. Text in documents automatically reflows, for one, and you can open and save documents in OneDrive, SharePoint, Dropbox, Google Drive, Box, and other cloud services.

Office on Android
Image used with permission by copyright holder

Eager to try your hand at the latest preview? Luckily, installing the new Office isn’t too hard. As with the Android tablet preview, Microsoft’s adopted the Play Store’s staged rollout tools. If you’ve ever signed up for a beta app release on Android before, you know the drill: Join the Office for Android community, click the links for Word, Excel, and PowerPoint, and wait anywhere between a few minutes to a few hours until you have access to the relevant Play Store pages.

Looking ahead, Microsoft’s already begun testing Office for Windows 10, but only on the technical preview of Windows 10 Mobile. Microsoft’s gotten better at supporting multiple platforms, but if history is any indication, expect the newest Office to make a very slow migration to Android and iOS in the next few months.

The Android Office updates just scratch the surface (no pun intended) of Microsoft’s broader cross-platform effort. The company announced in March plans to bring Cortana to iOS and Android, and it recently added PowerPoint and OneDrive support to the Apple Watch. It’s a play at brand proliferation, and it seems to be working — Microsoft’s paid Office tier numbers north of 12 million subscribers, and it’s growing.

Editors’ Recommendations

Topics
Kyle Wiggers
Kyle Wiggers
Former Digital Trends Contributor
Kyle Wiggers is a writer, Web designer, and podcaster with an acute interest in all things tech. When not reviewing gadgets…
The best hurricane trackers for Android and iOS in 2024
Best hurricane tracking apps.

The hurricane season instills fear in those who find themselves in the paths of these storms, and in their loved ones who are concerned for their safety. A hurricane app is essential if you’ve stayed up all night worrying about a family member who's alone during a destructive storm.

Many hurricane trackers are available to help you prepare for these dangerous events, monitor their progress, and assist in recovery. We’ve compiled a list of the best apps for tracking storms, predicting their paths, and providing on-the-ground suggetsions for shelters and emergency services. Most of these apps are free to download and supported by ads. Premium versions are available to remove ads and add extra features.

Read more
Microsoft Word may delete your files — here’s how to avoid it
Windows 11 logo on a laptop.

There's a new bug in Microsoft Word that may delete your files, and according to user reports, they're not always recoverable through the Recycle Bin. Fortunately, Microsoft is aware of the problem, but it's unclear when the issue might be fixed. If you want to make sure that your files stay safe, we've got a few workarounds to help you out.

In the last few days, the Microsoft community boards have been flooded with reports of people complaining about their files randomly being deleted, with one user saying: "I use Word. Today, it deleted eight hours of work." Further reports quickly made it clear that the affected files have a few things in common.

Read more
The Samsung Galaxy A16 sets a new record for budget Android phones
Galaxy A16 banner Samsung

We've known that Samsung's next lineup of budget phones was on the way, especially after all of the information that leaked last week. Now, we have confirmation on several elements of the phone, but the most important of them all is the incredible (and unheard of) six years of security patches the Galaxy A16 5G will receive from launch. That means it will be fully up to date until October 31, 2030.

We reported on this possibility a couple of weeks ago, but now it's confirmed — and that's a big deal. Many budget phones only receive two years of security patches post-launch. The Galaxy A16 5G's six years of support puts it only one year behind Samsung's flagship models in the Galaxy S24 series. For a phone as cheap as the Galaxy A16, that's incredible.

Read more