Office Mobile 365 for iOS has officially launched for iPhone. Microsoft says that the app will stay iPhone-exclusive, since iPad users can use the Office Web Apps instead.
Office Mobile for iOS (download it here) syncs with SkyDrive, Microsoft’s cloud service, to have document edits made on your iPhone show up on your Office Web Apps or desktop version of Office in real time. The app also requires an Office 365 subscription and gives you access to SkyDrive folders, document creation, recent documents and settings. Like the Windows Phone version of Office, Office Mobile for iOS supports Word, Excel, and PowerPoint docs, but in the case of PowerPoint, you’ll only be able to edit docs on the iPhone, not create new ones.
In Word docs, double-tapping individual words will get you the standard highlight controls; hitting the Edit button will bring up the formatting options.
Excel gives you a few more options for spreadsheet data. Highlighting the center of any cells and then dragging will highlight the rest of them. Then you can create tables and charts that can be moved into new tabs. AutuSum calculation, column sorting, and a few basic filters are supported, as well as formula changes confined to individual cells, for making quick fixes.
In PowerPoint, you can’t do much more than edit text, and hide and move slides. Landscape Mode will give you full access to the project, along with some options and a speaker note creator. Finally, there’s a Slide Navigator view, to get a quick fly-through of your presentations.
While the features are basic, Office Mobile for iOS could conceivably help iPhone users out in a pinch. It’s available now on the App Store.
