Microsoft Office is now available for iPad

Good news for iPad owners. After a long time of waiting, Microsoft finally brings Microsoft Office to iPad. Microsoft Office for iPad comes in three separate downloads: Microsoft Word for iPad, Microsoft Excel for iPad and Microsoft PowerPoint for iPad. They are free to download and available in AppStore right now. We can use these apps to open files for free. To unlock the ability to edit files, we would need Office 365 subscription at $99 per year.

While some people would say this move from Microsoft is way too late now that there are so many “alternative apps” in the AppStore, I personally still excited to this native app of Microsoft Office. Most of my excel files can’t be opened by those alternative apps. I have tried Kingsoft Office, Quickoffice, Documents2 and many other suites. None of them can open my Excel files properly due to the massive number of complex formula inside. For Word document, most of those alternative apps can open my files, but none of them can open it without messing up my layout (I use heavy layout using objects and text boxes). So, Microsoft Office is my primary hope.

I’m downloading the three apps as I write this. Will update later whether this “tablet version” from Microsoft is as usable as their desktop version or not.