Office for iPad success - topping the charts

As predicted last week, Microsoft released Office for iPad app, and to less fanfare, updated their Office for iPhone app too.

iPad
Looking at the UK charts, the iPad apps have been a huge success, current filling the top 3 spaces on the 'Top Fee iPad Apps' chart

Which is great news, but the free app only provides view access on the iPad.  The better news is that they seem to be doing well on the "In App Purchases" too.

To get the unlock the full functionality for these apps you either need an existing Office 365 subscription, or sign up as a new user through the app @ £79.99 for Office 365 Home.

On the "Top Grossing iPad Apps" charts, which tracks the "in app purchases" Microsoft Word is ranked 7th.  Considering that places 1 - 6 are given to gaming behemoths such as the Candy Crush Saga and Clash of Clans, this is a great result.

Excel ranks at 22 and PowerPoint does not appear on this chart, however this is misleading as subscribing to any one of these unlocks all three.

iPhone

It has been less well publicised, but the update to the Office application on the iPhone, Microsoft Office Mobile, has also had a major change.

Previously this required an Office 365 subscription to use, however the update has fully unlocked this for all users, for free.  Combined with a free OneDrive account, this is a great way to access, view, edit and create content on the move.  

Again, looking at the UK charts, the Microsoft Office Mobile app is place 3rd, which can only be more great news for Microsoft.

This all shows a clear need for a top quality, consistent, productivity solution for all devices, if only we could have had it last year.

#Office 2013 Compatability - no go for XP or Vista

Microsoft Office 2013 is nearly ready for the public to get there hands on, and Microsoft have started the marketing push with comments such as this.....

"The new Office works beautifully with touch, stylus, mouse or keyboard to give you the ultimate productivity experience. It brings the familiar Office experience to a wide range of new devices and gives you the best experience on Windows.*"

The asterisk in this sentence all important!  While Office 2013 works beautifully with Windows 7 or Windows 8, it offers no support for XP or Vista.

MS Office Professional Plus - Free for 30 Days

Office 365 - Office Professional Plus - Free Trial

If you need to get the latest version of  Microsoft office, this is a great way to get it, just sign up to the trial below and you will have full access to the latest version of Microsoft Office for 30 days (for up to 25 users).


Once the trial has ended you can simply uninstall the software or sign up to the service for 12 months.  The ongoing cost is just £8.00 per month and offers full upgrade rights for the length of your subscription.  If Microsoft release a new version of Office, you can install the new product at no additional cost.

Office Professional Plus - Trial Link
Office Professional Plus provides Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote, Outlook, Publisher and Access 2010.
 

A different way to license Microsoft Office

A different way to license Microsoft Office


If you currently license your Microsoft Office licenses using OEM (bought with a new machine) or Microsoft Open license, you might want to take a look at Office 365 Office Professional Plus.

Why?
If you are looking to use Office 365 you need to be aware that it runs a Now -1 support policy for Microsoft Office.  In English, this means that Microsoft only support the current version of Microsoft Office and one previous version.  At the time of typing this means that Office 2010 is supported along with Office 2007.

This doesn't mean that previous versions wont work, but you are not getting the most out of the product, and there are no guarantees from Microsoft,

Because of this, it makes sense to have a solution in place to keep your Microsoft Office software up to date.

How?
Office 365 offers an Office Professional Plus Subscription as a stand alone service (no need to sign up to any other plans), for £8.00 per user per month, the equivalent to £96.00 per year.

With Microsoft releasing a new version of office approximately every 3 years this, becomes a very cost effective option, even against OEM which would cost approximately £210.00 for a copy of Office Professional.  OEM also has lots of software restrictions such as no transfer rights, upgrade rights, etc,

The Office 365 E3 Plan includes Office Professional Plus, you can get a 30 day trial on the following link:
https://portal.microsoftonline.com/partner/partnersignup.aspx?type=Trial&id=8b1ae17f-78a6-45c1-a8c3-02b2a7dae3fe&msppid=334708