We’ve been seeing previews of the all-in-one Office app that brings together all of Microsoft’s various applications under just one app since early 2019. But the day has come when you can finally install this all-encompassing app on your smartphone so you can get Word, Excel, and Powerpoint among others under just one digital roof. The bad news is that if you’re planning to use this on a tablet, you won’t get a tablet-specific user interface.
The new Office application is a pretty useful app to have if you view and edit a lot of documents when you’re on the go but you don’t have space on your phone for the individual apps. You’re able to browse, view, and edit any Word, Excel, or PowerPoint document without having to open or even install their respective previously stand-alone apps. You will also be able to browse your OneDrive files, use some version or variation of the Office Lens scanner, and also get a QR code reader within the app.
While you can now install it on your smartphone, there is no support for tablets and Chromebooks according to Android Police. This is pretty inconvenient especially if you do a lot of your mobile work on devices other than your smartphone. You can install it on a tablet but the app is locked in portrait mode and doesn’t have a UI for the tablet itself so using it there isn’t that great. The existing Word, Excel, and Powerpoint individual apps still work on tablets though so there’s that.
The combined Office app was first introduced back in early 2019 and then Microsoft released a public preview in November. For some reason though, it went back to private testing but that didn’t really stop APKs from becoming available in some corners of the web. Now it looks like they’re ready to release it in the wild and so you can start uninstalling individual apps (if you can) and just get this one for your smartphone.
You can download the Microsoft Office app from the Google Play Store for free. While you can still get it for your tablet, you will have to use it without the benefit of full tablet support.
