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Microsoft reportedly prepping Office for iPad to release in the first half of 2014
While Microsoft Office Mobile for iPhone released last summer and we've yet to see software release for Apple tablets. Not only is the slate-focused productivity suite alive and well, it's apparently going to launch before July. ZDNet reports that development of Office for iPad (codenamed Miramar) could allow for its debut ahead of the touch-friendly Windows 8 version. This means that the previously reported fall 2014 timeline has been accelerated, and Microsoft may release the iPad version as soon as it's ready -- rather than keeping it under wraps until Q3. As Mary Jo Foley notes, the iOS package will likely require an Office 365 subscription and tap into OneDrive as its main storage repository. For now, we'll just have to wait and see -- but that wait could be shorter than initially expected.
GoDaddy, Microsoft focus on small businesses with Office 365 partnership
Early last year, Microsoft extended its Office 365 subscription service to small- and medium-sized businesses and now it's continuing that push with a new partnership with GoDaddy. The web-hosting and domain name company will offer Microsoft's suite of productivity tools to its small-business customers, including the ability to easily connect users' domain names to Office's email services. It also brings the full suite of Office's productivity software, including shared calendars, cloud storage and instant messaging. The move comes a little over a year after Blake Irving, a former Microsoft exec, took the helm as GoDaddy's new CEO, where he's focused on expanding its support for small businesses. Office 365 for GoDaddy is already available in the US and Canada and will open up globally later this year.
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The spaceship is cleared for landing, Cupertino approves new Apple HQ
A little over two years since Steve Jobs presented his case for it and after the occasional setback, the Cupertino City Council has finally given Apple full approval to go ahead with its futuristic campus. In exchange, Apple has agreed to fork over more money to the city in the form of a reduced sales tax rebate -- going forward, Cupertino will only give back 35 percent sales tax instead of the 50 percent it had previously. Indeed, as soon as Apple gets its final permits some time today, it can begin demolishing the former HP headquarters and start building its own. The circular 2.8-million square foot glass-clad structure you see above is the main hub of the whole affair, and is said to have an underground parking facility that can hold around 2,400 vehicles. There'll be a 100,000 square foot fitness center, a 120,000 square foot auditorium, plenty more space for the company's all-important research and development division and of course everything's designed to be as eco-friendly as possible. Don't go planning your desk arrangements just yet though, Cupertino employees, as you'll have to wait until 2016 to move into what Jobs called "the best office building in the world."
Office Remote for Windows Phone steers presentations from across the room
Microsoft has long championed Windows Phone's Office integration, but there has been a missing piece in that puzzle: an official way to control Office from a Windows Phone. The company is filling that gap today by launching its Office Remote app. The Windows Phone 8 client lets users navigate Excel, PowerPoint and Word on a Bluetooth-equipped Windows 7 or 8 PC, offering slide notes and other cues you'll need for a big presentation. We can't promise that managers will be impressed when you steer a quarterly results briefing from your Lumia 1520, but it won't hurt to grab Office Remote today from the Windows Phone Store.
Edit Office files and present on the go with hopTo for iPad
iPad owners, are you feeling constrained in your content creation choices? While there are some savvy cloud-connected apps that let you open, edit or share your Microsoft Office-formatted documents, relatively few will connect to multiple data sources, sync files with a desktop PC, track changes in Word docs or keep the visual fidelity of a file. Even fewer claim to show PowerPoint presentations with animations, transitions and other flair intact. Several of the standalone/offline-capable apps with this sort of pedigree have been gobbled up by Big Search (QuickOffice bought by Google, and stripped of the ability to talk to non-Google Drive cloud storage) or Big Terminal (Byte Squared, publisher of Office2HD, was acquired by Citrix). Apple's Pages and Numbers, while quite capable with their own file formats, aren't always 100% when dealing with Microsoft-formatted files. Apps like CloudOn, Parallels Desktop and Onlive work around the visual fidelity issue by connecting to a terminal-enabled version of a real Windows PC, but that approach has latency and UI issues galore. That's why the new hopTo app for iPad is so interesting. It layers a fresh-looking and somewhat minimal file management stack over connectors to Dropbox, Google Drive, Box.com and even your very own Windows PC. From any of those sources, you can easily edit both Word and Excel-formatted files on the go -- even inserting pictures from the web or from your iPad's local image library. PowerPoint decks aren't editable, but they are presentable; they keep the fonts, images and animations/transitions from the desktop experience. The app presents your documents in a simple, tabbed interface that does allow you to open and work on two docs simultaneously -- a rarity in the one-task-at-a-time world of iOS. In Excel documents, you even get a custom numeric keypad to enter your figures. PDF, image and other filetypes are generally viewable rather than editable. Document visual fidelity and tracked change support is excellent in hopTo; in fact, you get access to all of the standard Office fonts, which is pretty much unheard of in an iOS app that isn't doing a terminal connection in the background. Founder/CEO Eldad Eilam didn't confirm the infrastructure to me when he previewed hopTo last week, but I strongly suspect that underneath the gloss, hopTo is doing something similar to CloudOn's "remote Office" and providing some remote application resources to render the document. (Don't bother trying to use hopTo in Airplane Mode or away from connectivity; it doesn't work offline and will time out after a few minutes in the background, another pair of clues to the approach used to build the service.) One challenge with the lean hopTo interface is that it isn't immediately obvious how to perform operations on files, or create new ones. The trick is the "long press" -- tap and hold on a file icon or on the plus button, rather than a quick tap. If you do a long press on a file icon, you get hopTo's "orbit menu" where you can email files, delete, favorite, and so on. Long-pressing the plus button, which conventionally creates a new tab, allows you to start up a new Word or Excel doc in the cloud folder of your choice. In a PowerPoint full-screen slideshow, you long-press to get your controls back and escape out of the show. The initial version of hopTo has some quirky corners, as you might expect from a 1.0; among several minor disappointments, it can't edit native-format Google Docs files -- but then again, neither can Google's own Quickoffice app (it hands them off to the separate Google Drive app, which is a bit disconcerting). Still, as a free tool with reasonably complete editing capabilities for both Word and Excel documents, it's quite good. As a PowerPoint viewer/presenter that tries to keep track with the original presentation, it's extraordinary.
Microsoft upgrades Office Web Apps in response to free iWork suite
Perhaps to counter Apple's move to make its iWork office productivity suite free across iOS, Mac and the web, Microsoft today has announced significant updates to its Office Web Apps. The biggest feature is that users now have the ability to co-author documents across Word, Excel and PowerPoint on the web. As Microsoft noted on its Office 365 blog: A document is only as good as the people who contribute to it. So today, we're introducing a new way for people to collaborate on documents with Office Web Apps. Using real-time co-authoring, colleagues, friends and family can contribute and edit documents simultaneously in the Word Web App, PowerPoint Web App or Excel Web App. New real-time presence helps you see where your co-authors are working in the document so that you don't create conflicts as you edit. Additionally, the new ability to see changes to text and formatting as they happen will help you and your co-authors stay on the same page as your ideas develop and evolve. In addition to real-time co-authoring, Microsoft's web apps now also offer improved formatting, styles, and search controls in Word; the ability to drag and drop cells and reorder sheets in Excel; and new picture-cropping functionality in PowerPoint, among other features.
Microsoft makes $5.2 billion net profit, says Surface sales on the rise
Microsoft has just posted first quarter earnings that suggest it's faring well despite a tough PC market. Although the company's revenue was down from the previous quarter to $18.5 billion, its net profit climbed to $5.2 billion; both figures were double-digit improvements over the same quarter a year ago. The Redmond firm chalked up most of the success to growth in its corporate-focused Commercial group. Not that its Devices and Consumer division was in dire straits -- while Windows revenue from PC makers was down 7 percent, search ad revenue was up 47 percent. The Surface tablet line also saw a quarter-to-quarter increase in revenue to $400 million that was likely helped by price cuts to outgoing models. The company hasn't provided an outlook for its second quarter as of this writing, but it's easy to anticipate strong performance. Microsoft has just launched Windows 8.1, which will net $113 million in pre-order revenue (currently deferred); it could also trigger a surge in PC sales as customers upgrade. The tech giant is also launching a new round of first-party hardware during the period, including the Surface 2, Surface Pro 2 and Xbox One. It may be difficult to repeat this perfect storm of profit in 2014, but we doubt that Ballmer and crew are about to complain in the next few months.
CloudOn launches web editor, CloudOn Pro paid service
Many cloud-based productivity apps start on the web and eventually make their way to mobile devices. Not CloudOn: it just launched a web version of its previously mobile-only document editor. Mac and Windows users can now run a virtual Office session using a small plugin for either Chrome or Safari. They may have to pay for some functionality, however, as CloudOn is launching a paid CloudOn Pro service at the same time. Subscribers to the new tier get access to Office's more advanced features, including PowerPoint's presentation mode and Word's change tracking. The web app is available for free; those who want to go Pro can pay $30 per year ($3 per month) if they sign up before 2014, or $80 per year ($8 per month) afterwards.
Outlook.com gains IMAP support, integrates with third-party services like TripIt
Hello, compatibility! Microsoft's obviously a major proponent of Exchange ActiveSync (EAS), but if you've been using electronic mail for any length of time, you're probably aware that IMAP is a darn near universal protocol. Now, Microsoft is adding IMAP (and OAuth) support to Outlook.com. In addition to this being a lovely sign of Microsoft not shunning rival standards, it also opens up a ton of new possibilities. For one, applications that haven't supported EAS -- programs such as Mac Mail and the Mac edition of Mozilla Thunderbird -- can now host Outlook.com accounts. Moreover, IMAP gives devs the ability to build third-party clients and services that are useful to end-users, and Microsoft's announcing the first set of those as well. TripIt, Sift, Slice, motley*bunch, Unroll.me, OtherInbox, and Context.IO have taken advantage of Outlook.com's new IMAP capability and are rolling out updates today that allow their apps and services to integrate with your Outlook.com email. If you'd like for your own app to follow suit, Microsoft's providing a bit of instruction right here.
Microsoft releases fixes, critical security update for Office 2011
Microsoft has pushed out an update to Microsoft Office 2011 that fixes numerous issues with the suite as well as addresses a critical security flaw. The Office for Mac 2011 14.3.7 fixes a long list of bugs, most notably several with Outlook: Improves opening and checking out a file from SharePoint in Microsoft PowerPoint for Mac. This update fixes an issue that may sometimes cause Mac Office to crash when you try to open Office documents from a SharePoint site. Improves access to customer's spreadsheets in Microsoft Excel for Mac. This update fixes an issue that causes Excel to randomly crash when a file contains several drop-down macros. Improves message browsing using screen reader software in Outlook for Mac. This update fixes an issue that causes certain information in the navigation pane and message list to not be read by screen reader software. Adds item sort order to the View menu in Outlook for Mac. This update includes functionality that lets you change the sort order of Outlook items in the Outlook item list through the View menu. Menu items are located in the Arrange By submenu. Includes pane navigation functionality in Outlook for Mac. This update includes functionality that lets you move quickly through the navigation pane, the reading pane and the Outlook item list using the View menu, the Previous Pane keyboard shortcut and the Next Pane keyboard shortcut. Improves message and meeting viewing and composing using screen reader in Outlook for Mac. This update fixes an issue that causes certain message and meeting information to not be read by screen reader software. Improves the Contacts Search panel in Outlook for Mac. This update fixes an issue that causes action buttons for search results to not be keyboard-accessible. Adds an Insert Image command to the Format menu in Outlook for Mac. This update includes functionality that lets you insert images into Outlook items through the Format menu. Improves the ability to move through meeting attendee free / busy information using screen reader software in Outlook for Mac. This update fixes an issue that causes free / busy information in the Scheduling Assistant to not be read by screen reader software. Improves the ability to add and edit accounts using screen reader software in Outlook for Mac. This update fixes an issue that causes certain account information to not be read by screen reader software. The Office for Mac 2011 14.3.7 update is recommended for all users and can be downloaded by running Microsoft AutoUpdate on your Mac or via the Microsoft Download Center here.
Microsoft brings Office Mobile to Android smartphones
The once-mythical Office Mobile for iPhone has been available for a while, but what about that rumored Android version? As of today, it's equally real: Microsoft has launched Office Mobile for Android. Its cloud-focused approach to editing Excel, PowerPoint and Word documents will be familiar to those who've tried the iOS release, including SkyDrive storage support. What differences exist are there primarily to accommodate Google's Holo interface guidelines -- as on iOS, there's no tablet-native interface. The pricing certainly hasn't changed. While the core app is free, you'll need an Office 365 subscription to start working.
New Office 365 subscriptions get 12 months of free Xbox Live Gold (update: offer available in US)
Sweetening the deal on its cloud-based Office 365 suite, Microsoft will start bundling a year of Xbox Live Gold with any purchases of Office 365 Home Premium or Office 365 University made before September 28th. You'll then pick up an Xbox Live code as you sign in during the initial Office setup. Unfortunately, US customers aren't eligible for this promotion, but the majority of Europe, plus Australia, Canada and parts of Asia are all included. Alongside the recent promise of two free games a month, Microsoft's made this bundled subscription a pretty tempting proposition. Update: Turns out that this offer is available in the US after all. Thanks to tipster David for spotting, and sending that in. Details can be found at the More Coverage link.
Outlook Web App comes to iOS devices in native form
It hasn't been hard to get Exchange support on iOS devices, but there's some for whom third-party apps and web clients just won't do. Microsoft has them covered today -- it just repackaged the Outlook Web App as a pair of native iOS releases. Both OWA for iPad and OWA for iPhone deliver email, calendar and contacts to Office 365 subscribers with access to Exchange Online. The developer is quick to note that this isn't a recreation of the Windows Phone environment, and there are a few elements borrowed from Outlook's web version. Still, we see a few reasons to give OWA a try: the native iOS software sends push notifications, takes voice commands, and supports both passcodes as well as remote wipes. Between the new apps and Office for iPhone, it's clear that iOS users are now welcome in Microsoft's world.
Clippy hits the road as Office 365 expands to 38 new countries
Almost five months after its debut, Office 365 is getting 38 new passport stamps. Clippy's hitting such exotic locales as Fiji, the Bahamas and Barbados, and it's even picking up new languages along the way. The subscription-based productivity suite now includes support for Vietnamese, Arabic and Malay. What's more, Redmond is happily accepting five new currencies for payment, too. Brazil, Hong Kong, Mexico, Malaysia and India can all use their native money to pay for the software as a service. Sadly, there's still no word from Microsoft about accepting Bitcoins.
Microsoft spreads Office Store to 22 new markets, intros business intelligence tool
It's only been a few days since Build, and the Redmond giant already has some extra news to announce. Previously only available in the US, Microsoft's Office and SharePoint Store is now open in 22 new markets with added language support for French, German, Spanish and Japanese. Countries with new storefronts include Australia, Canada, the UK, Japan, India, South Africa, Germany, Spain, Mexico, Argentina, Ireland, New Zealand, Singapore, Belgium and Switzerland (there are sometimes several language markets per country). Next on Microsoft's announcement list is the introduction of Power BI for Office 365, a cloud-based business intelligence suite that uses Excel to analyze and visualize data with a variety of enterprise-centric tools. Data-minded professionals will be able to snag Power BI as an add-on for their current Office 365 package, or get it as a stand-alone product. While Power BI won't be available until later this year, international Office users can browse that brand-spanking new storefront ahora mismo at the source link below.
Microsoft to wind down TechNet subscriptions after August 31st
Many IT managers and early adopters cherish their TechNet subscriptions -- for a modest annual fee, they get advance access to a treasure trove of Microsoft apps. Unfortunately, that too-good-to-be-true deal is coming to an end, as Microsoft plans to phase out TechNet subscriptions in the months ahead. The company will stop taking new customers and renewals after August 31st, while Microsoft Certified Trainers will lose their perks after March 31st. Outside of volume licensing, TechNet downloads will stop entirely after September 30th, 2014. MSDN subscriptions will remain, but their steeper prices will likely rule them out for most enthusiasts. If you're not a professional, you'll just have to buy software as it reaches the public -- you know, like the rest of us.
SkyDrive Pro apps now available for iOS and Windows 8
Consumer apps for Microsoft's consumer cloud storage solution have been available for some time, but the enterprise version, SkyDrive Pro, now has a duo of applications up for grabs, too. iOS and Windows 8 users can now snag free downloads from the Windows Store and App Store, respectively, letting you take content offline, organize files, and upload and share on the go.
NoteSuite could replace Evernote, Skitch, Reminders, PDF apps and more
NoteSuite is available for Mac and iPad, and despite the lack of an iPhone client it is putting a number of apps on notice. In particular, a lot of the stuff I do with Evernote just got replaced by NoteSuite -- and I don't have to pay a subscription to do any of them. NoteSuite is a suite, in a way, but also a tightly integrated application with a ton of well thought out, useful and efficient tools. Imagine a PDF annotation app, note-taking app, reminder app, drawing app and outliner rolled into one. While there are a number of "multi-tool" note apps out there, a few features put NoteSuite far ahead of the competition. Taking notes Almost everything you need to take notes in NoteSuite is there: typing text is a breeze and the drawing tools are executed flawlessly. I liked being able to easily slice up an image. If you like annotating images, you can do this easily and there's a "handwriting" mode that allows you to draw words but keep them shrunk down, just as you'd see in Use Your Handwriting (a simple to-do app my daughter seems to love). It's a clever solution to the problem of handwriting on a digital screen. Little touches like drawings and handwriting remaining connected to text make a big difference in everyday use, and reduce the frustration of keeping your notes the way you like them. While apps like MagicalPad offer mind mapping tools in addition to text and drawing tools, NoteSuite focuses more on metadata. You can tag notes, add links between words in notes (much as you would do in VoodooPad), or let NoteSuite's AI look for relationships between words. Everything can be sorted and filtered in ways I've not seen before in such an app. The outlining tools are impressive, although I can see these getting slightly more robust with time (think OmniOutliner). Items can be easily re-arranged in a list, and you can drag and drop bullets, which can expand and contract when needed. In addition to drawing and text, you can import photos, do some light editing or lots of annotating (although it's still not quite as robust as Skitch). You can record audio notes and put them in your documents. As with some other note apps, you can easily throw these various elements together in one document, so photos, drawings, text and audio all coexist happily in your notes, plus it's easy to move outlines and to-do items around in your documents, meaning action items are no longer off in another app. Linking tasks and notes in such a way is a powerful feature! There's also a great web clipper, allowing you to grab a stripped down version of a web page or the entire page itself, handy for research and design. Data is king Most note-taking apps offer some limited search tools. NoteSuite makes search a fundamental part of your workflow, as there's AI built in to look for keywords and link them accordingly. You can turn this off or add your own links as well. Plus there are "Active" folders, which work a lot like smart folders on the Mac, keeping related items in one place. Between tags, these intelligent folders and a robust search engine, you will likely never lose a note ever again. A lot of the intelligent filtering and search tools remind me of the best parts in DEVONthink, which is pretty amazing given the power of that software. You can also create plain old folders and cram whatever you like into those. Also, with notes and tasks and outlines all in one app and the AI in NoteSuite, making the connection between research and "what to do next" has never been easier. Power users are going to be thrilled that they won't have to keep switching between apps, and duplicating effort when trying to turn data into action items. GTD inside NoteSuite's creator told me it is "fully GTD compliant" and while I haven't fully tested his claim, I can say all the things you'd need are there. You can set reminders, create start and due dates by using natural language and even consolidate to-do items. Yes, you can assign priority levels to items as well. There are some limited collaboration tools, but they are largely limited to one-way communications. This isn't a project management tool, but if you are working in a small group the basics should suffice. NoteSuite won't replace OmniFocus for me, but having my research and related tasks in one place is useful. I can also send to-do items to my calendar, create repeating items, and using NoteSuite's powerful search tool, look up all related items quickly and easily. Sync without subscriptions The iPad and Mac versions use iCloud to sync. As the creator told me, you should own your own data. That means changes occur almost instantly across platforms, and you always have offline access to your notes. The downside to iCloud is how Apple has chosen to silo your data. iCloud isn't really a collaboration service, like Dropbox can be. The NoteSuite team might be considering other sync services, however, so keep an eye out for updates if you must store your stuff elsewhere. Who needs Office? If you work in an environment where you're getting Word and PowerPoint documents, get ready to smile. NoteSuite allows you to embed slides in notes. Office docs are converted to PDF, and can be annotated just like any PDF in NoteSuite. iWork files do the same. PDF tools There's no shortage of PDF tools out there, so NoteSuite didn't try to include every single feature of every single app out there. Instead, the features in NoteSuite are carefully implemented and work great. You can create comment balloons, bookmarks, a table of contents, and of course draw on a document, highlight and underline text and so forth. A handy feature: excerpts of highlights, so you can quickly jump around to the places in a PDF where you made notes. You can sign documents, and flatten the document for sharing. While I'd like to see more revision support for collaboration, you can duplicate notes so you keep an original and have a marked-up version for sharing. Collaboration The only chink in NoteSuite's armor would be collaboration. While these tools aren't as robust as the impressive data tools, annotation and note creation tools, there are some there. You can assign tasks to colleagues via email, for example. By adding a task to your calendar you can also collaborate. Being able to flatten and send PDF's is an obvious win for collaborators, but services like Evernote still have a slight advantage in the form of shared notebooks. I think these features will expand in future versions, so be on the look out for updates. Design that gets out of the way The thing that has caused me to abandon more note apps than anything is a kitchen sink mentality to features, and a cluttered interface as a result. While I love the tools in MagicalPad, for example, there's a lot of "mystery meat" buttons and in general too many tools distracting me from what I'm doing at any given time. NoteSuite pays close attention to what you are doing, and presents the tools you need for that task. Never mind that the design is exceptionally well done. The icons are beautiful, and everything is logically arranged on the screen. The Mac version even allows you to hide the sidebar, so it looks more like Pages than Evernote. This is a good thing. Evernote on the Mac is three panels at once, and they are always there. NoteSuite lets you work in a document before going into a side panel to look up notes, organize your work or otherwise mine data. It's a refreshing approach, really. Not only does less clutter help you focus, but NoteSuite's modes hide the tools you don't need. I realize some users might like to have everything at their fingertips at all times, but I found switching between text and drawing modes to be a refreshing way to think less about what I was doing and focus more on doing it -- a neuroscience-approved method for getting a lot of stuff done. Conclusion I've only scratched the surface of NoteSuite's power. Individually, PDF annotation, text linking and task management tools maybe aren't such a big deal. Putting all of those tools together and then some? That's a big deal indeed. If you've ever been frustrated by having to bounce among several apps to get your work connected to your research, you will be thrilled at NoteSuite's powerful toolset. The tools in NoteSuite are wrapped in a clean, uncluttered workspace, making it all the more powerful. And with a Mac and iPad app that sync in the background, you can take your data wherever you go. I'm hoping NoteSuite adds an iPhone companion at some point, because I still use Evernote as a capture tool, and I think even a stripped-down version of NoteSuite would be handy for this purpose. Considering the low cost of NoteSuite (the iPad version is currently on sale for $1.99, the Mac version is currently a mere $4.99) and the focus on getting things done, I can't imagine most users would be unhappy with the software. NoteSuite is simply one of the most powerful, well thought out applications I've seen on Mac and iPad in a long time.
Microsoft teases a Metro-style version of Office, no word yet on availability (updated)
We already knew that Windows RT tablets would be getting their very own Outlook app with Windows 8.1, but apparently Microsoft has even more plans up its sleeve. Here at Build, the company is teasing a Metro-style Office suite that will be available through the Windows Store, just like any other non-desktop Windows program. Unfortunately, this is a tease in the truest sense of the word: Redmond won't say when the app will be available, and isn't providing many official screenshots. However, a company spokesperson did tell reporters that PowerPoint will have "all of the same transitions, the same graphic power [and] file format capability" as the desktop version, so presumably the same is true of Word and Excel too. That's all we have to share for now, though you can bet we'll be back with a proper hands-on as soon as Microsoft is ready to show off a more final version of the app. Update: ZDNet's Mary Jo Foley reports that the Metro-style Office applications (codenamed Gemini) will hit the Windows Store in 2014.
Microsoft demos real-time co-authoring for Office Web Apps
With Microsoft's Build developer conference kicking off in just a week, we're frankly surprised the company is choosing to release any news ahead of time. Today, though, the firm posted a video showing some changes to Office Web apps. In particular, the preview indicates that these various apps will now support real-time co-authoring, with multiple users making changes at once (yep, just like Google Docs). That's a nice, long-awaited improvement over the current setup, in which multiple users can make changes, but not alongside one another. According to Microsoft, this set of features will roll out over "the next several months." For now, we've got the video preview embedded after the break. And don't be put off by the 14-minute length; the demo doesn't actually begin until five and a half minutes in.
