{"id":7164,"date":"2015-02-09T00:01:00","date_gmt":"2015-02-09T08:01:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/?p=7164"},"modified":"2015-02-06T13:14:55","modified_gmt":"2015-02-06T21:14:55","slug":"office-for-android","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/?p=7164","title":{"rendered":"Office for Android"},"content":{"rendered":"

The other day I was delighted to find Microsoft Office apps in the Google Play Store. Being a Word maven, I obtained the Microsoft Word app for my tablet. It was free. That was the best part. Then the experience started to go downhill.
\n
\nI’ll get right to the point: Microsoft Word on the Android tablet just doesn’t work. It’s deliberate disfunction. The app won’t edit or save unless you subscribe to Microsoft Office 365, which costs about $7\/month. That’s the bottom line, and I don’t like it.<\/p>\n

In Figure 1, you see the Word app as it dwells on my Android tablet. It looks good. I like the interface, and it reads my Word documents just fine. Sadly, I can’t edit or create a thing unless I subscribe to Microsoft’s Office 365, which I refuse to do.<\/p>\n

\"Figure

Figure 1. Microsoft Word for Android. No editing allowed!<\/p><\/div>\n

No, I’m not being cheap or stubborn. I’m simply pointing out that unless you really, badly, intensely, severely need to use precisely Microsoft Word on a tablet, there is no point in paying for the service. That’s because plenty of good alternatives exist. And they’re free!<\/p>\n

The most obvious alternative is Google Docs, which works seamlessly with other Google apps in the Googleverse.<\/p>\n

The Google Docs interface is pretty extensive when viewed in a web browser — a computer’s web browser. On a mobile device, however, the Google Docs app is rather limited. Figure 2 shows the app editing a document.<\/p>\n

\"Figure

Figure 2. Google Docs. Not as extensive, but capable and free.<\/p><\/div>\n

The onscreen controls shown in Figure 2 aren’t as extensive as those available in the Word app (Figure 1). Perhaps that difference is enough to entice you to fork over your hard-earned pizza money for a monthly Microsoft subscription? I doubt it.<\/p>\n

My disconnect is with the whole word processor-on-a-tablet notion in the first place. Seriously: Who is really going to be creating something that detailed on a tablet?<\/p>\n

Yes, I recognize that writing on a tablet a trendy thing to do these days. I see lots of people with iPads and Androids using Bluetooth keyboards. That’s the way to go . . . for now. Eventually, my guess is that mobile users will sober up and return to working on laptops. Even my Chromebook is a better choice than using a tablet.<\/p>\n

So while Office for Android is here, I’m not impressed. As with Windows 8, I think Microsoft has blown their chance. A limited function Office, ala Google Docs, would have been excellent and I might even use it. But having to fork over money every month for basic app functionality is a mistake. The app is not<\/em> free. And given the free opportunities with Google Docs, I don’t see Microsoft making any dents with its Office for Android suite of apps.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It’s here, but it’s not really free.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[8,9],"class_list":["post-7164","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-main","tag-android","tag-word"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7164","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7164"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7164\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7171,"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7164\/revisions\/7171"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7164"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7164"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7164"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}