Office for Android phone finally released

Word, Excel and PowerPoint are now available as apps for Android phone users.

According to an announcement from Microsoft, the apps offer a touch-optimised Office experience similar to that available for Android tablets, but have a user interface (UI) redesigned for a smaller screen.

Android phone users already had Outlook, OneNote and OneDrive on their devices - with the inclusion of Word, Excel and PowerPoint, Microsoft has now completed the Office experience.

According to Microsoft, Office apps for Android phone offers a familiar and consistent Office experience, the ability to work on the go, to access documents quickly, and to collaborate with others.

The apps feature a redesigned UI so the Office experience is familiar but has been formatted to fit the smaller screen size of a phone. This means the navigation and menu options are placed at the bottom of the screen.

This enables users to review and edit documents on the go. Users can insert charts into Excel to turn numbers into insights, review and make edits before giving a PowerPoint presentation, and reflow documents in Word to make them easier to read.

When using an Android phone to make a PowerPoint presentation, users have access to the same transitions, animations and designs available on the desktop version.

Office apps for Android phones enables collaboration as users can share ideas, insights and presentations, as well as track changes, comments and mark-up docs made by others.

Documents can be shared by an emailed hyperlink or attachment.

Files can be created, opened, edited and saved in the cloud to ensure users can access them anywhere.

Third party cloud storage providers available to Android phone users include OneDrive, OneDrive for Business, Dropbox, Google Drive, Box, and SharePoint.

Like Office for iOS and Android tablet, the core viewing, creating and editing experience is available for free.

With an Office 365 subscription, users gain access to subscription-only features such as more robust editing and authoring features, 1TB of OneDrive storage, and 60 minutes of Skype worldwide calling per month.

Microsoft has partnered with more than 30 global, regional and local OEMs such as Samsung, Sony and LG to pre-load these apps on Android devices which will be available in retail stores later this year.

Excel, Word and PowerPoint for Android phones can be downloaded now from the Google Play store.