Last night, Microsoft unveiled a new Office app that bundles Excel, Word, Powerpoint, and PDF into one. The app – available now as a preview on Android and iOS – has been designed for mobile usage, with features such as PDF signing and the ability to create an Excel file by scanning a table.
I haven’t had a chance to spend much time with the new Microsoft Office, but I was quite impressed with how much you can do with your phone camera from this app.It’s quite easy to turn one or many pictures into PDF or a Word document. I even scanned a table from a user manual of an earphone to turn it into an Excel spreadsheet – the text recognition was spot on.
The Lens mode also has special sub-modes for whiteboard and document scanning. So, if you attend a lot of lectures or meetings, this app could make it easier to grab notes without much effort.
Plus, the app also lets you take notes, kind of like you would in Google Keep. You can jot down text, create lists, and attach images. So, even if you’re not immersed in the Mircosoft Office world, the app can help you in many situations where you need to quickly send or sign a document.
The company opened up a preview for iOS, but due to Testflight’s (Apple’s test platform) limitation of 10,000 users, slots were taken up quickly. If you have an Android phone, you can head to this page and follow instructions to try out the new app.
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