Microsoft's Office for Windows 10 is touch-friendly, coming to phone and tablets

By Rich Edmonds
published

As well as bringing a new Windows 10 experience to both desktop users and the Windows Phone ecosystem, Microsoft also spoke about the new Office at its Windows 10 event. The new suite of productivity apps will be built for modern day productivity, available across the board as universal apps.

Phone, PC and tablets. Microsoft will release the new Office suite of products to each and every device running Windows 10. Consumers have cried out for a touch experience with Office, which has proven to be a pain when it comes to Intel-based tablets and touch-enabled laptops.

Word on Windows Phone

Word, Excel and PowerPoint will be included on phones and small tablets and everything will be optimized for touchscreens. Microsoft's Joe Belfiore elaborated on some of the new features coming to Office, including a new reflow page-layout mode that makes it easier to view documents on smaller screens.

Other improvements include maintaining a level of control with available features and functionality, as well as all formatting you have come to know and love is supported with Office ribbon for the phone, providing the same collaboration features as the PC.

New Office

When using Office on smaller-screen devices, a list of Recent Documents will also be available that follows the user from hardware to hardware. Other new improvements for Office on all platforms include hardware accelerated PowerPoint transitions, Miracast broadcasting and even wireless printing.

Rich Edmonds
Rich Edmonds
Senior Editor, PC Build

Rich Edmonds was formerly a Senior Editor of PC hardware at Windows Central, covering everything related to PC components and NAS. He's been involved in technology for more than a decade and knows a thing or two about the magic inside a PC chassis. You can follow him on Twitter at @RichEdmonds.

31 Comments
  • Looks nice, and about time!
  • Woooooooooooooow
  • Wow
  • Where is a new music player? Am I the only one who is worried about it? :(
  • Noo bro..mee toooo ):
  • Yes, there will be a new music player, just replay the event video.
  • We have to wait until build in a few months to find out everything about Windows PHONE 10..
    ......
    I'm still calling it WP10.
  • Great day. Hope something makes Microsoft forget that this isn't an Android devices event.
  • Good bye metro design and good bye microsoft because if i wanted that design that makes doing things difficult i would choose ios because its better at this then Microsoft will ever be , And now you pushed me to it
  • You sound challenged, consider learning how to use something before talking trash.
  • And you mist learn to see with your eyes and understand
  • See ya.
  • Windows 10 looks amazing.
  • did not impress me with phone :( 
  • You must be the only person on the planet who thought what was showed was the finished product.
  • Looks incredible and unique.
  • will they give the metro ux?
  • Great improvement
  • Wowowoeowoeo
  • So much to eat
  • I like this
  • These look to be exactly the same as the ones already available on ios. Really glad they are coming to windows phone. I hope they let windows phone users have the full version, not have features removed like on iOS unless you subscribe to office 365. Still a big improvement on the current versions on windows phone though. Posted via the Windows Central App for Android
  • Metro style has gone? I see a new Android, not windows phone... Posted via the Windows Phone Central App for Android
  • I'm glad to see that Microsoft has given up on making Windows phone look unique. I guess it was never going to work out for them, so now I can recommend Android without any second thoughts.
  • So every thing is now topward accessible... Need to grow longer fingers
  • God I hate this and the hamburger so much.....it's mindnumbingly stupid.
  • The story and sentiment I got from the briefing of windows 10 and office for windows phone and tablets less than 8 inches is that it would help productivity by making editing and correcting documents easier and watch better quality ppt's. But to a degree I can already do this with the current office for windows 8.x. What I was expecting was improved UI (shown and done)  and make it possible to make documents with mobile. The biggest news I'm stil waiting for is the guarantee that bluetooth keyboard will come back to mobile, like winodws mobile 6.x. So for me it was a nice showcase of a nice retouch, but not capturing what users really want with office mobile. So still waiting with anticipation what office will bring these next few months. In my opinion they have not captured then essential of what a user (me) wants to do with office mobile.
  • Increasingly hating the design MS is using for its core apps and services.
    Also, didn't anyone ever gave them this idea of putting the top ribbon in ellipses at the bottom and use them all as staircase steps to bring them up with multiple taps on 3 dot menu. And put the typography based Titles on top like they used to have with WP7.5. Both of these could vanish as soon as user starts scrolling.
    Just my two cents.
  • Sadly what a waste only to me matters is 1 note & maybe outlook. & they heldback s3 for this garbage
  • Not useful to me as hardcore business user. I miss data connections, VBA and Access. Disappointing? Well, I didn't expect else and I don't expect this to be changed in the future. Still sad, I think you may expect more as Microsoft user.
  • Will phone users have to pay to use the full feature set like on iOS, or will we get a free version sort of like what we have had since Windows Phone 7?