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The Office Mobile apps don’t have
as much to offer as Office 2016.
But there’s a lot there for the
casual user, too
found in the paid Office apps. But
for our own use, we prefer using
Excel Mobile to Excel 2016, precisely
because our needs are basic.
Summing a column is performed
automatically, for example. In Word
Mobile, we can track changes, check
spelling, add footnotes, and even
perform the Smart Lookup function
built into the paid version of Word.
If you’d like, you can also visit
Office.com and try out some of
the web-based versions of Office.
Yes, it’s another version of Office,
and largely redundant, too. But the
web apps will be one of the first
platforms to receive new features,
precisely because they can be
updated on the fly. Features such
as Clutter, which we really like,
debuted on the web months before
the dedicated apps. The same goes
for saving documents into Dropbox:
you can do that via the web apps,
and even Office for iOS and Android,
but not Office 2016, yet.
You do make a sacrifice or
two in choosing the built-in Office
Mobile apps. You can only work
on one document at a time. The
real-time collaboration Microsoft
boasts about? Not there, although
you can still track changes as
before. OneNote Mobile also lacks
one of our favorite features: voice
recording. More and more features
have trickled down to the free
versions, but there’s still value in
paying for the full Office suite.
What makes it great?
If you’ve skimmed through this
review, we bet that you focused
on just a section or two, because
you don’t use all of Office to its
full capabilities. Office has become
siloed: writers use Word religiously,
while number crunchers plumb
the depths of Excel. Sales and
marketing gurus live in PowerPoint.
A generalist might be able to
produce a basic spreadsheet, but
stop short of fancier techniques,
such as pulling in live, disparate data
sources to support a proposal.
The future of Office 365, then,
depends on compelling as many
potential Office customers as it can
to say: “I didn’t even know it could
do that.” Alas, Office 2016 barely
accomplishes that goal.
We can tell you what’s new in
Office 2016 – and if you look closely
enough, you can notice many of the
new features yourself. But what are
they? And what are they good for?
These are two questions Microsoft
simply assumes you already
understand, and that’s a dangerous
assumption to hang a multi-billiondollar
business upon.
Microsoft would love for you
to subscribe to Office 365, and
the company promises a steady
stream of monthly improvements
to keep you hooked. But what are
they? Office 2013 never told you.
You’ll have to dig out Office 365’s
upcoming feature road map to find
out. Office 365 Home allows you
a license to install on five devices,
five tablets, and five phones, plus
a terabyte of free storage. But it’s
been almost a year since Microsoft
promised unlimited OneDrive
storage, and it still hasn’t happened.
Office 2016 continues to
leave you in the dark about what
it’s adding, although a slightly
tweaked dashboard will apparently
serve to introduce you to Office’s
improvements. But Microsoft needs
to sell Office to you, rather than
simply assume you’ll buy it. How?
By educating the user on how to
use Office. Office 2013 and 2016
do a nice job of explaining what
random menu items actually do via
tool tips: in Word 2016, for example,
you can hover over Theme fonts,
for example, and be told “This is
an easy way to change all of your
text at once. For this to work, your
text must be formatted using the
‘body’ and ‘heading’ fonts.” Then
there’s a ‘tell me more’ link that
provides a fuller explanation, using
text and graphics, on how to change
theme colours, create your own,
and so on. It’s just a help file, but a
pretty good one.
We think that Microsoft needs to
take the next step, though, and start
showing, rather than telling, how
users can use these features to best
effect. The obvious tool, of course, is
video. In any event, we’d like to see a
list of document templates when we
open Word – but also a video tutorial
on how to create our own.
If Office is now online and
connected, take advantage of it.
Let us open up Word and see a list
of videos next to those templates.
Microsoft has a stable of how-to
videos, but very little education
on how to use the features they
describe. Show us how, but also why
to use Office. Put those videos in
Word itself, showcasing what’s live
and useful. Connect those videos to
the tool tips. Consider embedding a
live video thumbnail in the app itself.
You begin to see this verve,
this liveliness, in Delve and Sway.
Documents breathe. But in the
stock apps – Excel, PowerPoint,
Word– that legacy feels like a boat
anchor. Office is 27 years old,
people, and it still feels that way.
Verdict
We’re reluctant to advise you to rush
out and buy Office 2016. Windows 10
offers a number of capabilities, and
for free. That makes it a no-brainer.
Microsoft wants you to buy Office
2016, and the company already
provides a suite of free Office
Mobile apps that doesn’t make that
decision easy for casual users.
Buying Office 2016 means
investing in collaboration, and
subscribing to Office 365 means
insuring yourself for the future. If
both of these appeal to you, then
get out your credit cards. If not,
then you might try Microsoft’s
free alternative, Office Mobile.
J Mark Hachman
February 2016 www.pcadvisor.co.uk/reviews 63