Microsoft Expands Availability of Office Preview for Android Tablets

Two months ago, Microsoft made preview versions of its Office apps for Android—Word, Excel and PowerPoint—available, but the firm was only supporting a limited range of devices at the time. Today, that availability has expanded quite a bit. And I see I can now access these apps on my Nexus 9, for example.

"We've seen great interest in the Office for Android tablet preview, and expanding the preview will broaden the user-base, increase feedback and allow our engineering team to continue fine-tuning the apps for a wide range of Android tablets before general availability," a Microsoft representative told me. "It will also help them prioritize future updates after general availability."

With today's update to the Office for Android tablet preview, anyone can go to the Google Play Store and download the Word, Excel and PowerPoint preview apps. These apps are still optimized for Android 4.4 KitKat, so you will see a warning message if you're on a different OS version, such as 5.0. But they should work on any ARM-based Android tablet running KitKat or Lollipop, with a screen size between 7- and 10.1-inches.

But they do work, and based on a very limited amount of time with Word on the Nexus 9, everything looks ship-shape.

Here are the download links.

Microsoft Word Preview for Android tablets

Microsoft Excel Preview for Android tablets

Microsoft PowerPoint Preview for Android tablets