Microsoft Issues Major Update to Office for iPad

The Office for iPad apps—Word, Excel and PowerPoint Mobile—received major updates today, so fire up your iDevice and get updated. Key updates include export to PDF, new picture editing tools, support for third-party fonts, Presenter view in PowerPoint and PivotTable improvements for Excel.

"We're making good on our commitment to delivering continuous updates," a post by the Office 365 team to the Office Blogs notes. "We've done a ton of work and we hope you like it."

I literally just packed up my iPad for a coming trip, but here's what Microsoft says is new.

All three apps: Word, Excel and PowerPoint

All of the Office for iPad apps get the following updates:

Export to PDF. Similar to a feature that was just added to OneNote for iOS, this lets you export to PDF from the iOS Share pane. This feature works for everyone; that is, it does not require an Office 365 subscription.

New picture editing tools. When you tap on a picture in a document, you will see two new options: Crop and Reset. Crop is, well, a cropping tool of course. But Reset lets you instantly remove all styles and other changes from a picture and start over with the original version.

Third-party font support. Now you can add any fronts that are installed on your iPad to documents.

Excel

Excel Mobile for iPad gets the following updates:

PivotTable improvements. You can now sort, filter, expand and collapse, show details, and refresh PivotTables whose data is all contained within the workbook of the currently selected spreadsheet. You can also change the visual style and layout of PivotTables.

New flick gesture. Now you can make selections with a flick gesture. Flick down on a column to select that entire column, for example, or grab a selection handle and flick it in any direction to multi-select cells.

Better support for hardware keyboards. If you're using that Apple Bluetooth keyboard with your iPad, you can now use the arrow keys to navigate in Edit mode, enter formulas (Point mode), and use keyboard shortcuts (like CTRL + 2 to switch modes).

Printing improvements. Microsoft added more scaling options and more paper sizes from which to choose.

PowerPoint

PowerPoint Mobile for iPad gets the following updates:

Presenter view. It's here: Now you can enter Presenter view when projecting to another screen so you can view notes, see what's on the next slide, and so on.

Video. PowerPoint for iPad now lets you (more easily) insert video and sound in your presentations. And you can play these embedded files directly from within the app.

Better annotations. There are new eraser and pen settings for making annotations during presentations.

Edit hyperlinks. You can now edit hyperlinks directly from the app.