ADVERTISEMENT

MICROSOFT 365

By Peter Deegan

The Microsoft 365 app — formerly known as the Office 365 app — is what I call the Office “all-in-one” app.

It’s available for Apple (iPhone/iPad) and Android devices and combines the Word, Excel, and PowerPoint mobile apps into a single app — with elements of OneDrive, the Lens app, and many other Microsoft features thrown in for good measure. Anyone can use the app, though there are some extras for Microsoft 365 customers.

Because the “all-new” Microsoft 365 mobile app is being pushed heavily, let’s take a closer look.

You can open and edit Word, Excel, and PowerPoint documents; view PDFs; make notes; scan in documents using the device camera; convert images to text; and record and transcribe voice audio.

More is being added. Microsoft Feed is due this month for commercial customers. Teams is promised. Microsoft Designer is sure to be included later in the year.

Outlook, OneNote, and Teams mobile are the only core Microsoft apps not included in the Microsoft 365 app. To Do, Lists, Whiteboard, and other apps also work separately.

Microsoft boasts that its 365 app is like its Office.com gateway site, as if that were a good thing. One day Microsoft will explain why the same interface for a large screen with mouse and keyboard is also good for a small touchscreen. Wasn’t losing over $8 billion on Nokia and Windows Phone enough of a lesson?

Naturally, the Microsoft 365 app can open existing Office documents and create new ones, plus it can export PDFs. The Home pane has all that, along with lists of recently opened documents, documents shared with you, and pinned docs. You can search for file names and content. Click the Create (+) button at bottom right to see the Quick Capture and new document options.

Figure 1. Home pane with Create / Quick Capture options

The Word, Excel, and PowerPoint features are the same as in their standalone app counterparts. The Microsoft 365 app features seem much the same for Apple and Android devices, but there are minor differences; sometimes a new feature in one app hasn’t yet reached the other platform.

Modern device cameras are good enough to double as document scanners. The Microsoft 365 app includes a scanner with OCR to convert the image into editable text or an Excel table.

From the Create / Quick Capture menu (Figure 1), choose Scan.

Figure 2. Camera / Scan in the Microsoft 365 app

Scan works not only with new photos but also with pictures already saved on the device.

I prefer the separate Microsoft Lens app for its faster access — it opens at the camera, ready to take shots. It also has more and clearer options for capturing from documents, whiteboards, and business cards. Anything made by Lens is available to other Microsoft apps.

Microsoft has really gone to town with PDF support in the Microsoft 365 app. There are options to:

PDFs can be viewed easily within the app. BNut to get all the PDF powers (bookmarks, attachments, etc.), you’ll need a better PDF-viewing app.

There are two “Apps” panes in the Microsoft 365 app. This is a misnomer because no apps are listed. Instead, the first pane lists some features of the Microsoft 365 app that don’t fit into the usual Open or New categories.

Figure 3. Apps pane

There’s a separate “Microsoft Apps” pane which has a list of the many apps released by the company, with options to either Open (if already installed) or Get (to install on the device).

A very limited “Notes” feature is available only in the Microsoft 365 app. It supports nothing more than plain text and camera images.

Figure 4. Notes in the Microsoft 365 app

These notes synchronize to your other Microsoft 365 apps on other mobile devices, but don’t appear on any desktop app — not even Office.com in a browser.

The Voice notes feature is good, but I wish it could be started much faster instead of digging into the Microsoft 365 app menus. I also wish it were available on iPad, not just iPhone. For fast personal-voice reminders, there are better options. For recording meetings, speeches, or longer personal notes, voice with transcription is ideal. Not only will Voice record audio notes, it will also transcribe into plain text as you speak (Internet connection required). If the device is offline, Voice will still record. However, no transcript is available until the audio is uploaded to OneDrive.

Figure 5. Playback of voice note with synced transcript highlighting

Play the audio alongside the transcript, highlighting sentences as you hear them. The transcript text can be edited to correct the inevitable “speech to text” mistakes.

Forms can be made or edited from the Microsoft 365 app. On a small screen, as with many Office tasks, it’s good only for small changes.

Figure 6. Forms editing view

At the upper right of the Home page is a bell icon that opens an Activity pane to show alerts and notifications. For Microsoft 365 business accounts, there’s also Microsoft Feed — a list of updates and changes in your organization’s documents.

Figure 7. Microsoft Feed

The “usual suspects” are present — Microsoft’s own OneDrive, OneDrive for Business, and SharePoint (including Teams files). Storage also supports around 15 other cloud providers including Dropbox, Box, and Egnyte.

Other providers not listed might be available if their app is installed and is syncing files to the device. In the Microsoft 365 app, look at Open | Other Locations. For iPhone/iPad, use the iOS Files app to see what else is available. I found iCloud, Acrobat PDF viewer, and Resilio Sync on my iPhone.

In Microsoft 365, OneDrive and other mobile apps have the essential “Make Available Offline” option in the file properties. That ensures the file is kept synchronized with cloud storage and is always available, even if the Internet isn’t on. Check the settings for mobile devices, as synchronization usually happens only when connected via Wi-Fi.

Figure 8. Make Available Offline and Pin

On the same pane is Pin, which is synchronized across your Pinned lists for Microsoft apps.

Add multiple Microsoft accounts to the Microsoft 365 app, and quickly switch between them. Click on the personal icon/initials in the upper-left area of the app.

Figure 9. Switching Microsoft accounts in the Microsoft 365 app

The Microsoft 365 app has a lot of features but doesn’t cover everything that Microsoft offers in apps. In other cases, the stand-alone apps are easier to work with.

The Microsoft 365 app has too many things packed into a single app. The menus are crowded and confusing. It works a little better on an iPad or tablet, where there’s more screen space to see options. Sometimes you’re better served by the standalone app than using Microsoft 365, as I’ve just mentioned with respect to OneDrive and, especially, Lens.

The Microsoft 365 app does have a few redeeming features, such as the ability to open a second document of the same type (Word, Excel, or PowerPoint) alongside the main app. Signing a PDF is a nice touch if you need it.

The Microsoft 365 app uses less space, so it’s handy for devices with limited storage — compared to installing the full Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and other mobile apps.

Having lots of features in one app might sound great at M³ (Microsoft Marketing Meeting). But out here in the real world having separate apps works much better.

By all means, try the Microsoft 365 app. Just don’t be surprised if you prefer the separate apps, which do the same jobs on less cluttered screens and with the ability to switch rapidly among apps.

Join the conversation! Your questions, comments, and feedback about this topic are always welcome in our forums!

Peter Deegan is the author of Windows 11 for Microsoft Office Users, Microsoft 365 for Windows: Straight Talk, Eye-Catching Signs with Word, Christmas Cheer with Office, and others. He is the co-founder and editor in chief of the Office Watch site and newsletters since they started in 1996.

FROM THE FORUMS

As you all know, a forum topic is associated with every post on our blog (the site’s home page) and every article published in our newsletter.

Almost every one of those topics generates some interest, so almost all have at least a few replies from the readership. The replies may be compliments on our articles, complaints about what we have written, disagreement with our conclusions, corrections of errors, further information about the topic, or in-depth commentary about specific points.

We appreciate the activity in the forums. Even if you don’t think there is anything to add, you might find the additional information provided in the forums useful.

In the first quarter of this year, we published roughly 55 newsletter articles and another 45 blog posts. From those 100 items, here are the ten most heavily discussed forum topics.

By the way, a recent improvement at our site allows us to prevent a post or article from automatically creating a forum topic. For example, most “From the forums” posts will not have a topic; instead, they will mention other topics, as this note does. So while the vast majority of our content will have associated forums topics, it’s not quite accurate to say “every” one will.

Don’t forget to log in before posting!

ADVERTISEMENT

Enjoying the newsletter? Become a PLUS member and get it all!
	Don’t miss any of our great content about Windows, Microsoft, Office, 365, PCs, hardware, software, privacy, security, safety, useful and safe freeware, important news, analysis, and Susan Bradley’s popular and sought-after patch advice. PLUS, these exclusive benefits: Every article, delivered to your inbox Four bonus issues per year, with original content MS-DEFCON Alerts, delivered to your inbox MS-DEFCON Alerts available via TEXT message Special Plus Alerts, delivered to your inbox Access to the complete archive of nearly two decades of newsletters Identification as a Plus member in our popular forums No ads We’re supported by donations — choose any amount of $6 or more for a one-year membership.