You can now purchase a monthly subscription straight from within the app

Sep 3, 2014 06:52 GMT  ·  By

Microsoft launched Office for iPad earlier this year, and since then, the company has tried to improve the productivity suite as much as possible, so today a new pack of enhancements are available.

Starting today, Office for iPad users can purchase Office 365 monthly subscriptions straight from within the apps, be they Word, Excel, or PowerPoint.

While Office for iPad is completely free, it only allows Apple users to view documents stored on their tablets, while an Office 365 subscription is required for editing features.

With this new update, users can purchase an Office 365 Home or Personal subscription without leaving the app, with pricing starting at $6.99 per month in the United States.

“You asked for more flexibility in signing up for Office 365 subscriptions on iPad. So starting today, you can buy a monthly subscription to Office 365 from within Microsoft Word, Excel, and PowerPoint for iPad,” Microsoft said in an announcement this morning.

“You can choose between Office 365 Personal and Office 365 Home. Office 365 Personal is designed to help individuals who want to use Office on one PC or Mac and one tablet, while Office 365 Home is for households with up to five PCs or Macs, plus five tablets.”

Microsoft says that customers who have already purchased a one-year subscription for Office 365 in order to use the product on an iPad can continue doing so until the subscription expires.

“These new In-App subscription changes are great options for those who prefer the flexibility of monthly payments. Existing customers, who have purchased Office 365 Home for one year, will continue on the same subscription. If you buy a monthly subscription on your iPad, you can switch to an annual subscription from your iPad, or from iTunes on your PC or Mac,” it claims.

In the meantime, Microsoft is also said to be continuing work on the Windows 8 version of Office, which could arrive on the market before the end of the year. This new flavor of the productivity suite will run in the Modern UI and will allow users to edit and create documents without the need for a desktop.

This change could play a key role in Microsoft’s long-term strategy, as the company is believed to work on removing the desktop entirely in future Windows builds for tablets, offering instead the essential apps to perform the common tasks right in the touch-optimized Modern interface.