14 DAY TRIAL // Microsoft has just rolled out a new update for its Office productivity suite on iOS devices, so iPhone and iPad users can now benefit from important additions, such as support for the OpenDocument format.
All productivity apps included in the Office suite have been updated to version 1.22, which, according to the listings added in the App Store, comes with support for exporting a document to the OpenDocument Text (.ODT) format.
No other change is included in the release notes, although some other bug fixes and performance improvements are very likely to be part of the update, but the addition of ODT format support for exporting is anyway a pretty important thing.
The OpenDocument format has become a lot more popular in the last few years, mostly thanks to freeware productivity suites, such has LibreOffice, which used this extension for saving documents. Furthermore, there are many organizations out there, including authorities in several big cities, who decided to give up on Microsoft Office and switch to freeware solutions, so it’s very clear that adding interoperability with the OpenDocument format is the only way to go.
Microsoft’s Office apps, iPhone “essentials”
Microsoft’s Office apps are enjoying a pretty huge success on iOS, with Word and Excel becoming two of the most downloaded apps in the App Store shortly after their release. The applications require at least iOS 8.0 and can be installed on iPhones, iPads, and iPod touch.
What’s important to note is that using the Office productivity suite on the 12.9-inch iPad Pro requires an Office 365 subscription for editing capabilities, otherwise you can only use it for viewing documents in Word, Excel, and PowerPoint. The Office suite is offered free of charge on devices with smaller screens.
If working with Office on your iOS devices is critical to you, and support for the OpenDocument format was one of the things you’ve been expecting for, go ahead and download Word, Excel, and PowerPoint version 1.22 right now to get this improvement.