Tech giant Microsoft is rolling out big updates for all three of their major Office apps for Android, specifically that of Word, PowerPoint, and Excel. There will be several overlapping improvements, along with app-specific features that will be brought into the aforementioned apps. However, the main highlight here is the addition of an auto-save feature, which is found on the more staple desktop version of the software. Frankly speaking, this functionality has long been overdue as it should have been placed there from so many opportunities but there are many interruptions that prevented the company from doing so such as unexpected battery drains or lost connections.
Microsoft Brings Auto-Save and a Bunch of Other Updates to Their Android Apps
In the same update being brought by Microsoft, Word and PowerPoint also get real-time collaborative editing support aside from the auto-save feature that they will also be getting. This particular feature is also similar to what can be seen in the web apps and in Google Docs.
While the collaborative editing between the Microsoft Word and PowerPoint apps is a great new feature, it is not exactly seamless. Going into the browser version of the apps, it will say that users are editing offline even when their devices are clearly connected to a network.
The auto-save feature, on the other hand, works just about right. The app will automatically pick up if guests or other collaborators are beginning to edit a document, presentation, or spreadsheet. However, users won’t be able to see these changes in real-time. In other words, these features may still need to be further tweaked before we are able to see it functioning to be as good, or at least almost as good as the apps’ desktop counterparts.
Moving forward, another feature in relation to the auto-save feature is version history. With the addition of this, users are probably able to alleviate all known fears about the auto-save function causing any problems. Simply put, if you want to realize to an earlier version of a document, presentation, or spreadsheet, you can very well do so by just choosing from a list of save points.
As for PowerPoint, it gets a unique, and very useful tool found in the update. It is described by the company as “Designer.” However, it would seem that it only appears on the tablet version of said app.
Most users should already have the Microsoft update in their devices by now, but for those who haven’t downloaded them yet can head on to the Google Play Store to download and install them in these apps.