Just a few years ago tablets were mainly used for browsing the web and checking email but with the release of Apple’s iPad Pro and its new iPad Air, these devices are now much closer to laptops in terms of performance and this is especially true when using the company’s Magic Keyboard.
In an effort to help iPad users be more productive, Microsoft is now bringing mouse and keyboard support to Office for iPad. The software giant’s Word, Excel and PowerPoint apps are now receiving updates that will allow them to take full advantage of trackpad support in iPadOS.
These new updates will give iPad users using a mouse or Apple’s new Magic Keyboard easy cursor control, fluid navigation and precise adjustments. In a blog post, Microsoft points out that using a mouse or trackpad with iPad for common tasks such as highlighting text in Word, selecting a range of cells in Excel and moving and resizing graphics in PowerPoint are as simple and intuitive as ever.
At the same time, moving a finger across the Magic Keyboard’s built-in trackpad transforms the cursor into the tool you need depending on the content you’re pointing to.
Fluent UI updates
Microsoft also announced that it will bring recent design enhancements from its Fluent UI to Office for iPad through new start screens and a new ribbon of feature menus.
These enhancements are designed to provide a cleaner and more modern user experience for the company’s mobile apps for iPadOS that echoes similar changes made to the Microsoft 365 experience.
Users have already begun receiving Microsoft’s latest updates to Office for iPad through a phased roll-out and these updates should be available to all users within a couple weeks.
However, Microsoft plans to continue updating the Office experience to take advantage of iPad’s unique capabilities including its large Multi-Touch display and wide variety of accessories. The company also plans to add the ability to open multiple documents in Word and PowerPoint as well as offline file support for cloud files.