Tech: Is It Cold In Here? Microsoft Office Mobile Arrives for iOS

It might be cold in here because Hell may have frozen over. That’s right, Microsoft Office for iOS has finally arrived. Sort of.

The “Redmond Giant” has released Office Mobile for Office 365 subscribers. The app is a free download, at the moment, but an Office 365 subscription is required for use. Lame.

Couple things that struck us off the bat with this: The app is currently available only for the iPhone. Double lame. Who uses an iPhone for this kind of thing? That’s what iPads were made for.

Second, you can only save documents to your Sky Drive account. No local saving is available. Triple lame. For more, check out the full release notes below:

Microsoft Office Mobile is the official Office companion optimized for your iPhone. You can access, view and edit your Microsoft Word, Microsoft Excel and Microsoft PowerPoint documents from virtually anywhere. Documents look like the originals, thanks to support for charts, animations, SmartArt graphics and shapes. When you make quick edits or add comments to a document, the formatting and content remain intact.

KEY FEATURES:

Access documents from virtually anywhere:

* Cloud – With your phone, you can access Office documents that are stored on SkyDrive, SkyDrive Pro, or SharePoint.**
* Recent Documents – Office Mobile is cloud-connected. The documents you’ve recently viewed on your computer are readily available on your phone in the recent documents panel.
* Email Attachments – You can view and edit Office documents attached to email messages.

Office documents look stunning:
* Great-Looking Documents – Word, Excel and PowerPoint documents look great on your phone, thanks to support for charts, animations, SmartArt Graphics, and shapes.
* Optimized for phone – Word, Excel and PowerPoint have been optimized for the small screen of your phone.
* Resume Reading – When opening a Word document from SkyDrive or SkyDrive Pro on your phone, it automatically resumes at the place where you left off reading, even if you last viewed the document on your PC or tablet.
* Presentation Views – The Slide Navigator view in PowerPoint lets you browse slides faster, while speaker notes help you practice your presentation.

Make quick edits and share:
* Edit – You can make quick edits to Word, Excel and PowerPoint documents.
* Documents Remain Intact – Formatting and content remain intact when you edit Word, Excel, or PowerPoint documents on your phone.
* Edit While Offline – Your device doesn’t have to be continuously connected to the network to work on an Office document that is stored online. You can view and edit recently used documents even while you’re offline. Your changes will be saved online when your device reconnects to the network or to Wi-Fi.
* Create – You can create new Word and Excel documents on your phone.
* Comments – You can review comments that have been made in Word and Excel documents on your phone and add your own comments.
* Share – When you’re done with your edits or comments, simply send the document in email or save it to SkyDrive or SharePoint.

Requirements:
* An Office 365 subscription is required to use this app.
* Compatible with iPhone 4, 4S, and 5, iPod Touch 5th Generation. Requires iOS 6.1 or later.
* Microsoft Office 2013 on a PC is needed for features like recent documents and resume reading.

**Office 365 account and setup necessary. Data connection required. Storage limits and carrier fees apply.