Microsoft this morning held their Office 2010 business launch in Sydney. One of the main focuses in the Office launch was Office Live. That’s the ability to edit Microsoft Office documents in the browser. Having used Office 2010 since the Tech Preview almost a year ago, I figure I’d give you a different angle on the announcement.
While watching the Australia Office 2010 launch news on twitter #Office2010AU on the iPad, I thought why not try Office Live right from the device. Check out the gallery below for screen shots.
Browsing around my documents on http://skydrive.live.com worked fine, not surprising given Microsoft has been very public about their multi-browser support. Upon opening a .docx Word document, I was presented with a ‘Open in Pages’ button in the top-left hand corner of mobile Safari. Pressing on it launches Pages (assuming u have it installed), and your Word document is now fully editable in Apple’s Pages app.
The roundtrip back to SkyDrive fails though. Due to Apple’s restriction on Safari accessing files the iPad, the ‘Choose file’ button on the Add Files page is de-activated. This means you’ll need to email the doc to yourself, jump on a desktop, then upload the file to SkyDrive – A very messy solution.
Maybe we should just wait for an Office Live iPad app.
Click images for larger versions
More info about Office 2010 Australian Business launch available here.