Microsoft is bringing mouse and trackpad support to its Office for iPad apps today. The software maker promised it would update its Office iPadOS apps earlier this year, and the updates are now live in the App Store for Word, Excel, and PowerPoint.
Revealed on Monday Microsoft is making several changes that Microsoft 365 customers experience in the Excel, PowerPoint, and Word apps for iPad. Rather than major feature changes, a blog post outlining the alterations shows the updates are more to make the apps easier to use in general, and take advantage of Apple’s own operating system improvements.
Following the rollout of mouse support in iPadOS 13.4 and further enhancements included in iPadOS 14, Microsoft is updating the apps with full support for trackpads and mice, for “easy cursor control, fluid navigation, and precise adjustments.” The change will allow users to more accurately select items and make changes to documents than if they were to use the usual touchscreen interface, and will bring the apps in line with the traditional desktop-based experience.
Alongside the mouse and trackpad support, Microsoft is also adding more Fluent UI to its Office for iPad apps. Word, Excel, and PowerPoint all have refreshed start screens and a new ribbon of feature menus.
Microsoft is also planning to bring multiple document support to Excel, better contextual menus, and offline file support for cloud files in the coming months. This latest mouse and keyboard support is starting to roll out today and “should reach all users within a couple weeks.”
