Microsoft Office: Edit & Share

I don’t know if this app by itself is better than having the three separate Office apps installed, but it takes up considerably less space. I use this almost exclusively for Excel documents, and this app is an adequate editor for very simple things like adding new data entries and viewing attachments received via mail or shared via cloud based file services. However, this app is EXTREMELY SLOW to work with and its interface feels claustrophobic and fiddly on an iPhone 8 screen. Maybe it’s better on an iPad Pro, with the larger display and more powerful CPU to run it? I don’t even try to do anything so complicated as enter formulas or format cells when I’m using this app… like I said, the UI is not great. A word of warning: if you rely on Dropbox to store Office documents that you frequently work with and update via this app, you will tear your hair out in frustration at the way Office turns into a complete basket case trying to deal with Dropbox storage. I don’t know whose fault that is, Microsoft or Dropbox, but it’s infuriating and will happen to you even when doing the simplest things to documents retrieved from Dropbox folders. It gets even worse if you’re using a VPN… be ready for lost work and mondo pain. At least everything works even slower over VPN connections, so you have that to look forward to.

I really like this app. It’s very useful to have on my phone, as it allows me to do my work for college on the go. I have had one major issue with it. I spent four hours on an essay for English, and it was perfect. About 15 minutes before class, I was editing it just before I was going to print it. I had all the text highlighted, and I was just changing the paragraph spacing and font. I somehow hit the backspace and I lost all of the text. My phone buffered for a moment. I wasn’t panicking, at first. I hit the undo button, but nothing happened. I tried a couple more times, still nothing. A little bit of panic started to set in, but I was trying not to freak out. I went back to the paper’s history, and it hadn’t saved for hours. This essay was a big part of my grade, and it was all gone. Sure, I should have manually saved it, but it usually saves on it’s own. Moral of the story, save your work, because the app might not.

This app is not a replacement for separate office apps, word, excel and PowerPoint, it is nothing but a quick way to add and delete some data, other than that it would be very hard to create a complete document trying to use features like tables and objects and formatting etc. i used it on iPad Pro M1 yet its performance was bad and many features are missing. Also you will face a problem when sharing the document from a windows to iOS using this app, as the view of the document is different on both. Objects tends to move from its place and the whole formatting of the documents gets ruined. That is not the kind of quality that we were used to from Microsoft when it comes to office suite. I DO NOT RECOMMEND IT better use the separate apps, yet still it is not as powerful or easy as on windows and that is a shameful strategy from Microsoft to not power up office on apple products.

A sync issue has happened three times now. I open a document saved to OneDrive on my iPad and start editing. I then switch to another app to look something up. I return to Office, only to be told that changes can’t be uploaded because someone else is editing the document. No one else is editing the document. I have opened it on only one device, and no other. And if someone else were, why is that a problem? What is the point of saving documents to the cloud if collaboration is impossible? If someone else if editing, figure that stuff out and sync the changes. So I close the document then click on the icon indicating a sync issue. I click on resolve, hoping I can merge the two conflicting copies. No such option is available. I have to manually copy the changes I made, discard them, and then paste them in. Wonderful.

I use on the iPad because i have to. I open excel files from iCloud or Dropbox, edit them for hours (clicking “save” constantly, or using “auto save”). The app says “saved, pending upload”. So I keep working. Then i exit the app to do something else. Hours later i pull up the file again in dropbox or iCloud, and BAM! NOTHING EFF-ING SAVES! Wasted hours of work! Happened to me 3x now! The answer, according to the guru’s online? Stop work when you want to save. Press the “back to dropbox” button or whatever it’s called. The file should upload to dropbox after a few seconds. Then reopen the file again. The “pending upload” message is gone under the save menu. It’s a lot of steps, takes way too much time, and if you miss a step, BAM, you’re eff’ed again.’ Steaming hot lazy Microsoft garbage. As usual. I’ve hated these guys since the 90’s. Just a crap company, and always has been. Eat S#$i! Microsoft. Cost me so much wasted time I just want to scream. Also, you can’t just use this app to replace the dropbox or iCloud app. Why? The file sorting and menus are atrocious. No sorting, filtering, or tagging files. So if you have hundreds, across dozens of folders and sub folders, this app is basically useless. Very very few customizing options too. Can’t say enough bad stuff about this app. And it’s all true.

I am a college student using Microsoft Office for essays and assignments. There are a lot of things that bug me about the app structure but my biggest complaint is the app’s constant lagging. Whenever I type on the app for a bit more than, say, 30 minutes, the app stalls to a halt. When it gets to that point, when I type, the letters come on the screen seconds after I type them in. And even when I try to close the app down and open the Doc, the app still stalls. Then, I resort to switching to the Word app (which does the same thing), and I just fall into a cycle of switching between apps. I have an 2021 IPad 12.9 Pro that I recently bought, so I know that my device isn’t the problem. I also don’t know why it takes so long for documents to save on the app. When I finish typing and go back to the Home Screen, the doc says that its still uploading onto OneDrive. When it comes down to this, I usually switch to Google Docs, and I never see the same problems I have with Microsoft Office or Microsoft Word. Please Microsoft, I want to use your apps, but I can’t deal with the constant stalling

Any of these reviews above 2-3 stars are literally straight out of midnight infomercial "testimonials". This "app" is entirely useless from even the most basic of productivity angles. Its horribly unstable. It randomly closes files. Half the time it won't even open files and instead will just bring up the most recently opened file. It easily becomes unresponsive & glitchy. Simple things like copy and paste are nearly impossible. It has cluttered and entirely redundant UI features. MS quality 🤡

The PowerPoint is just too glitchy and unpredictable to recommend it to anyone. The text cursor keeps jumping between words as i type in a textbox making me overwrite previous words in that same textbox. It sometimes glitches when trying to insert a word from the autocomplete and just mixes words together and other random behavior. So frustrating to use. I expected more from Microsoft.