March 27, 2014 - 22:53 AMT
Microsoft announces long-rumored Office for iPad

Microsoft held a press event Thursday, March 27 where new Chief Executive Satya Nadella provided a glimpse of his vision for the company and announced the long-rumored Office suite for the iPad, the Wall Street Journal reports.

On the iPad, Office will work much like it does on the iPhone. Anyone can download the app and use it to read and present Office documents. But only people with an Office 365 subscription can create and edit documents. On the iPhone, all of Office is in one app. On the iPad, the suite is split into different apps: Word, PowerPoint and Excel.

Office is one of Microsoft’s cornerstone products. Bringing the productivity suite to different operating systems, screen sizes and form factors is a part of Microsoft’s overall strategy of getting its software onto any device. ”You can expect us to make sure we drive Office 365 everywhere — Web, all phones, all tablets, PCs,” he said. “That’s our real commitment to Office 365.”

Documents will be saved on Microsoft’s OneDrive cloud-storage system, and the app allows for multiple editors on a document.

“This is not the Windows app ported to the iPad, and this certainly isn’t the iPhone app running in 2x,” Julia White, Microsoft’s Office general manager, said at the press event in San Francisco. “It’s a unique experience.”

White said the Office apps for iPad will appear in the iOS app store around 2 pm ET.