Microsoft is introducing a single Microsoft Office app for iOS and Android. The new app is simply called Office and is designed so you have a more seamless integration between the different office apps. The separate Outlook email app remains. 

The single download seems set to replace the separate Word, Excel and PowerPoint apps on both platforms even though Microsoft says it is "fully committed to supporting the existing Word, Excel, and PowerPoint mobile apps".

Product manager Ramit Arora added: "We appreciate that millions of people use and depend on these apps today, and we will continue to invest in them."

In the new app, files can be stored locally or accessed in the cloud, while you can easily share documents with other users or devices. You don’t need to sign-in to use the app, signing in with your work, school, or personal Microsoft Account gives you access to your online files. You're able to sign in with more than one account if you wish. 

More than ever, the new app is designed with 'quick actions' in mind to begin creating Office documents. So you can create a PDF from a photo or any document. Or create a Word document by taking a picture of a page. Or take a picture of a table and create an Excel document from it (this is a real favourite of ours since it was introduced in the mobile version of Excel earlier this year).

And, handily, you can sign PDFs with your finger or stylus - Apple Pencil aficionados will be well used to doing this on the iPad already.

Microsoft now has a single app for Office on iOS and Android image 2
Microsoft

 

Both the iOS and Android versions of the Office app are available in a public preview version - if you're interested, see more about Office for iOS and Office for Android