Microsoft Office now available as a free download for Android tablets

Microsoft last night announced that the Office suite is now available as a free download for Android tablets. Touch optimised versions of Word, Excel and PowerPoint are all live on the Google Play store and compatible with tablets a screen size between 7 and 10.1-inches. Devices with larger screens require an Office 365 subscription, while devices with smaller screens only support Office Mobile.

Kirk Koenigsbauer, Microsoft's Corporate Vice President of Office 365 Client Applications said that each of the suite's apps have had their most important features optimised for mobile scenarios.

"Word documents look beautiful, with text, images, footnotes, tables and charts all nicely formatted," said Koenigsbauer. "Excel spreadsheets bring raw data to life with support for formulas, charts, tables, PivotTables, sorting, filtering and comments. PowerPoint presentations look stunning when your ideas are expressed with full support for rich formatting and embedded video, transitions and animations."

At present, the apps are optimised for Android KitKat, but can still be used on devices running Lollipop. Other requirements include a minimum 1GB of RAM and an ARM-based processor. Updates optimising the suite for Lollipop and adding support for Intel processors will be pushed out later this year. 

Source: Office Blogs