- Start
- Mar 26, 201490% CONFIDENCEfrom the source
- End
- Mar 27, 201490% CONFIDENCEfrom the source
Unveiled Office for iPad
- On 27 March 2014, at a press conference in San Francisco, Microsoft "unveiled Office for iPad - specifically Word, PowerPoint and Excel", as part of what it called its "mobile first, cloud first approach"[1][3][4][5]
- It was Satya Nadella's first public press conference as CEO, 52 days after he replaced Steve Ballmer; Nadella framed it as "the first step on a journey" at the "critical intersection of mobile and cloud"[3][4][5]
- The three apps went on sale in the App Store the same day - reported as from 11 p.m. PT Thursday by one account and 2PM ET by another - and are free to download: free versions read Word documents, view Excel data and present with PowerPoint, while "To get the full editing and creation experience, you need an Office 365 subscription", from $70 per year[1][3][4][5]
- They require an iPad running iOS 7.0 or later, and shipped in 29 languages and, as of that day, 135 markets; a subscription covers Office for iPad on up to 5 tablets plus 5 copies for PCs and Macs, and the new Office 365 Personal - $70 per year for one device, against $100 annually for the five-device premium subscription - "will also qualify when it becomes available later this spring"[1][4]
- Alongside the iPad apps Microsoft made Office Mobile for iPhone and Android phones free for everyone, as it already was on Windows Phone, in the App Store and Google Play[1][4]
- Reaction noted at the time: Tim Cook tweeted "Welcome to the #iPad and @AppStore! @satyanadella and Office for iPad", Box CEO Aaron Levie said "Better late than never", and TIME judged it not game-changing, with file compatibility and formatting fidelity likely its biggest benefit[4][5]
- Context given: Office accounted for 90% of the business division's revenue in the last fiscal year, and VP of Marketing John Case said the aim is to turn Office into "a first-class cloud service"; Microsoft said it would bring Office apps to the Windows Store and other popular platforms in future[1][3]
Notable features
- Office for iPad is Word, Excel and PowerPoint as separate iPad apps, the first dedicated version of Office for tablet computers[2][6]
- The apps were built for touch rather than ported: Julia White said it is "definitely not the Windows app ported to the iPad", demonstrating a touch-sized Ribbon, a numeric keyboard in Excel and a built-in laser pointer, pens and highlighters in PowerPoint; Word keeps track changes, threaded comments and in-place chart editing, and files save to OneDrive by default with simultaneous multi-person editing and offline access[1][4][5]
- Documents keep their full formatting: in Word, images, tables, SmartArt, footnotes and equations; in Excel, formulas, charts, sparklines, conditional formatting and filters; in PowerPoint, transitions, animations and speaker notes, with content and formatting maintained across Office on PC, Mac, tablet and phone[6]
- The apps use iPad features such as voice dictation to draft a Word document and AirPlay to project a presentation wirelessly on a TV, open documents from OneDrive, OneDrive for Business and SharePoint, and remember the documents last worked on whatever the device[6]
References 676% CONFIDENCE
The first entry is always the pin's source. Overall confidence is a weighted average of how firmly each reference supports the start and end times used above; a reference counts half as much for every 180 days older than the newest.
- [1]90%blogs.office.com/2014/03/27/announcing-the-office-you-love-now-on-the-ipadblogs.office.com· Posted Jun 15, 2017· Starts Mar 26, 2014 ✓· Ends Mar 27, 2014 ✓· 0% of score
Happened as dated, per blogs.office.com: "…today The power of AI wherever you go. Available on desktop and mobile devices. Connect with us on…"
- [2]76%Microsoft Office - Wikipediaen.wikipedia.org· Added Sep 22, 2026· 100% of score
Wikipedia's Microsoft Office[1] article says "On March 27, 2014, Microsoft launched Office for iPad, the first dedicated version of Office for tablet computers."
- [3]85%Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella announces Office for iPad at public debutfortune.com· Published Mar 27, 2014· 0% of score
Fortune confirms Nadella "announced iPad versions of Microsoft Word, Excel, and PowerPoint, available today," published 27 March 2014, an exact match to the pin's stored date.
- [4]85%Microsoft Unveils Office for iPad in Big Mobile Movenbcnews.com· Published Mar 27, 2014· 0% of score
NBC News reports "Microsoft's new CEO Satya Nadella unveiled a version of Office[1] designed for the iPad at his first public event on Thursday in San Francisco," matching the pin's stored 27 March 2014 unveiling date.
- [5]85%Microsoft Office for the iPad Is (Finally) Heretime.com· Published Mar 27, 2014· 0% of score
Time reports the new Office[1] apps for iPad were "available starting at 2PM ET today," 27 March 2014, independently corroborating NBC's and Fortune's[3] same-day accounts and the pin's stored date.
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