Microsoft's Office apps for iPad are getting updated today with a major new feature.
The Word, Excel, and PowerPoint apps for iPad are now being updated with trackpad and mouse support. Your cursor will transform into the tool you need depending on what you're pointing at, letting you do things like highlight text in Word, select a range of cells in Excel, and move and resize graphics in PowerPoint.
"This experience will be immediately familiar to anyone who has ever used Office on a Mac or a PC and helps make iPad even more versatile and capable for getting more work done," Microsoft says.
These updates also bring new start screens and a new ribbon of feature menus to Word, Excel, and PowerPoint on the iPad. The design updates reflect the changes that Microsoft has been making with its Fluent UI in other Microsoft 365 products and they give a more modern user experience and help you to more quickly find what you're looking for.
All of these new features have already started rolling out to users and should reach everyone within a couple of weeks.
Apple has steadily been adding improvements to iPadOS, like native mouse and trackpad support, to make the iPad a better replacement for a traditional computer. And then app updates like these for Microsoft Office and the arrival of Adobe apps like Photoshop and Illustrator take things a step further, giving users an experience that they're used to on a full-size computer but on Apple's tablet.
