‘Old Habits are Difficult to Change’
The same can go with MS Office, as we are habitual of using MS Office for our professional and personal documentation work. This habit becomes more beneficial for iPad users when Microsoft has introduced a full suite of office for Apple products. This decision has increased the efficiency of the iPad in terms of office documentation.
In-fact you will like some functionalities of iPad more in comparison to Windows Tablet. Though you have to buy a subscription plan to use Office in iPad as well as in Windows Tablet, but the functionalities are totally different. If you wish to use Office for free in your iPad, you can still use some features of it, like reading documents, give presentations, and even mess around with spreadsheets, using documents on the device or in OneDrive. However, for editing or creating any document, you have to buy an Office 365 subscription. On the other hand Windows provides a trial pack of MS office to test its efficiency and usability for a month only, after that you have to purchase it for Windows as well. Whenever you use MS office closely, you will get to know some minor changes in the functionalities, it depends upon your requirements, whether they are better or worse for you.
Here are the major differences that you will find between Office with iPad and with Windows Tablet, whenever you use it.
Macros Support
Macros are included as one of the best features of Office, for many users it is a blessing to save their time as well as for large data management. At times, Macros are the compulsory function to use for some users. If you are one of them, then iPad will not provide you that functionality, as it does not support Macros. On the other hand, this problem will not be with Windows Tablet. However, remember that Macros are also not supported by Microsoft’s Windows RT.
Integration with Windows Office Groups
Working with Office in the collaborative environment with an iPad, is not very efficient. As there is no way for iPad to integrate inherently connected file shares with the use of any other application. However, Windows Tablets are designed for this, and they are more conducive to integrate docs with existing data infrastructures, which are created on the MS platform. This is a major issue that an iPad user will have to face whenever they use Office professionally.
Keyboard and Mouse Control
In case you want to use your Windows Tablet or iPad as a PC, and want to connect them with external keyboard and mouse, iPad does not offer you such functionality. However, Windows Tablet support this functionality, and can be connected with the mouse, even you can switch between touch and mouse functions, where iPad does not support this feature. On the other hand, Windows Tablet also supports external keyboard function, but iPad does not. Still you can connect external key board with Bluetooth to iPad, but it specifically does not support an external keyboard feature. Though these are very small issue and you may not bother to use MS office in iPad without mouse or keyboard.
Text Enlargement
Some people are used to read documents on their tables and for that, they use zoom feature. iPad has a feature called magnifying glass by which user can easily increase the size of text. However, as this is a special feature of iPad, so windows does not support it, but there are many other ways available in Windows Tablet, which can help user to increase text size.
Text Correction
Some people have the habit to make typing errors while creating spreadsheets, documents or presentations on the Tablet screen. To solve such problem MS Office offers the auto spelling corrector feature, which is common in iPad and Windows both. The only difference is, way of highlighting. In iPad, you will see the correct words are highlighted above the wrong spelling, but in Windows Tablet, it will be described with a colored underline like a desktop version of MS office.
In spite of all the differences there are also some similar features that MS office has with Windows Tablet and iPad both. Therefore both the devices are popular for this app and people make choices of platforms according to their requirements. Let’s discuss some similarities between using MS office with Windows Table and iPad.
Similar Features
The differences that office shares with Windows Tablet and iPad are so minor that you do not have to adjust much, whenever it comes to switch the platform. You will find the basic programming functionalities same, on both of the devices. You can use complex formulas in Excel with Windows Tablet and the iPad both, and can use all the Word functions, even the naming conventions will also remain same as before.
Using MS Office with Windows Tablet and iPad is not very different from each other except some professional features. At times, user needs Office just for personal usage or for small office purposes. It depends upon the requirement of the work, whether which platform will be the best for the user. If you go for core professional work, Windows Tablet is better than iPad office, however, for normal user iPad is more flexible.
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