Windows 10 Phones Brings by Microsoft in April

Windows 10 by Microsoft is bringing previews of its universal Office apps -- Word, Excel and Power point -- to Windows smartphones. The new apps will come to the Windows 10 Technical Preview for Windows phones in late April and will offer a taste of Office 2016, and yet another glimpse at Microsoft's plans to make Windows 10 the "Everywhere OS." Windows 10 is set to officially launch sometime this summer.

Windows 10

In reading mode, Word documents look like web pages. Microsoft Most of us aren't printing quite as much as we used to, and the documents we are creating are getting a lot more complex: images, tables, and charts dotted about are commonplace. The upcoming versions of Word offer a new Reading mode: press it and all of the elements of the document you're reading are "reflowed" to fit your device. That might mean ditching the archaic "sheet of paper" metaphor in favor of streamlined text -- or columns of text, if you're on a tablet -- interspersed with images and the like. Double-click on an image or chart and it enlarges so you can appreciate the details.

I remarked that it looks and feels just like the web, and Spataro nodded -- that's entirely the point. Mobile websites, apps like Pocket, and Windows 8's own Reading mode have all but conditioned many of us to see documents not as sheets of paper, but as flowing text. You can tweak things to your liking, too, and adjustments like changing the size of the text won't affect the original document.

 Windows 10 Phones Brings by Microsoft in April

My time with the new Office for Windows phone was admittedly short,

 but it's clear that it's designed, as Spataro explained, for "On the Go" productivity. Tapping out long documents on a smartphone display will never be a great experience, but these universal apps mean you won't be missing out on key Office features, or forced to break out a laptop when you want to edit a document. You'll probably want to, as I certainly didn't enjoy creating a quick-and-dirty spreadsheet on a smartphone. But you'll have most of Office's toolbox at your fingertips, which will be a powerful tool for the busy mobile professional.