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Office Web Apps Now on Windows Skydrive

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If you’re one of the folks who have been waiting for the Microsoft Office Web Apps to come out of technical preview so you can give them a try, the time is now. On the Windows Live Blog, Jason Moore is announcing that Microsoft has flicked the switch and you can now check out the Office Web Apps on Skydrive, if you live n the US, UK, Canada, or Ireland.

The Office Web Apps are a part of Microsoft’s answer for the cloud and includes Word, Excel, OneNote, and Powerpoint. You can upload docs to Skydrive, edit them in a browser, and, well, you know the drill. The Office Web Apps promise great integration with your desktop versions of the apps. If you’re using a smartphone you can view Word and Powerpoint docs on many (but not all) smartphones without any additional software.

7 Comments

7 Comments

  1. Fleon

    06/08/2010 at 7:22 am

    The Office Web Apps are great for what they are, unfortunately, Onenote is a huge letdown, and pretty much unusable for two reasons- the 50MB file size is too limiting and ink on a page makes the page unreadable.

    50MB for a Onenote section is way too small. I want to be able to put my whole Notebook in the cloud, not just random little pieces of it… what would be the point of that?

    Ink doesn’t show up at all. I understand that it must be difficult to push the ink and display it correctly across browsers, but at the same time it’s my primary input method and arguably the reason for Onenote’s existence in the first place.

    Lastly, in my initial trial, there are some pretty big bugs- maybe related to highlighting from ink, but I’m not sure. Here’s an example of what it should look like:

    “Just as the world was built in seven days, the kallah is figuratively building the walls of the couple’s new world together. The number seven also symbolizes the wholeness and completeness that they cannot attain separately.”

    This is what the Web App displays:

    “Just as the [Unknown Object] world was built in seven days, the kallah is figuratively building the walls of the couple’s new world [Unknown Object] together. The number seven also symbolizes the wholeness and completeness that they cannot attain [Unknown Object] separately.”

    Don’t get me wrong, it’s a brilliant start, and Word, Excel, and Powerpoint seem flawless. Onenote- and particularly tablet use- has seemingly gotten the short end of the stick once again, however.

    It’s not a shock that Apple is getting away with a crappy version of a tablet when MS won’t bother to pay attention to its own market share and keeps canceling promising projects like the Courier.

    • GoodThings2Life

      06/08/2010 at 8:04 am

      I completely agree. I exclusively use OneNote for ink-based notes, so having it available by web or mobile device is useless right now without ink. It’s sad too, because with OneNote’s prominence, you’d think they’d be touting its FULL capabilities to detract from the iPad craze.

    • Mike

      06/12/2010 at 3:09 am

      It may have been trying to be witty.
      It seems to have identified the world twice as an unknown object.
      And then, playfully, also identified the unattainable completeness as an unknown object.
      It is rather insightful commentary really.

  2. Kathy Jacobs

    06/08/2010 at 9:53 am

    Have to agree, inking seems to have some problems. But, I am finding it quite useful for sharing OneNote with those who don’t have it. I work with a bunch of Mac users. Being able to send them notes and have them update the pages rocks.

    Just as we early users were patient with OneNote when it first came out, I am hoping that we can be patient with the webapps. For one thing, maybe they will make fixes quicker. (My thought here is that they can do fixes by product instead of waiting for everyone to do it. More realtime, maybe?)

  3. Joseph O'Laughlin

    06/09/2010 at 3:19 pm

    And what about SEARCH on OneNote app?

    If a collaborator hides an important text chunk in an unlikely named page.. how do I find it?

  4. Mike

    06/11/2010 at 1:59 am

    Interestingly, this is not just being able to look at docs in the browser, etc…
    You do not need to have any version of office installed to utilize these features.
    So it also represents a give-away of a very basic version of office apps.
    I see no indication that they plan on changing that.
    I didn’t play with it enough to see if it is better than google docs or not.

  5. Bobisr23

    08/15/2011 at 10:35 pm

    Is there a way to see our skydrive files on a Thrive tablet? Anybody!

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