Word, Excel, and PowerPoint now let you open, edit, and save your work to Apple’s cloud, as well as other services

Feb 17, 2015 10:43 GMT  ·  By

In a move that surprises some users, Microsoft today opened up support for iCloud syncing inside its Office suite for iOS customers. Users can now open, edit, and create new documents that can be saved to iCloud and other clouds, so long as they have iOS 8 installed.

Microsoft has promoted its three main Office apps - Word, Excel, and Powerpoint - to version 1.6 today. According to the release notes accompanying each app, the update add iCloud support with the ability to “open, edit, and save your work to iCloud and other online storage services.”

Those other cloud vendors aren’t named, but you can be sure that OneDrive is among them.

iCloud integration requires iOS 8, so if you’re on the fence about upgrading to the newest firmware, know that you won’t be able to use the new iCloud ability without making the jump. It’s also worth noting that you can’t downgrade your device afterwards either.

In the marketing text for each app, Microsoft touts the software as “the real Microsoft Word/Excel/Powerpoint app designed for iPad, iPhone and iPod touch.” This, because there are many other replicas out there, some much older than Microsoft’s original versions.

The Redmond software company also notes that each individual update packs a number of bug fixes as well. No specific code corrections are mentioned.