For many, this news isn’t new. However, Microsoft has now officially announced the status of Office applications for Chromebooks.
After Microsoft quietly started rolling out their suite of Android Apps to Chrome OS last week, I reached out to our contact at the company to see if there was a formal statement addressing the release.
Today, I received word that they had, indeed, made the announcement via the Office Blog. The news was shared amongst a number updates in the article “New in November.”
Kirk Koenigsbauer writes:
Office Mobile apps on Chromebook — Earlier this week, we released a preview of the Office Mobile apps for Google Chromebooks. These apps were originally designed for Android phones, and they’re not yet fully optimized for the Chromebook form factor. We’ve done some initial work on the end user experience and want to gather customer feedback. As with all of our mobile apps, an Office 365 subscription is required to edit documents on devices with a screen size of 10.1 inches or greater.
So, there you have it. Microsoft’s official stance is that the Office Mobile apps are available for Android-enabled Chromebooks and that they are still in the process of optimizing them for Chrome devices.
As stated above, the 10.1″ rule is in effect. Essentially, this means you will need a subscription to Office 365 if you wish to do any type of editing to your documents. We have seen some reports of OneNote not being compatible with some devices but it is unclear exactly why. It is possible that the Office Apps will only install on touchscreen Chromebooks but we are still researching that at the moment.
OneNote isn't available everywhere. pic.twitter.com/xXW2m8Nd0S
— Art Gelwicks (@TheIdeaPump) November 30, 2017
Have you been able to install Office Apps? Drop us a comment below and let us know which Chromebook has let you do so.
Source: Office Blog