Microsoft tests multi-window iPadOS support for Word and PowerPoint

AppleInsider · April 30, 2020 12:29AM

Microsoft on Wednesday offered a sneak peek at upcoming Office capabilities for iPadOS, with Office beta testers now able to open multiple documents side-by-side in Word and PowerPoint.

Multi-window support in Microsoft Office for iPadOS.

Detailed in a blog post, the new feature takes advantage of iPadOS 13's multi-window support for apps.

Technically an enhancement of Apple's Split View, the mechanism allows for two instances of the same app to be opened and viewed side-by-side. For example, users can open a first email in one Split View pane while composing another in the second pane. Previously, Split View support was limited to one window per app.

Microsoft is now experimenting with the feature, allowing users to open multiple Word or PowerPoint documents side-by-side.

There are a few ways to access the capability in beta form:

Touch, hold, and drag a file from the Recent, Shared, and Open file list in the app to the iPad screen edge to open it side-by-side.

In Word or PowerPoint, swipe up from the bottom of the screen and open the dock. Then touch and hold the same app's icon and drag it off the dock to the left or right edge of the screen. Then tap the document to open it.

In Word or PowerPoint, access the Recent, Shared, and Open views in the app start screen, tap the "" menu for a file in the list, then tap Open in New Window.

For now, Split Screen support is restricted to so-called "Office Insiders," or members of Microsoft's public beta testing program. Those interested in trying out the new feature must join the Office Insider program and download beta versions of Office apps through Testflight.

Whether multi-window support will make it to a shipping version of Office remains to be seen, though it appears Microsoft put significant time and effort into integrating the iPad-only feature.

tht · April 30, 2020 12:39AM

Nice to see MS pushing and adopting iPadOS features.

Hopefully Apple is thinking ahead with the multiview or multiscene support and will be able to flip a switch and have these apps automatically support overlapping views if and when it comes.

laytech · April 30, 2020 12:55AM

Can't wait to see this feature rolled out to the general public. Office 365 has to be one of the most cost effective and high value subscriptions going. You get the full office suit along with OneDrive for a real low monthly fee - Australian dollar term its just $17.20 per month - such great value. Compare that to Adobe subscription which is a rip off at $24.50 per month. You just can't compare the two in terms of value. Adobe should be ashamed. Little wonder people decide to get around their licensing by purchasing other products.

By implementing OneDrive we got rid of DropBox which saved us the cost of our Office subscription. Whilst, DropBox is far superior than OneDrive, OneDrive is improving all the time and it does what we need it to.

For once, Microsoft have got something bang on right, a good product suit at a fair and reasonable price. Its a no brainer for me. Adobe have got it all wrong. It should be a $9.95 product and 3 PC install allowance.

theledger · April 30, 2020 1:20AM

I’m glad they are finally testing this. I’ve been waiting for this feature for months. I still wish they would increase the functionality of the apps. Sometimes I switch to the web based apps to do certain jobs that the installed apps cannot, such as editing smart graphics in PowerPoint. Every current iPad has so much performance headroom that Office could greatly expand functionality while keeping it entirely usable.

seanismorris · April 30, 2020 2:05AM

I’d like to see the stats on Word, PowerPoint, etc. usage on the iPad for people with Office365 subscriptions... how often is it used, and is it used for content creation or reading/presenting.

In other words, are users learning how to use it fully...

razorpit · April 30, 2020 12:17PM

laytech said:

Can't wait to see this feature rolled out to the general public. Office 365 has to be one of the most cost effective and high value subscriptions going. You get the full office suit along with OneDrive for a real low monthly fee - Australian dollar term its just $17.20 per month - such great value. Compare that to Adobe subscription which is a rip off at $24.50 per month. You just can't compare the two in terms of value. Adobe should be ashamed. Little wonder people decide to get around their licensing by purchasing other products.

By implementing OneDrive we got rid of DropBox which saved us the cost of our Office subscription. Whilst, DropBox is far superior than OneDrive, OneDrive is improving all the time and it does what we need it to.

For once, Microsoft have got something bang on right, a good product suit at a fair and reasonable price. Its a no brainer for me. Adobe have got it all wrong. It should be a $9.95 product and 3 PC install allowance.

It has it’s warts. But ya, for the most part it offers the greatest collection of technologies for the price. Teams works pretty good once you get your workforce onboard with it.

razorpit · April 30, 2020 12:22PM

seanismorris said:

I’d like to see the stats on Word, PowerPoint, etc. usage on the iPad for people with Office365 subscriptions... how often is it used, and is it used for content creation or reading/presenting.

In other words, are users learning how to use it fully...

We have it in our company of 120+. To be honest I still use Numbers and Pages as much as possible. The mobile software is not terrible, but from my general experience with things like Word, its still not quite the “what you see is what you get” promise of the mid 90’s. Pages, Numbers, generally does offer that.

I cringe when I have to collaborate with others on Word documents and graphics of any kind are involved.

georgebmac · April 30, 2020 1:54PM

That's nice.

But it would be far more helpful if Microsoft Office was upgraded to fully support the new mouse & cursor on iPadOS like Apple did with their office products.

One of the major benefits of having a mouse or trackpad is its use on spreadsheets where it offers precision as well as a "right click" feature. And, since MS Excel is the world leading spreadsheet, their product (and its users!) would particularly benefit from this upgrade.

guruzac · April 30, 2020 5:40PM

This is great news. I use Word more than any other MS Office app on my iPad Pros and there have been many times where having multi window support was really missed.

GeorgeBMac said:

That's nice.
But it would be far more helpful if Microsoft Office was upgraded to fully support the new mouse & cursor on iPadOS like Apple did with their office products.

One of the major benefits of having a mouse or trackpad is its use on spreadsheets where it offers precision as well as a "right click" feature. And, since MS Excel is the world leading spreadsheet, their product (and its users!) would particularly benefit from this upgrade.

Yeah I agree. Hopefully they update the Office suite to support trackpad/mouse/cursor support along with the multi window support.

mplsp · April 30, 2020 5:57PM

Honestly, I wish Pages and Numbers would offer direct support for .docx and .xls formats instead of forcing you to save a copy. That’s really the only reason I continue to use word and excel.

Our group moved to office365 about a year ago and I’ve been pretty disappointed. The interface is confusing And the online versions of MS Office are way behind google docs. Real time collaboration just doesn’t work effectively and sharing can be quite clumsy. Most of my partners still revert to google docs if they need to share stuff.

Edit - the other problem I've found is compared to Pages and Numbers, Word and Excel take forever to load. I've taken to just leaving them open so I don't have to wait.

edited April 2020

lulumo · May 3, 2020 7:03PM

We tried using Office 365 to copy and paste between Word and PowerPoint in Split screen mode using a 2020 iPad Pro, but it does Not work. Once can copy (i.e. a few sentences) in Word but one can not paste it into a Power point text box. I guess iPadOS can not handle such functions yet. Using my MacBook Pro, I repeated the same copying and pasting between Office 365 Word & PowerPoint, and it does work! Please fix copying and pasting between split screens when running Office 365 on iPadOS.

Microsoft tests multi-window iPadOS support for Word and PowerPoint

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