Microsoft releases Office Remote app for Windows Phone
Now control your Presentations, Excel sheets and even Word documents right from your Windows Phone.
For all of you who love to exercise control over distances, Microsoft has come out with something just for you. Microsoft has released an app called Office Remote that will allow you to control various aspects of the many Office applications through your cellphone. Sounds amazing? It is, but there are obviously some catches.
The app will allow you to control PowerPoint slides, work with Excel presentations by allowing you to switch between sheets by a simply swiping left to right and even jumping from one heading to the next in MS Word. The catch, however, is that this app is only available for Windows Phone devices, meaning the remote functionality is yours to wield only if you’re a Windows Phone loyalist. It doesn’t just stop there though. The Remote app will only work to control the x86/64 versions of Office 2013. So if you have an RT version of the suite running on your tablet, the app will not play with that.
The reason for this discrimination, it seems, happens to be the extension one has to install on the PC before this app will connect to the Office Suite. We all know that Windows RT doesn’t allow installations from outside of the Windows Marketplace, so RT users won’t be able to install this little add-on for Office RT, effectively meaning that this version of the Office Suite can’t be controlled by this app. However, there is no one to say that MS won’t figure a workaround for this issue.
Here’s a full list of things you can do with the Remote Office app for Windows Phone.
Word
Jump to headings
Jump to comments
Screen up/down
Line up/down
Change the zoom level
PowerPoint
Jump to the next, previous, and last slide
View slide thumbnails and jump to a slide
View speaker notes on phone
View presentation timer and slide numbers
Laser pointer using touch on your phone
Excel
Change worksheets by swiping
Use Slicers, PivotTable, and Filters
Jump to any named object in your workbook
Move up or down the worksheet
Change the zoom level
You can download the Office Remote app for Windows Phone from the Windows Phone Store for free. You will also need to install the add-in for Office on your PC by downloading it from Microsoft.