Get Microsoft Office for iPad here – if you want

It's been a long time since I would've automatically bought Microsoft Word for anything, for anywhere, let alone for my iPad. Word's last killer feature was that everyone else had it and everyone needed documents sent in that format. Once we couldn't get it on iPad, we said nuts to Microsoft Office and did just fine with everything else. We did so just fine that now Office has come, it's a shrug.

Partly because we don't need it, partly because you have to pay a subscription to use Word, Excel or PowerPoint to actually do any work.

But aren't you curious? Don't you just want to try it out? You're bound to have some Word or Excel documents somewhere and you can read those in Office for iPad. You can read them in anything, really, but you can get Office and you can have at least something of a play, so give it a go.

Except.

Truly, Apple's App Store has some severe problems when you can't find Microsoft Office for iPad on it on the day it launched. Seriously: search for Microsoft Office or Microsoft Word on the iPad App Store and you will get a slew of other apps first. I couldn't find it at all. Searching for just the word Microsoft is worse.

But somehow Microsoft OneNote pops up in various searches and if you select that, there's a Related tab which does show you Word, Excel and PowerPoint.

Don't bother digging, I've done that, here are the direct links:

Word:
https://itunes.apple.com/gb/app/microsoft-word-for-ipad/id586447913?mt=8

Excel:
https://itunes.apple.com/gb/app/microsoft-excel-for-ipad/id586683407?mt=8

PowerPoint (seriously, you want PowerPoint?)
https://itunes.apple.com/gb/app/microsoft-powerpoint-for-ipad/id586449534?mt=8

Notice the /gb/ part of those addresses: these are the UK (or Great Britain) links but tap them wherever you are, iTunes will figure it out.

Even if it's the best-ever implementation of PowerPoint, that presentation app would come a distant fifth out of the three anyway. Excel is certainly the most powerful and least top-heavy of the three. But I am a writer and I've got form writing about word processors so it is Word I naturally go for. And without yet schlepping through setting up a SkyDrive (or whatever the lawyers require Microsoft to call that now) and definitely without paying around $10/month or about $100/year just to experiment with typing, I've gone for it and got it and am now deleting it.

Good to see it finally arrive. Good to see it seemingly well-worked out. I just need a compelling reason to buy it and it's been many years since its mere existence on iPad would be enough.

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