Review of Microsoft word
By Norcal Reservoir Dog
Well I use Microsoft word at work, the mobile version is vastly inferior. If it were free, I probably couldn’t complain. But, if you want to get the capability of redlining documents and other important work-related actions, you have to purchase the subscription. This is where the trouble begins. Microsoft support is terrible. Several times a year the program won’t work and tells me I need a subscription. I’ve spent hours on the phone with Microsoft since I first purchased this program. There’s some sort of company disconnect between their accounting department and mobile services. This needs to be fixed.
Regarding the applications performance, at best it’s OK. It tends to be slow, saving a document while you were working on it is not as straightforward as it should be, and if you want to dictate, you better proofread twice. Many of the desired editing features are not available in this mobile application. Formatting is next to impossible and many many other features are not available. While I don’t think you can expect 100% duplication, iPad cost more than most PCs, have ample memory, and should be capable of handling all of the commands necessary to do a competent job of preparing a word document. And you should not have to have an external keyboard with your iPad to perform the tasks. Bottom line, The program is livable, but not particularly likable.
Love/Hate relationship with Word on iPad
By rkr9knight
I’ve used Word for years, and I am really good at it and take advantage of the really cool features that other word processor programs lack. The desktop version of Word is amazing!! However, Word on the iPad is mediocre! For instance, I utilize fields and cross reference data between different parts of a document, which is a huge time saver for me. Unfortunately, I’m unable to take advantage of this feature on my iPad, which means, that I must work on a laptop or desktop computer to really get the benefits of using Word in this day and age. Also, I really don’t like the automatic saving feature because I frequently use templates that I do not want to overwrite while working and the automatic saving feature makes this impossible. Please fix this! I wish there was a way to select, in the settings, a “discontinue automatic saving” option. If Google Docs had these features, I would likely make a permanent switch to that program because I appreciate working seamlessly with others. Also, as one who works in schools, I see that high school students have been trained in Google Docs and they aren’t familiar with using Word. I see a need to get with the times and I’m not seeing Word advance it’s features; however, as long as the above options are only available on Word, I will be sticking with them. Please, make these crucial features available on the app version of Word as well!
The editing experience is terrible
By Ki2rin
In most times, the prompt jumps to the very first line after a few second later whenever I touch the middle of the screen to edit a docx file. This is very annoying since my file is of 98 pages. Then I should pull down the scroll bar to the bottom of the document. This happens very often, especially when in Mobile view.
The second thing is about the page loading steps or speed. By moving down the scroll bar the pages are loaded incrementally. But it has too many steps to the bottom page. Scrolling down the bar to the bottom of the screen loads pages a little. I couldn’t find a good way to jump to the bottom page at once. And this happens in Mobile view.
The third frustrating thing is the reaction speed is not just slow, it’s really slow. When I type a character, say A, that appears in the screen after about 0.3~0.5s. This issue also has something to do with Mobile view, I think.
The fourth is about moving the cursor with a long-touch. This not only related to Word but to all the other Office 365 applications I guess. This app adopting the obsolete way shows a convex glass that zoom-in around the cursor when I long-touch the screen. Apple changed the way it moves the cursor since iOS 13 if I’m right. I’m not gonna explain it in detail here but the new way is much elegant and gives seamless experience in editing the text.
Smooth Transition Between iPad to PC
By Unimatrix002
I’ve been using Word for iPad, iPhone, and my Dell laptop for a couple of months and experienced a very smooth transition from one device to another. One problem I had was that fancy fonts I was using on my PC didn’t carry over to my iPad (I’ve got to download those fonts I think; I haven’t done that yet). For most of my typing, I prefer Courier and simple fonts anyway, so it’s not a problem. A few times there were too many differences between devices (I probably left my file open on a different device) and the app asked me which version of the document to use; it worked just like Word’s manuscript comparison function where it highlights the differences between the two files (which is much better than Scrivener—I’ve lost several version of my manuscripts in Scrivener when it couldn’t resolve differences between a file on my laptop and on another device). This app doesn’t have all the bells and whistles that my Word for PC offers, but it has enough. I’m happy with it.
Love data losses that Microsoft can do nothing about? Then this app is for you!
By My Official Review
I’m writing this review as a warning. I had about 10 Word documents saved on my phone. I do use this app from time to time whenever I feel like adding something to a document. But tonight, everything changed. I come back to the app so I can edit a document. However, when I tapped on it, an error message appeared saying, “Sorry, this document is stored on an unsupported server location.” Good thing I had a copy of the document... right? Nope! Every single one of my dox had the same error. I can no longer access these files from anywhere. All of my stuff is gone now. Forever.
This has never happened to me or anyone I know before, but it has been an issue in the past. I looked up this issue, and found a few forum posts about this exact issue. And guess what Microsoft’s response was? Give up. There’s nothing they can do to help you if this happens. Just like that, you’re back to zero.
If this didn’t happen, I absolutely would give this app maybe a 4-star rating. But since this happened, I don’t think I can trust Microsoft with my data anymore. NONE of this is my fault. I don’t know what to do with the app at this point, because I still might use it for future projects, but I’m terrified that this will happen again.
Use with Caution-Random Crashes Cause Data Lisa
By squidney17
I have been using Microsoft word on pc, mac, and iPad for several years and mostly had a good experience. Until recently with the iPad app, which I use almost everyday. The app will randomly crash and delete hours worth of progress I had made on a document.
It freezes, sits, and then force closes and when I reopen, my hard work is gone. I auto save to Dropbox, and after experiencing this crash issue multiple times, I periodically go in and out of documents to make sure they are saving, as well as check the menu bar to see that it says “changes are automatically saved to Dropbox.” Which it always does, even during that hour of work that didn’t save after the crash! Why is it telling me it’s saving when it’s really not? I don’t believe this a Dropbox issue, because word itself is crashing. Last time it crashed when I was exiting the document (doing my insane self-checking because I’m so paranoid about this problem). Just froze, and I knew that it was too late. There’s nothing more devastating. I’ve troubleshooted this problem, but no progress yet.
I’m considering another word processor app at this point, but that would be inconvenient because no one else has Dropbox integration. Fix your app, please. This is ridiculous.
Unusable when I need it the most
By Pocketfrogger101
I have always used Word for as long as I can remember to write essays for school, create a resume for a job, or just to write random notes when needed. But right now I am so frustrated with Word. I have a brand new IPad and even paid for the high end keyboard so I could do my work for school. I downloaded this app because I thought it would work great for my many homework assignments and study guides I had to get done. But all it has done is frustrate me and make me want to throw the thing across the room! It has many great features (when logged in) and should be capable of handling my typing skills, but for some reason it can’t? The lag on this app is CRAZY bad. I can’t get anything done on bigger files where I have more than 15 pages and over 3,000 words...which is not even a lot?? The app is unusable, if I can’t type at the pace I need to with 3,000 words in my document then this app is a bust. Another great thing about the app is that even when you have the “Auto-Save” on, it likes to not save all of your work and make you start all over again! Even better when it crashes! I’ve seen these issues on forums that have come up from all the way back when the app launched. Come on Microsoft, I expected better.
Laggy and frustfrating.
By one of a student
This app is laggy and wonky as hell. It have a great concept but it is still just a great concept. The lagging is real. You can even see when you try to scroll the pages, it is janky and irritating. Typing is lagged, sometimes a few words behind. ‘Drawing’ is a nice feature but the writings moved a bit after you remove the pencil, so it became really not precise. If I’m writing with my pencil, it shift either to the right or left a bit from where I jot down, making a very not smooth, irritating writing experience. The eraser is even worse. You can erase a word and then the next one won’t, and it brings forward the keyboard instead. The only fix I could do was when that happened, I turn on drawing with fingers and erases with my finger instead. So annoying. If you want to move your writing, it won’t select more than one object at a time, which means you have to move letters by letters, unlike onenote which you could lasso a bunch of stuff. It’s just so annoying.
If you’re wondering why I didn’t use onenote, I do use onenote. It’s just this one class that give options of lecture notes in docs format, and we have a bunch of definitions and calculations in a single lecture note, so I typed when it were definitions, and write when doing calculations.
Why I hate, hate, Word.
By Strat/Gibson/Kramer
Word. In a single word to describe it, terrible. Or this word, frustrating, or this word aggravating, or another word, crashes, how about freezes. I could go on and on about it, but my main complaint is it try’s to be to helpful and that’s where it gets itself into trouble.
Originally if you had a mid-spelled word it would hi light it and offer suggestions. Now when it’s highlighted it takes you to other prompts before bringing you to where you wanted to be in the first place. Next it randomly capitalizes words in the middle of sentences and occasionally will do it when it begins the next line.
I hate if I’ve written a 300 page manuscript, gone back to say page 164 to change something, saving it to that page, close it, when I reopen it later I’m back at page one. It may not seem like much, but when you’re writing 5 hours plus at a time, it becomes maddening.
The worst insult? I pay for this misery!
New version not as good as the previous one
By terrilee_nc
Verdict: if you want to/need to use Office across your devices, get this. If not, use Pages or Google Docs. They will both allow you to open & edit Word docs & Save docs as Word.
Though it’s really handy to have Office products on my phone so I can edit files without having to go to my laptop, I’m not keen on the latest version of Word for iOS. It’s just clunkier to use. It took me quite a bit of poking around just to find the editing control menus. And when I copy & paste text into a new document, it only pastes the text, not any original formatting. I don’t see any paste options such as there are in Word for windows. Example: I have an email with text formatted as a table. Previously, if I copied & pasted into a new doc, it pasted as a table. Now, it just pastes the text with generic font & no formatting except paragraph breaks. I completely lose the table.
It seems this app has gotten more bare-bones rather than feature-full. It’s good enough, but if I have an Office subscription, I expect a little more.
