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.
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.
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.
Track Changes Nightmare
By writer in dire straits
I have been using this app on my iPad since it became available and have had minor issues here and there that were easy to overlook, but this one is making my work life miserable as I am very dependent on this feature. About 6 weeks ago it started losing the option of seeing All Markup in balloons if the app was open for very long, if I navigated away from it, or if I closed it and reopened it later. The only way to regain this option is to delete and reinstall each time I need to edit a document ... and since writing and editing are what I do for a living, this is untenable, but I don’t have a better option at the moment. Even with this glitch Word is still, unfortunately, the best way to create, edit, and share documents with others who are on other types of devices and platforms. I really wish Pages were more compatible with PCs and had a more user-friendly tracking function. Forget about Google Docs. I don’t have one good thing to say about it. I have asked both Microsoft and Apple for help. Apple can’t do anything because it’s not on their end. Microsoft is clueless and really didn’t seem interested in trying to help find a solution.
The most important feature won’t work on the Mac!
By Totally Confused...
I’ve been using Microsoft software since 1987. When I switched to Mac, it was only because I could get a subscription to Office 365 and continue to use Word. Imagine my surprise to discover - after hours on the phone with Apple Support and Microsoft Support - the auto-save function will ONLY work if you use One Drive. I didn’t move over to Mac to use Microsoft storage. I want everything in iCloud because it makes sense to have one unified storage location. Yes, I can still hit file/save every ten minutes - but I shouldn’t have to deal with that distraction because I paid to get an app that would work on my computer. The inconvenience of this demand is making me consider moving over to all of the apple products. Pages isn’t that different from Word - in a lot of ways, it’s even better. So, here’s my official request, Microsoft. If you’re going to make people pay for your product, you don’t get to insist how they use it. Open that feature so we can save to the iCloud! If you have to demand that we use a product like One Drive, you’re admitting that it’s just not good enough to attract Mac users on its own merits. Fix this please!
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!
File location/Search/Properties issue
By MD922
For the most part, I love Microsoft Word. However if I don’t remember where I put a file and I haven’t used it for a while it won’t show up in my recent and I have the hardest time trying to find it. It would be nice if you could search through all the locations that you have saved in the locations spot instead of going to each one separately to find your missing file.
Once I found my file, which I did not find through Microsoft word (I had to go to my files on my iPhone where I found the file quickly since it was in the cloud from my Mac desktop), I was unable to open it up.
HOWEVER, I cannot find anywhere under file properties or anywhere else where I can find where it is located, it should be in the file properties section, also it would be really handy if they allowed you to click from there to change the location of where you keep your file.
Great for collaborating across devices
By Leo Steveyeo
I have devices I use at home, at work, and volunteer places where I do not necessarily own all devices. I usually use a USB drive but, remembering where I keep that small USB drive is much burdensome. Many times, I could not locate my USB drive. Using OneDrive and having 5 users access is a convenience, the price, over $100 a year is a little high, thou. I litterally have access to more than 5 devices.
Now, when my Phone becomes more than a phone, I really like to see Word to be more easy to edit text using iPhone. I tried editing text on a document using my iPhone, I was able to edit it. However, when I open it on a PC, the line that I typed in using my iPhone has a different format than other text in the same document. Selecting text, and editing tables or that with shapes are not very much easy on iPhone which might have a lot to do with iPhone structure. But, I really want to see improvement on this area which Microsoft could possibly eliminate barriers and add more user friendly features for Word on iPhone.
About halfway there
By k-ledge
I use this app everyday and for the most part - it works if you’re doing basic documents. However, when working with bullets and numbering, sometimes it chokes if a custom spacing/tabbing has been setup using the desktop version of Word.
If you create a graph such as a hierarchy in the desktop version, it will display in the iOS version but it cannot be modified - not even on the iPad Pro - which is what I use.
It should cache your last document you worked on locally so that you don’t have to reload it when you return. This is important for iOS because of how you have to app switch.
The funny thing is that before loading the app, I was able to access the more full featured web version of Word in Safari on iOS and it worked for the most part. Which led me to believe that there is still a lot of potential for the iOS version.
For tables, there should be a button on the table to add more columns or rows - Apple’s Pages does that really well and saves the extra touches and strokes.
A touch interface is just different than a mouse interface. I think if the product manager was forced to use the iOS version for a month they might make some changes to add features in a way that makes sense for a true touch environment even if it’s slightly different than the desktop version.
More and more people are making a touch interface their primary device which means that fewer compromises will need to be made.
