It was around this time last year when I kindly treated myself to an iPad Air 2 and spent the subsequent months engaging in the activities of a typical, casual tablet user: browsing, listening to music and podcasts, spending too much time on social media, performing some menial word processing tasks and so on. However, over the last few months I’ve noticed that my usage has taken a turn in an interesting direction, particularly in relation to the latter activity – the last two significant Apps that I have downloaded are Microsoft Word and Excel!
The main cause of this shift was my school’s involvement in a new Erasmus Plus project, A Digital Journey in Europe (I might elaborate on this in a future post!). Our school is the main coordinating partner and as part of the lead team I needed my iPad for its office and productivity suite. However for me, the iWork suite continually fell short and it was only when I downloaded the relevant Office Apps did I experience true proper productivity. 
It is possible to get Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook and OneNote applications, among others, optimised for your iPad and iPad Pro (Office on your iPad).
The main applications which I am concerned with here are the main stalwarts, Word and Excel and to a lesser degree, PowerPoint and Outlook.
Microsoft built these Office Apps specifically for the iPad and it shows. They are fast, fluid, easy to perform simple tasks on and also capable of more detailed and complicated outputs.
Users can download each, free of charge, from Apple’s iTunes on a device running iOS 8.0 or above. Documents, sheets etc. can be viewed for free and to create and edit documents or spreadsheets a qualifying Office 365 subscription is required.
Happy holidays to all!