Get Microsoft Office for Symbian

Third party apps can be good, but they often don’t feel quite like the real thing. That’s why, as from today, you can download the Microsoft Office Mobile app right onto your Symbian smartphone.  
Until now you could only get the full Microsoft Office Mobile app on Windows Phone, but not anymore. We are happy to announce that from today, the Nokia 701, Nokia 700, Nokia 603, Nokia E7, Nokia X7, Nokia C7, Nokia Oro, and Nokia C6-01 will also get this much sought after collection of productivity apps. You can get them using the Nokia Software Update tool on your smartphone, or connecting your phone to the Nokia Suite on your PC.

Office Mobile apps will also be available from the Nokia Store in just a few weeks.

In February this year, we announced that OneNote, Lync 2010, Document Connection and PowerPoint Broadcast were available for Symbian. Now, Word Mobile, PowerPoint Mobile and Excel Mobile are the latest applications to join the suite of Microsoft Apps built especially for the latest Symbian smartphones.

Office Mobile apps gives you quick access to your documents so that you can get more done while on the go, or when you’re not using your laptop. And because these apps were created by Microsoft, the functionalities are as close as possible – if not the same – to the Microsoft Office apps on your PC.

If you’re a Word user, you’ll appreciate the fact that with Word mobile, you can save or send documents while preserving tables, SmartArt and charts, or the pinch/zoom functionality to easily view and edit documents.

In PowerPoint mobile, you can edit presentation texts and speaker notes, or use the Outline view to quickly browse through slides. With Excel mobile, you can create charts, or insert formulae and view rich data and charts from anywhere.

Another really convenient feature of Office Mobile is that it gives you a single view to documents – whether they’re stored on your phone as files, as email attachments, or on your company SharePoint site.

There are a variety of third party apps or native apps on other platforms that go as far as allowing you to edit, but in my opinion, it’s just not the same. If you’re working on a Word document, nothing beats using Microsoft’s own app. If Excel is your thing, then you will not settle for anything less than the ability to modify data by accessing more than 110 formulae.

It’s also useful to know that these apps aren’t just for show. Using apps that were developed, certified and tested by Microsoft to read your work email, share notes, chat with colleagues, download and edit Word, Excel or PowerPoint files, and send them – just to list a few of the most common things that people do these days with their smartphones – ensures that your documents are compatible when you switch from your PC to the mobile phone, and that you’re not introducing any viruses that may linger in third party apps.

In tech companies, we refer to apps that are deeply ingrained into the platform or which were built specifically for a platform as ‘native apps’. The person who runs IT in your company refers to them as ‘safe apps’. If you use them, you may simply refer to them as ‘really useful apps’.

Couple these apps with all-time Nokia favourites like Nokia Drive, Nokia Maps, Nokia Public Transport and more than 100,000 apps in the Nokia Store, and you have a smartphone powerhouse in your hands.

What do you think? If you have a Symbian smartphone that falls into the list mentioned in the first paragraph, tell us more about your experience. If you have a Nokia N8, Nokia E6 or Nokia 500, we will announce availability for these smartphones later. The Nokia 808 PureView will also come with all these apps when it begins selling. For more information on Mobile Office apps or the full suite of Microsoft productivity applications, check out the Nokia for Business site.