Microsoft's unified Office experience comes to iPad

Microsoft's all-in-one Office app is now available on iPad almost a year to the day since it launched outside of preview on mobiles. For the uninitiated, the app combines the company's holy trinity of productivity tools (Word, Excel and PowerPoint) for people who want to work on the go.

While some Android tablets have always had access to the new Office, the absence of a fully optimized iPad app has been a glaring omission. The launch of the iPadOS version, spotted by The Verge, finally corrects that and means users no longer have to resort to the windowed mode or the individual Office apps — though Microsoft has been embellishing the latter with useful updates.

It's especially valuable for those looking to turn their iPad into a laptop replacement, with all the new productivity tools that the combined Office suite provides, including an Actions pane for document editing, the ability to quickly create and sign PDFs and change pictures into documents.