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Accessing Office365 SharePoint Online and Office Web Apps on an iPad

I decided to write this follow up about exactly that…accessing SharePoint and Office Web Apps on an iPad

The first step of course is opening Safari and typing in the URL of your SharePoint (SP) site. This initially redirects you to the authentication portal

(login.microsoftonline.com) where you enter your username/password. If your domain is federated these are your AD credentials:

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SharePoint

After signing in, the SP start page opens:

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As you can see this looks pretty good.

I found navigating around the sites works very smoothly, see some screens below:

The default Calendar view:

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And a default Document Library:

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Also, editing a site through the 2010 Ribbon works:

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During my browsing through the sites I noticed it went really smoothly, it will be very easy to create a SP site layout and design that is specifically oriented

towards touch control.

Office Web Apps

For accessing Office documents from, for example, a Document library we have the option to use Office Web Apps.

These will be available by default in the O365 for Enterprise E1 subscription to view only.

If you also want to edit using Office Web Apps you’ll need to be on O365 E2 subscription.

So let’s go ahead and open some Office docs on an iPad for viewing:

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A Word Document:

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An Excel sheet:

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A PowerPoint presentation:

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Notice that every document maintains the rich contents; pictures, tables, text formatting, graphs, etc. Very impressive.

Also, it feels pretty good on an iPad, there’s no ‘swiping’ to the next page or any other gesture controls, but I felt comfortable using the standard button

controls.

Editing documents…here’s a catch.

On an iPad, editing only works in Excel. Not in Word, PPT or OneNote.

This is actually a limitation in the iPad/Safari software; it simply does not recognize the ‘typing areas’ in Word, PPT and OneNote as text entering areas. So

when you select the canvas in Word to start typing…Safari does not recognize it as a text entering area and will not give you the option to use the keyboard.

From sources…I hear that MS and Apple are aware of this and working on fixing this. I’m pretty sure this limitation will go away since Apple’s mobile stuff is

showing up everywhere, including corporations.

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But for now…all I can show you is editing an Excel file in Excel Web App on an iPad:

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Concluding

On an iPad:

SharePoint all OOTB functionality: CHECK

Office Web Apps viewing: CHECK

Excel Web App editing: CHECK

Word, PPT and OneNote editing: nope