Dynamic watermarking is now available for Android and iOS Word, Excel, and PowerPoint apps

In July, Microsoft announced that members of its Microsoft 365 Insider program could try out a new feature that is designed to help with security when businesses want to keep its content safe when they are shown in Word, Excel, and PowerPoint apps.

The new feature lets businesses who have bought a license for sensitivity labels in Microsoft 365 apps automatically place a dynamic watermark whenever such a label is placed on a Word, Excel, or PowerPoint document.

This week, Microsoft announced another preview that expanded this new dynamic watermark when a sensitivity label is placed on documents that are viewed in the Android and iOS apps for Word, PowerPoint, and Excel.

In a blog post Microsoft stated:

With the Android and iOS release, you can now label files with dynamic watermarking-enabled labels and view, edit, and collaborate on these files regardless of which platform you’re using.

In addition to supporting the Android and iOS apps with the watermarking feature, businesses can now add a date and time to that watermark as well. The blog post states:

Adding a date-time variable to the dynamic watermark string enables admins to know precisely when leaked information was captured.

As with the previous release for the main Word, Excel, and PowerPoint apps, anyone who tries to get rid of these watermarks on the iOS and Android versions won't be able to do so until the company's admins grant them special permission to get rid of the marks. Also, anyone who tries to access a file with these dynamic watermarks in a version of Microsoft 365 that does not support the feature will instead see an "access denied" message.

This feature is still in a public preview, so there could still be some changes made. There's no word on when the Android and iOS Microsoft 365 watermark feature will reach general availability.