Two weeks ago, Microsoft began accepting applications for the Office Insider Program for iOS, which it had announced back in August. Today, the very first Fast ring build is available for the platform.
Each of the three announcements (one for Word, Excel, and PowerPoint) listed one major change, which is "a set of architectural updates that will help us improve each app for the future." Using these apps will help Microsoft to address issues with these changes, and you can give feedback by heading over to File -> Send Feedback.
As is always the case with a Fast ring build, there are some known issues. Here are the issues that are common across all three apps:
To run Office Insider builds, you must have iOS 10 installed on your device.
After returning from the background, you are unable to reopen your document. To work around this, look for your document under Recent in the Document Picker.
Adding Dropbox service is not working in this build.
Here are the additional known issues for Word:
Comments and tracked changes may not display correctly on the screen.
In documents with bulleted lists, the default bullet shape displays as a rectangle instead of a circle
These issues are exclusive to Excel:
If you type something into the formula bar and then switch to another app, you may lose what you typed. To avoid this, make sure to enter the formula before switching to the other app.
If you copy something in Excel, then copy something from another app and paste into Excel, it will paste what you copied in Excel rather than what you copied from the other app.
When inserting a chart, the preview images in the chart gallery thumbnails appear to overlap. If you select a thumbnail, the resulting chart will look normal.
If you have a file containing a PivotTable with slicers, the slicers may not appear when you open the file on your iPad or iPhone.
Finally, here are the known issues for PowerPoint:
In presentations with animations, some animations may not display correctly.
In presentations with comments, comment markers do not appear as they should.
The Apple Watch App is not yet supported.
Obviously, there are quite a few known issues to be aware of, so you might want to take that into consideration before installing them, as there really aren't any new front-facing features to test out.
If you haven't yet received your invitation into the Office Insider Program for iOS, Microsoft says not to worry. The company says that more invitations will be sent out in the coming weeks.
Source: Microsoft (1) (2) (3) | Image via MSPoweruser
