Microsoft is helping to make Apple’s iPad a little friendlier as a laptop replacement. On Monday, the company announced it’s adding better controls for when an iPad owner is running Word, Excel and PowerPoint using a mouse or trackpad.
The update is designed to take full advantage of the trackpad and mouse support on the iPadOS, which was introduced in version 13.4 back in March. The support has paved the way for iPad owners to run the tablets more like a PC by using a Bluetooth-powered mouse or trackpad to control a cursor on the screen.
Now Microsoft is releasing updates to the company’s Office apps that are designed to take full advantage of the trackpad and mouse support. The main change is how cursor operates over the Word, Excel and PowerPoint apps: it can now change into the appropriate tool depending on the content you’re pointing to.
Microsoft has uploaded an image, demonstrating the function in action. As you can see, the cursor changes into a resizing icon when hovering over a picture’s edges in Word, enabling easy access to adjust the image’s size.
“And using a mouse or trackpad with iPad for common tasks like highlighting a passage of text in Word, selecting a range of cells in Excel, and moving and resizing graphics in PowerPoint are as simple and intuitive as ever,” wrote Bill Doll, Microsoft product marketing manager in the announcement.
“This experience will be immediately familiar to anyone who has ever used Office on a Mac or a PC and helps make iPad even more versatile and capable for getting more work done,” he added.
Alongside the mouse and trackpad support, the company has updated the start screens and ribbon icons on Word, Excel and PowerPoint for a cleaner look.
According to Doll, Microsoft has already been releasing the updates to iPad owners. The full roll out is expected to be completed within two weeks.
