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Office for Android gets help and more

The stream of updates (or feature ‘catch up’ depending on your point of view) continues with Office for Android getting the ‘Tell me’ help system that’s already in other incarnations of Office.

The ‘Tell me’ icon is a lightbulb.  Office for Android (Word, Excel and PowerPoint) has it on the editing toolbar.  Tap on the pencil/letter icon on the top row then the lightbulb next to the toolbar list.

Type in a question or keywords and a series of suggested answers will appear.  If they don’t work, tap enter for a broader search.   Ideally Tell Me should figure out what you want and when you tap on an answer, it will take you to the correct menu or option.  Tell Me usually requires internet access.

Reply with edited document

Reply with edited document means you can edit an Office document attachment and send it back as part of the same email thread.  It seems this requires the Outlook app to work.

Merge / Split Cells

Word for Android can now merge and split cells

Tables can be edited using the nifty table handles that we’ve mentioned before.

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The darker arrow is an enlarged pointer to the current insertion point or boundaries for a selection.

Drag the bottom right icon to resize the entire table.

Tap on the grey area above a column to see more handles for the column or tap the left grey area to select a row/s.

Tab the top left block to select the entire worksheet.

The Plus symbol to add a row or column isn’t in the current Word for Android release.

Excel

Excel for Android now has better autocomplete which is invaluable for making consistent lists.

Grouped rows or columns can be expanded or collapsed.

PowerPoint

The only documented change in PowerPoint is the addition of ‘Tell Me’.

If you have the Office for Android apps already, they have probably been updated automatically.

Office for Android install links via Google Play:  Word   Excel   PowerPoint

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