Office Mobile is an office suite by Microsoft for Windows Mobile Professional, Classic, and Standard editions. It consists of Word Mobile, Excel Mobile, PowerPoint Mobile, OneNote Mobile, and Outlook Mobile. It is meant to be compatible with desktop versions of the office suite. Office Mobile originally debuted as Pocket Office on the Pocket PC 2000 operating system in April of 2000. It has since been updated several times. The present version is Office Mobile 6.1, and was released on September 26, 2007.

History

Office Mobile originally shipped as "Pocket Office", and was released by Microsoft with the Pocket PC 2000 operating system in April of 2000. This release was specifically for the Pocket PC hardware platform, as Microsoft's Smartphone hardware specification had not yet been released. It consisted of Pocket Word, Pocket Excel, and Pocket Outlook. With steady updates throughout subsequent releases of Windows Mobile, Office Mobile was rebranded as its current name after the release of the Windows Mobile 5.0 operating system. This release of Office Mobile also included PowerPoint Mobile for the first time. Accompanying the release of Microsoft OneNote 2007, a new optional addition to the Office Mobile line of programs was released as OneNote Mobile. With the release of Windows Mobile 6 Standard, Office Mobile became available for the Smartphone hardware platform, however unlike Office Mobile for the Professional and Classic versions of Windows Mobile, creation of new documents is not an added feature.

In June of 2007, Microsoft announced a new version of the office suite, Office Mobile 2007. It became available as "Office Mobile 6.1" on September 26, 2007 as a free upgrade download to current Windows Mobile 5.0 and 6 users. However, "Office Mobile 6.1 Upgrade" is not compatible with Windows Mobile 5.0 powered devices running builds earlier than 14847. It will also be a pre-installed feature in subsequent releases of Windows Mobile 6 devices. Office Mobile 6.1 is compatible with the Office Open XML specification like its desktop counterpart.

Programs

Word Mobile

Word Mobile running on Windows Mobile 6 Professional

Word Mobile, originally called Pocket Word, has been included with the Office Mobile suite since the release of the Pocket PC in 2000. It is a word processor program with similar functions to its desktop counterpart, Microsoft Word. Word Mobile allows for basic formatting of documents, and has the ability to save documents in multiple formats including Rich Text Format, Microsoft's DOC format for reading on desktop versions of Word, and simple Text files. While it is possible to open legacy PSW (Pocket Word) files on the current version of Word Mobile, such files must be saved as another supported format. Word Mobile also allows for insertion of pictures, lists, and tables to documents, however pictures must be added on the desktop version of Word, and can't be moved. Additionally, Word Mobile includes a spell checker, word count tool, and a "Find and Replace" command. footnotes, endnotes, headers, footers, page breaks, certain indentation of lists, and certain fonts, while not displayed nor able to be inserted while working on a document in Word Mobile, such features are retained if the original document has them.

Excel Mobile

Excel Mobile running on Windows Mobile 6 Professional

Like Word Mobile, Excel Mobile was one of the original programs included in Office Mobile at its release. It is a spreadsheet program that is compatible with Microsoft Excel, and can create, open, edit, and save in Microsoft's '.xls' spreadsheet format. Excel Mobile allows for formatting of cells, basic calculations of formulas, and the creation of charts or graphs. As a means of dealing with limited screen resolution, Excel Mobile also has the ability to use a full-screen mode. In addition, it supports filtering of data and split panes to view different parts of a worksheet at one time. Protection settings, zoom settings, autofilter settings, certain chart formatting, hidden sheets, and other features are not supported on Excel Mobile, and will be modified upon opening and saving a workbook.

Outlook Mobile

Outlook Mobile's Calendar program running on Windows Mobile 6 Professional

Outlook Mobile is a personal information manager. Unlike the rest of the Office Mobile suite, Outlook Mobile does not consist of a single application on the Windows Mobile platform, and instead has several separate programs: Messaging, Calendar, Contacts, and Tasks. It synchronizes e-mail, appointments, contacts, and tasks from the desktop version of Outlook. It is compatible with neither Windows Calendar, Windows Mail, nor Windows Contacts. Outlook Mobile is also capable of bypassing synchronization with its desktop counterpart, and interact directly with Microsoft Exchange Server. This direct interaction allows for an always-on E-mail connection, frequently referred to as Push e-mail.

Messaging

Outlook Mobile's Messaging application includes the following features:

Push e-mail using Microsoft Exchange Server

Microsoft Outlook folder synchronization

SMS messaging on phones

MMS messaging on phones

Windows Live Hotmail support

POP support

IMAP support

E-mail attachment support

HTML e-mail support

Exchange searching

Calendar

Outlook Mobile's Calendar application includes the following features:

vCal support

Agenda, Day, Week, Month, Year, and Lunar calendar views

Category support

Microsoft Exchange Server support

Reminders and Alarms

Contacts

Outlook Mobile's Contacts application includes the following features:

vCard support

Category support

Contact searching

Exchange searching

Contact photos

Ringtone assignment for contacts on phones

Tasks

Outlook Mobile's Tasks application includes the following features:

Category support

Priority status of tasks

Sensitivity status of tasks

Reminders

PowerPoint Mobile

PowerPoint Mobile was included with the release of the Windows Mobile 5.0 operating system. It is a presentation program capable of reading presentation documents from Microsoft PowerPoint. Unlike Word and Excel Mobile, PowerPoint Mobile is unable to create or edit new documents. Although essentially only a PowerPoint viewer, PowerPoint Mobile also allows for a zooming option to deal with limited screen resolution.

OneNote Mobile

OneNote Mobile running on Windows Mobile 6 Professional

Originally released with the Microsoft Office 2007 Beta, OneNote Mobile is a notetaking program that synchronizes with Microsoft OneNote. OneNote Mobile allows for basic formatting of text, the insertion of media such as pictures or audio recordings, creation of lists, and the use of hyperlinks within documents. Pictures and audio recordings may be taken directly from the program with a built-in camera and microphone respectively.