Install Microsoft Excel for iPad app
Run the app for the first time
Activation
What are my options if I don’t activate?
What happens if I activate the app and change the signed in user? Does the app stays activated?
How can I remove the activation?
When I sign in using the Office 365 account, Microsoft Excel for iPad automatically is adding Office 365 OneDrive (cloud) and the Office 365 SharePoint Team Site (cloud) to my default Open locations and Connected Services. Can I do something to not have them automatically added?
Connecting to a SharePoint Team Site
Create and move documents to a SharePoint Team Site
Excel – co-authoring using Microsoft Office Web Apps
Install Microsoft Excel for iPad app
In App Store locate the Microsoft Excel for iPad app and install it.
Run the app for the first time
Activation
Microsoft Excel for iPad is a free app. As a free app it allows you to open the Microsoft Excel documents in read-only mode. So, activating the app is not really required.
In case you want to perform changes (enable the editing mode) you need to activate the app. The activation is performed one time and is valid for all the Microsoft for iOS apps (e.g.: if you activate Excel app, you will not be requested to perform again the activation for Word app, or PowerPoint app). The activation details are identical with Microsoft Word for iPad app. More details can be found in the Collaborate using Microsoft Word for iPad app (on-premises) article.
What are my options if I don’t activate?
As mentioned in the activation section – the app allows you to open the Microsoft Excel documents in read-only mode. In case the activation hasn’t been performed, the shopping cart icon will be visible in the left down corner of the screen.
Opening a Microsoft Excel attachment is simple. Perform a long tap on the attachment and chose to open the document using the Excel app.
What happens if I activate the app and change the signed in user? Does the app stays activated?
The application stays activated.
Let’s assume you have an Office 365 account. You can use it to activate the app, sign out and sign in using a regular @hotmail.com/@outlook.com account. The editing functionality remains active.
How can I remove the activation?
Settings -> Excel -> Reset Excel. The reset will actually take place the next time when the user quits and restarts the app.
When I sign in using the Office 365 account, Microsoft Excel for iPad automatically is adding Office 365 OneDrive (cloud) and the Office 365 SharePoint Team Site (cloud) to my default Open locations and Connected Services. Can I do something to not have them automatically added?
Microsoft is interested to promote their cloud services. When you sign in using the Office 365 account, Microsoft Excel for iPad automatically is adding Office 365 OneDrive (cloud) and the Office 365 SharePoint Team Site (cloud) to your default Open locations and Connected Services (illustrated in the bellow picture). The companies who are working with client data and who are forced by contractual agreements to host the data on-premises will be concerned the users will get confused, and most likely will save the confidential documents on Office 365 cloud.
It is possible to configure the Office 365 user account to not be licensed for any SharePoint Online plan (Office 365 Admin Center -> Users & Groups -> Active Users -> click on the impacted user -> Licenses).
This will make the Microsoft Excel for iPad to not add Office 365 OneDrive (cloud) and the Office 365 SharePoint Team Site (cloud) to your default Open locations.
Connecting to a SharePoint Team Site
Create and move documents to a SharePoint Team Site
You have the possibility to save the document directly to the SharePoint Team Site (on-premises).
If you are offline, you can save the document on the iPad and later move it to the SharePoint Team Site (on-premises).
Excel – co-authoring using Microsoft Office Web Apps
At the end of this article I will present how the co-authoring works for Excel. I will take a general situation where three users are editing the same file in the same time.
Compared with Word and PowerPoint, co-authoring in Excel is not performed through the iOS app. Co-authoring is performed only through Microsoft Office Web Apps. All the users will perform the editing directly in the browser.
Again, co-authoring in Excel doesn’t require any kind of iOS app to be installed. I will present it in this article simply because co-authoring is possible using Safari (iPad).
Let’s take the following scenario.
The on-premises environment composed by:
- Microsoft SharePoint 2013
- Microsoft Office Web Apps 2013
- VPN solution supported by iPad
The VPN is not really a requirement if the user is able to reach the SharePoint and Office Web App server only through the Wi-Fi connection, but in our scenario we consider the iOS user as being remote (outside the intranet corporate network).
Three users:
- User 1: Viorel Iftode – iOS user + VPN;
- User 2: Gigel Popescu – Windows 8.1 + Internet Explorer 11;
- User 3: John Smith – Windows 8.1 + Internet Explorer 11;
Scenario:
- Gigel Popescu (Windows 8.1 + Internet Explorer 11) starts editing in the browser (Microsoft Excel Web App) the MS Office Excel sample.xlsx.
- Viorel Iftode (iOS user) starts editing in the browser the same document (MS Office Excel sample.xlsx). Both users are getting notified about each other’s presence.
- John Smith (Windows 8.1 + Internet Explorer 11) is joining the MS Office Excel sample.xlsx editing using Microsoft Office Web Apps. All three users are getting notified about each other’s presence.
- Gigel Popescu (Windows 8.1 + Internet Explorer 11) is performing document changes (updates the 2010 year value from 200 to 230). The other two authors (Viorel Iftode and John Smith) will automatically see the changes.
- Viorel Iftode (iOS user) is performing document changes (updates the 2011 year value from 250 to 270). The other two authors (Gigel Popescu and John Smith) will automatically see the changes.
- John Smith (Windows 8.1 + Internet Explorer 11) is performing document changes (updates the 2012 year value from 240 to 290). The other two authors (Gigel Popescu and Viorel Iftode) will automatically see the changes.
Gigel Popescu (Windows 8.1 + Internet Explorer 11) starts editing in the browser (Microsoft Excel Web App) the MS Office Excel sample.xlsx.
Viorel Iftode (iOS user) starts editing in the browser the same document (MS Office Excel sample.xlsx). He is getting notified he’s not editing alone the document.
Gigel Popescu is also getting notified about the presence of Viorel Iftode.
John Smith (Windows 8.1 + Internet Explorer 11) is joining the MS Office Excel sample.xlsx editing using Microsoft Office Web Apps. He is getting notified he’s not editing alone the document.
Gigel Popescu (Windows 8.1 + Internet Explorer 11) and Viorel Iftode (iOS user) are notified about the presence of John Smith.
Gigel Popescu (Windows 8.1 + Internet Explorer 11) is performing document changes (updates the 2010 year value from 200 to 230).
Please note the changes performed by Gigel Popescu are already visible for Viorel Iftode.
Viorel Iftode (iOS user) is performing document changes (updates the 2011 year value from 250 to 270).
Please note the changes performed by Gigel Popescu and Viorel Iftode are already visible for John Smith.
John Smith (Windows 8.1 + Internet Explorer 11) is performing document changes (updates the 2012 year value from 240 to 290). The other two authors (Gigel Popescu and Viorel Iftode) will automatically see the changes.
