Microsoft recently boosted its Office suite for the iPhone by offering finger-drawing support to PowerPoint, Excel and Word apps.
Earlier this year, the company behind Windows expanded the productivity suite by granting inking support to iPad Pro tablets, which let owners of the slates take full advantage of the Apple Pencil.
In a considerate move targeted at iPhone users, Microsoft now offers them the same level of doodling capabilities, removing the need for a pencil.
Each of the three productivity apps contains a Draw tab. With the help of the tools from the tab, iPhone owners can use either a stylus or their own fingers to write, highlight, annotate and draw over every Microsoft Office document available.
A full degree of customization is in place. Users can modify the thickness and color of the pen, and if the hand-drawn shapes are a bit confusing, they can also mutate them into customized shapes. An eraser tool is also in store, should you have misspelled a word or you're pretentious about the doodling process. Excel wizards should know that annotations can be placed over cells, and those who frequently use PowerPoint will now be able to draw over slides with ease.
If you haven't already, download Microsoft PowerPoint, Microsoft Word and Microsoft Excel from the App Store to get the basic productivity tools for your iPhone.
Something to keep in mind, though: the apps might be downloadable for free, but users must input a real Office 365 subscription to get free reign in creating and editing documents.
The doodling and inking support for iPhone and iPad are part of Microsoft's push to make Office the go-to solution for enterprise productivity, regardless of the ecosystem.
The company also made big strolls to boost its desktop and laptop Office variants, as well.
At the end of 2015, Microsoft gave Office an edge when it comes to collaboration by revealing plans to integrate Skype right into the Office Online apps. Skype Meeting Broadcast has allowed users to broadcast a Skype for Business meeting on the internet to an audience of 10,000 people max, making it ideal for communication between large teams from multinational corporations. Earlier that year, Office 2016 for Mac landed in 139 countries and was available in 16 languages.
By boosting its productivity suite with additions such as the Office-Skype integration and the doodle support, Microsoft is gunning for rivals such as Google's Apps for Work.
