Microsoft office online apps now come with Skype

Microsoft Office Online apps come fully loaded with Skype. This is going to be immensely useful to most people. Microsoft Office is already among the most popular apps on both Android and Apple Store. But now there is one more reason to go for it as it comes preloaded with another very popular app.

This means that Office online users will now be able to collaborate with other users in real-time in either Microsoft Word or PowerPoint. The new feature will be rolled out only to Word Online and PowerPoint Online, which means Excel as well as OneNote are not on the fortune list, at least for the time being.

Microsoft has been focusing on cross-platform services and the cloud with increasing fervor ever since Steve Ballmer gave up his chair to Nadella. The Skype addition adds more functionality to the online Office apps. With it, users may carry on a chat with the same people with whom they were collaborating even after exiting the document in question.

This can be done via Skype for desktop or mobile. It’s not very clear right now, but it looks there will be some kind of notification system to tell users when their team members are working on the project, so that they can jump in if they wish to. The chat option will be made available via a special button in the upper right hand corner of the open application.

"It's perfect if you prefer using the web rather than an app: perhaps you're sitting at a computer that doesn't already have Skype downloaded," Microsoft said in its statement. The U.S. software giant also said, "Or maybe you're on the go and using an Internet cafe or hotel computer whilst on vacation where you can't download Skype at all."