Your Android smartphone could be your biggest Word or PowerPoint helper

Microsoft has announced a new, more convenient way to pull images from Android devices, such as smartphones, into documents and spreadsheets made with the web versions of Word and Powerpoint found in Microsoft 365.

In a post on the Office Insiders blog, the company revealed that it will soon be possible for users of Microsoft’s online online collaboration tool to link their Android photo libraries to a Microsoft account using a one-time set up process. 

For now, the feature is only available to personal users, in addition to enterprise and education organizations, who have opted into the Office Insiders program, which gives users early access to exciting but experimental new features within the company’s office software suite.

Microsoft 365 and Android integration

While at a glance this might seem like an exclusive club, with some business and education users may be out of luck due to their organization’s Microsoft Office configuration, it’s not too hard to enrol so long as a user has full control over their system. 

For personal users, the Office Insider program is a simple opt-in, to be found on the product information page within Microsoft 365.

Once that’s done, linking your Android photo library to your Microsoft account is a simple process, so long as your Android device has the means to scan a QR code with its camera and install the Link to Windows app on the Google Play Store. 

Luckily, these are features that will come as standard on most, if not all, recent business smartphones.

The new feature promises to be robust and intuitive, supporting the same image sizes, dimensions, and file types currently supported by Word and Powerpoint on the web. It will also allow users to replace existing images in documents with those on mobile devices.

The feature will eventually be available to all users of Office on the web who have a Microsoft 365 subscription, use an android phone, and, if they are using the Mozilla Firefox web browser, are using version 104.0 or later. 

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