As you probably know, Microsoft Office Apps for iPad are now available for download. The apps are free, but you will need a Microsoft OneDrive account to edit or create documents. Word, Excel, and Powerpoint are beautifully crafted apps for the iPad, but there’s a feature that wasn’t included in the first version. This is print. Yes, there is no native way to print from the Apps themselves. After some tinkering and squirming about the fact that we don’t have as much pressure as we used to, Microsoft has admitted That this will likely be a feature included in a future update.
So what do you do if you need to print an Office document from your iPad? The answer is to find an App that will do this for you. There are many Apps that will let you print from your iPad, but I will focus on two that offer two different solutions for how to print Office documents for iPad.
called the first Printer Specialist and made by Readdle. The app itself costs $6.99, but a free Lite version You can download it to see if it works with your printer, so you don’t have to pay the freight to find out. Printer Pro works with any App in which you can create documents and works as most iOS users expect.
To use Printer Pro, download the App and then select Add Printer to add your printer to the list.
Again, there is a Lite version you can use to test if your printer is working properly. If you download and use the lite version, the paid version will import your installed printers from this version.
When you create a document in a Microsoft Office Application, it is saved to your OneDrive account. Open the OneDrive App and select and open the document. Once in the document, go to the lower left corner of the screen and select the three circles in the lower taskbar.
This will present you with your document or option or . Select This will open a small window where you can scroll to see which Apps you can open your document in. Scroll until you find Printer Pro and select it. Your document will open in Printer Pro.
There are several printer options to choose from, and you can also select the printer you want to print your document to. Once you’ve chosen your options, press the big blue Print button and your document should reach your printer’s output tray.
Another alternative is called ThinPrint Cloud Printer. After installing the ThinPrint Cloud Printer, the printing procedure is as described above, but the installation is quite different.
ThinPrint Cloud Printer requires you to create an account and download a small “connected to your printer” application for your computer. I’m not sure why this step is necessary in this era of wireless printing, but it is. Note that to install this ThinPrint app on a Mac, you will need to change your download security settings as it is not a properly signed App.
After you create an account and install the utility on your computer, you open the document in OneDrive and then select ThinPrint. The document will then be printed.
Of course, you can open the document from OneDrive on your computer and print it from there. You can print from any other App that takes advantage of the “Open” functionality of iOS, such as Printer Pro.
You could argue that Microsoft should add a print functionality to this first version and you haven’t heard too many complaints. However, until an update brings this native functionality to Word, Excel, and Powerpoint for the iPad, these are the two ways to print hard copies of your documents.
Note that there are other similar printing Apps for iPad that will work just as well. Some also include a free version, like Printer Pro Lite, that lets you test your printer before you buy it.