Microsoft Adding Real Time Editing to Office Web Application Suite

Hot on the heels of Apple’s iWork for Web announcement at WWDC last week and the release of Microsoft Office Mobile for iPhone, Microsoft has just announced that they will soon be rolling out real time editing functionality to their Office web application suite, which is available free for Outlook.com and Office 365 users. The new functionality was demonstrated on the Office Garage Series YouTube account, and works more or less as you would expect with different users designated by different colored cursors.

The new feature will be coming within a “couple of months,” and is obviously meant to better compete against Google Docs, which also contains very comprehensive live editing capabilities. Microsoft is also adding numerous other new features to their Office Web Suite, including find and replace, header and footer editing, and the ability to view comments. Excel users will also gain the ability to autofill tables as well as data validation support.

Microsoft is also scheduled to be bringing several new updates to their overall Office 2013 lineup later this year, including bringing Outlook 2013 to Windows RT for users of Microsoft’s ARM based operating system, as well as other larger updates in the form of their Microsoft Office “Blue” update. Microsoft is holding their annual Build developer conference on June 26th where they will likely be revealing more about the future of not online Microsoft Office, but also Windows, Windows Server, and Windows Phone.