Business App of the Week: Office Remote

Office Remote: Turn Your Windows Smartphone Into A Presentation Remote

How often do you present information in meetings using a Microsoft Office product? For most business users, the answer is likely "very often," despite the recent proliferation of other viable options. If you have a smartphone running Windows Phone 8, Microsoft's Office Remote app allows you to control presentations of Word, Excel, and PowerPoint files from your PC. By connecting to your PC via Bluetooth, Office Remote lets you change PowerPoint slides, scroll through Word documents, and jump around in Excel spreadsheets. Our testing showed that the app actually works quite well, with good responsiveness over bluetooth.

Availability and Pricing

The good news is that Office Remote is free. The bad news is that its availability is limited. Not only is it only available on the Windows Phone 8 platform, but it also only works with Microsoft Office 2013--not with Office 2013 RT or earlier versions of Office. Still, if users have both Office 2013 and a Windows smartphone, this free app is probably a no-brainer.