Office Remote lets you control PowerPoint, Word, and Excel using a Windows Phone

Office Remote app for Windows Phone

Microsoft makes available for download Office Remote, a new Windows Phone 8 app that allows users to easily control Office 2013 (except Office RT 2013) documents from PowerPoint, Word, and Excel via Bluetooth-enabled Windows 8 or Windows 7 PCs.

Controlling documents wirelessly with your Windows Phone is a two piece puzzle: first you’ll need to download Office Remote from the Windows Phone Store, and second you also need to install Microsoft Office Remote PC Setup add-in (or plugin) in your PC. Follow the setup, you will only need to launch Word, Excel, or a PowerPoint presentation and then just fire up the app in your phone.

Here is a video from the Office team that shows how to use Office Remote with PowerPoint in Windows 8.1:

Using the app with PowerPoint, you can move between slides, view notes, and even control an on-screen laser pointer over the presentation using your phone display as a touchpad. On a Word document you can scroll through and easily jump between sections. Finally using an Excel spreadsheet you can navigate between graphs and worksheets, and control data sliders.

Office Remote feature set:

PowerPoint:

  • Jump to the next, previous, and last slide
  • View slide thumbnails and jump to a slide
  • View speaker notes on phone
  • View presentation timer and slide numbers
  • Laser pointer using touch on your phone

Excel:

  • Change worksheets by swiping
  • Use Slicers, PivotTable, and Filters
  • Jump to any named object in your workbook
  • Move up or down the worksheet
  • Change the zoom level

Word:

  • Jump to headings
  • Jump to comments
  • Screen up/down
  • Line up/down
  • Change the zoom level

According to the software giant, Office Remote is one of the first attempt to what Microsoft Research defines as “diverse society of devices”, which is “where you use not only the right device for the task at hand, but, potentially, also use multiple devices together to make it easier to achieve your goals.”. And the company has more plans to bring even more productivity tools in the future; for now at least, you can WOW your boss or potential customer with great Office 2013 presentation using your Windows phone without wires.

About the author

Mauro Huculak is a Windows How-To Expert who started Pureinfotech in 2010 as an independent online publication. He has also been a Windows Central contributor for nearly a decade. Mauro has over 14 years of experience writing comprehensive guides and creating professional videos about Windows and software, including Android and Linux. Before becoming a technology writer, he was an IT administrator for seven years. In total, Mauro has over 20 years of combined experience in technology. Throughout his career, he achieved different professional certifications from Microsoft (MSCA), Cisco (CCNP), VMware (VCP), and CompTIA (A+ and Network+), and he has been recognized as a Microsoft MVP for many years. You can follow him on X (Twitter), YouTube, LinkedIn and About.me.