Microsoft Research has just developed a nice little app that turns your Windows Phone into a remote device for controlling MS Office documents on your PC. The use of the remote app with the Windows phone as a carrier has many practical uses when working with Word, Excel, and PowerPoint. With the phone in your hand, you can control the presentation by going back and forth between slides; or bring up supporting Word document; or illustrate a point on a spreadsheet.

The Office Remote has been spawned from the minds of the Microsoft Research team and the Microsoft Office engineering team. Bert Van Hoof, an Office group program manager elaborated on its utility.

“With Office Remote, you can start your PowerPoint presentation, advance the slides, see your speaker notes, and control an on-screen laser pointer with a touch of your finger—all from your phone. You can also navigate between Excel worksheets and graphs, and control data slicers from the palm of your hand. And you can scroll through a Word document or quickly jump to specific sections or comments.”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wAXZFwi5CmI

These are not the only interactions possible with the app. The blog announcement also mentions other usage examples like zoom control and scrolling a document line by line. The aim of the development is to allow natural interaction between multiple devices.

The Office Remote is available for download from the Windows Phone Store. Minimum requirements include a Windows Phone 8 device, Office 2013 (all versions except Office 2013 RT), a Bluetooth-enabled PC, and the installation of a desktop add-in for Office Remote on your PC.

Try it out and offer your feedback below.

Source: Microsoft Blog [Broken URL Removed]