Windows Phone 8 App: Office Remote – Remote Control to Your Office Application

0

Microsoft recently released a pretty cool Windows Phone 8 App, called Office Remote, that allows you to use your Windows Phone handset as a smart remote to interact with Office Applications on your Bluetooth-powered desktop, such as remote-controlling your Word, Excel, and PowerPoint from across the room so you can walk freely during the presentation. I’ve been testing this new cool app for a few days and found it’s quite entertaining and could be quite useful, if you have all required devices handy.

What you need

Well, you will need a few things to get this to work:

  • A Windows Phone 8 handset
  • A Bluetooth powered computer
  • Office 2013 (RT not included)

It won’t work with other mobile platform, or other version of Office, including the version of Office 2013 that comes with Windows RT. So that’s why I couldn’t get it to work on my Surface RT…a big deal to me.

Before you to get start

You will need to install a tiny Office 2013 add-in onto the PC you want to remote control. You will see a new Office Remote tab once you installed it.

You will also need to pair the PC with the Windows Phone handset via Bluetooth first before you get started.

Now let’s play

On Computer that runs Office 2013, go to Office Remote tab, and click Turn On.

Office Remote desktop plugin - Windows Phone 8 App: Office Remote - Remote Control to Your Office Application

On Windows Phone handset, launch Office Remote app, select a device and connect.

Depending on which office application you have turned on Remote, you will see a different interface on the handset to remote interactive with the application. If you are communicating with a PowerPoint presentation, you will see something like this on your phone.

Office Remote PowerPoint - Windows Phone 8 App: Office Remote - Remote Control to Your Office Application

Tapping the arrows on the phone will result in the page movements on the main computer that runs the presentation. What’s better than a USB pointer is that if you have the notes written in the PPT file, you will see them right from your phone.

I was quite impressed when I got everything connected and worked. If you happen to have a Windows Phone handset handy and a computer that has Bluetooth you will definitely have to try this.

LEAVE A REPLY

Please enter your comment!
Please enter your name here