In early 2014, Microsoft started providing Office 365 users with the option to secure their accounts with multi-factor authentication. When signing in, folks have to respond to a phone call, text message, or phone notification after entering their password. The feature has since worked on PCs and smartphones, but when Office came to Android tablets, support was absent.

According to the identical changelogs accompanying the latest versions of Microsoft Word, Excel, and PowerPoint for tablets, that has changed.

What's new:

  • Multi-factor authentication for Office 365 accounts.
  • Support of Mobile Application Management with Microsoft Intune. This enables IT administrators to (1) restrict copying of company data from managed Office apps to personal apps, (2) enable app level encryption, (3) enforce an app level PIN, and (4) selectively wipe managed apps and related data on a device.
  • Bug fixes and performance improvements.

This effectively opens up all three Microsoft Office tablet apps to a subset of users who previously went without. And considering the sensitive circumstances under which many users fire up Office, this is for the best.