Adobe and Microsoft Team Up to Integrate PDF Services into Office 365

Microsoft and Adobe have been in a partnership for some time, and recently teamed up once more to integrate Adobe’s PDF services into Office 365. The new integration will see PDF services added to the ribbon of Microsoft Word, PowerPoint, OneDrive, Excel, and SharePoint.

Although users were able to save Office documents as PDF files in the past, it required several menu steps. The new dedicated button in the ribbon will let users save documents in PDF or combine multiple files into a PDF document with a few clicks.

To benefit from the integration users will require an Adobe Document Cloud (DC) for teams and enterprises subscription as well as an Office 365 subscription. While the policy is subject to further changes, it is in line with Adobe and Microsoft targeting businesses with the integration – most of which already subscribe to both platforms.

Adobe’s goal is for businesses to have the option to create documents in any Office app and subsequently have it reviewed and signed within the app itself. Documents can be signed using Adobe Sign that was previously integrated into Microsoft Dynamics 365 as a result of their ongoing collaboration with Microsoft.

Any documents created in Office 365 that are saved as PDF files can be converted back to their original format in Office 365 with the integrated services as well. That will make it possible for them to be edited in their original form, and subsequently saved once again as a PDF.

The move is widely expected to appeal to businesses due to how extensively many already use Adobe DC and Office 365. It will allow teams to report, share, and collaborate PDF documents more easily within either the Adobe DC or Office 365 ecosystem. Overall Microsoft expects that it will represent an opportunity for businesses to streamline their workflow and save a significant amount of time.

Some individual users may benefit from it the integration as well, however the cost of entry will be prohibitive to individuals in most cases. For individual users a more basic tool to edit PDF documents is normally all that is needed, and for example many use Movavi PDF Editor to merge documents as described at https://pdf.movavi.com/how-to-merge-pdf-files.html.

Overall the new integration of PDF services to Office 365 is an indication of how close the partnership between Adobe and Microsoft has become. That partnership is likely to continue in the future seeing as the close relationship has benefited both parties so far.

On its part Adobe is committed to expanding the use of the PDF format and innovating the ways in which it is used. One of its recent projects was an update to its Adobe Scan mobile app that leveraged the AI power of Adobe Sensei to allow it to scan business cards and convert them to digital contacts.

Despite the next step for Adobe and Microsoft being unknown, the new integration is already making waves and so a deeper integration may be on the cards in the not too distant future.