Can anyone say how well Office apps stay in memory on M1 iPad? I tried in Apple Store, but the apps are demo only and drop from memory as soon as you switch to another app. I know most apps are supposed to stay in memory with M1, but is this pretty much universal? On a 2018 iPad Pro, I’m now noticing more often how apps - such as Office and older apps like Aeon Timeline - get dropped from memory quite aggressively. Is the M1/8Gb RAM a good fix for this?
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iPad Pro Office on M1 iPad?
- Thread starter Stewart70
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I never had issues with the old separate office apps (word, excel, etc), but a few months ago Microsoft unified all the office suite under one same app (not a great idea I’ve found), and I do notice the reloading each time I even just return to the Home Screen. Very annoying.
I also use pages on iPad and it handle pretty well the conversion with word files. I would use word more often if this reloading issue was resolved
I have the 8GB 2021 12.9 and haven't been running into reloads with Word in the unified app when switching among multiple apps.
I’ve been running Office 365 on my iPads for years. No problems or reloading even with my old IPP 9.7 from 2016.
I upgraded from the 2018 iPad Pro 11” to the 2021 M1 w/8GB RAM. I use the Office apps extensively for work and don’t really see apps reloading anymore. I just tested it to see if they’re still in memory and they were - Outlook, PowerPoint, Excel and Teams. I use the individual apps, not the Office app. The RAM increase is the main reason I upgraded, it’s definitely worth it if you’re using a lot of apps.
You could just delete the office app and reinstall the separate three apps... they're still being updated.
Thanks for all the replies, particularly paulmeyers42 and sparksd . I wouldn't use Office except for work and it's good to know you're seeing improvement from the extra RAM. It does make the M1 more tempting. 
Thanks for all the replies, particularly paulmeyers42 and sparksd . I wouldn't use Office except for work and it's good to know you're seeing improvement from the extra RAM. It does make the M1 more tempting.
It's been about 8 hours since I opened a document in Word (consolidated version) and left it in the middle of a sentence with the s/w keyboard up. I've been using the iPad in a variety of apps since and just went back to Word - the document is still open with the cursor where I left off and the keyboard still displayed.
<<< Edit >>> The below comments relate to the separate apps. I never use the consolidated Office App.
I haven’t had a single reload in my 8GB M1 iPad Pro with Office. I’m a heavy user of Word and Excel.
I have some massive Excel spreadsheets that make my 10th gen Intel I5 laptop cry. These complex forecasting models for a $100 million manufacturing plant on my Dell laptop take like 90 seconds to calculate. On my M1 iPad Pro they take about 30 seconds. Doing “Pro” work isn’t just about video production ?
I also have some massive Word files that are complete book manuscripts with hundreds of pictures that were unusable in my 10.5” iPad Pro. But on my M1 iPad Pro everything is fluid smooth.
I’m HIGHLY impressed with the performance of Office on this new M1 iPad Pro.
I haven’t had a single reload in my 8GB M1 iPad Pro with Office. I’m a heavy user of Word and Excel.
I have some massive Excel spreadsheets that make my 10th gen Intel I5 laptop cry. These complex forecasting models for a $100 million manufacturing plant on my Dell laptop take like 90 seconds to calculate. On my M1 iPad Pro they take about 30 seconds. Doing “Pro” work isn’t just about video production ?
I also have some massive Word files that are complete book manuscripts with hundreds of pictures that were unusable in my 10.5” iPad Pro. But on my M1 iPad Pro everything is fluid smooth.
I’m HIGHLY impressed with the performance of Office on this new M1 iPad Pro.
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Let’s just hope for some added features to bring it more in line with the MacOs version of excel (or even better the windows version)