Quickoffice Suite for iPhone - the first real Microsoft Office-compatible iPhone suite

According to laptopmag.com, Quickoffice for iPhone was released at the start of this month in the US. It consists of three applications:

Quickword, which lets you create, edit and view Microsoft Word-compatible documents on the iPhone

Quicksheet, which allows you to create, edit and view Microsoft Excel-compatible spreadsheets on the iPhone, and

Quickoffice Files, which is basically the previously released MobileFiles 2.0 (which we reviewed here: iPhone Mobile Files Pro review)

This app lets you transfer files between your iPhone and your computer. It also allows you to view different file formats on your iPhone including PDF, iWork, PowerPoint and pictures.


According to the site, it is the single best iPhone app to edit, create and share Microsoft Office documents. You get all of the essentials like word wrapping, the facility to open and edit large and complex files, and support for Word and Excel.

However, on our last visit (7 April 2009) to the Greek app store, only Quickoffice Files and Quicksheet were available. Also, the quickoffice.com website implies that the suite has not yet been released in full (there is an option to sign up for a newsletter that will inform of the release). Maybe laptopmag.com tested a prelease of the product.

In any case, it seems that Quickoffice hands out Word and Excel –compatible documents to the iPhone user without a problem. In Quickword, you may double-tap to highlight text and use two tiny selection pins to move and highlight your document. If you click and hold, you can also zoom in for more precise highlighting, or triple-tap to select an entire document. Further, you can copy and paste any text—an aspect that even the latest iPhone OS itself has yet to integrate (until its new OS Version 3.0 is available). Quickoffice goes further than formatting to give emphasis to usability.

If somebody calls your iPhone, your document is automatically saved, even when the app shuts down due to the incoming call. Quickoffice even autosaves open docs every 5 minutes- in case the battery goes bust.
Very thoughtful feature.

Excel functionality seems to be robust as well. You can highlight and resize columns, compute data using a huge library of functions, and more. Copy/Paste functionality isn't yet available, but laptopmag.com states that the company said it's coming soon.

The complete suite’s price is $19.99, but QuickSheet or QuickWord are also available separately for $12.99 each, or Quickoffice Files for $3.99.

Quickoffice Files, like its predecessor Mobile Files, syncs Office documents seamlessly with Mobile Me, via Wi-Fi, to an FTP server and directly to your iPhone, or can turn your iPhone into a mounted drive via Wi-Fi.

Quickoffice for iPhone apparently doesn't support the creation of PowerPoint files, but you can view them as well as PDF and picture files. After months of waiting for a real mobile Office alternative for the iPhone, we seem to finally have something really useful and all-encompassing that lets us create, edit and share our Microsoft Office-compatible documents with our iPhone.

Web-based Microsoft Office 14 will run on iPhone's Safari

An official Microsoft Office suite will become available shortly on the iPhone.

Recently Microsoft exec Stephen Elop's suggested that Microsoft Office is coming to the iPhone. Ina Fried from cnet news asserts this will be the case as Microsoft seems to have already announced that they are planning to introduce Web-based versions of Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and OneNote in the coming months. The applications will run in Safari, Internet Explorer and Firefox. Microsoft has already confirmed that this means Office for iPhone, as noted by Microsoft's Sarah Perez in November last year.

Microsoft did not explicitly state there will be a free version, though executives have noted the apps will be part of Office Live, which comes as both free and subscription packages. Perez insinuates that there will be both free and paid options. I am just curious whether this will appear as a gadget in the iPhone’s AppStore.

 

Generally speaking, one of the significant changes with Office 14 is the fact that, in addition to the desktop versions, Microsoft will also produce a set of "Office Web Applications" essentially slimmed-down versions of Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and OneNote that can run via a Web browser, including iPhone’s Safari. For the first time, this means Linux machines and Apple's iPhone will run the programs.

 

Ina Fried produced a video interview with Office development chief Antoine Leblond that you can view here: http://news.cnet.com/8301-13860_3-10210254-56.html

 

Exciting stuff for iPhone users with a real Mobile Office!

The iPhone really is a Mobile Office!

Here is another example of the iPhone's integration with your business office:

Last night while we were shooting a wedding, I could not remember how many hours the client had booked us for. Out comes the iPhone and using Vodafone free monthly data I connect to my iDisk using MobileFiles.

For those who don't know what the iDisk is and what it has to do with the iPhone: It is a service provided by Apple through MobileMe that provides you with an Internet hard drive that can be accessed by any device: a desktop computer (an Internet connection suffices), a laptop or your iPhone, provided you have a program like MobileFiles installed. I put all my important work stuff on iDisk, contracts, business plans, etc. It's like a hard drive that is the same and always up to date on any computer you use.

So out comes the iPhone and it connects to my iDisk through MobileFiles. Voilà. In a matter of seconds I downloaded the contract that was signed by the client and which I had scanned and saved on my iDisk, to my iPhone's screen.

Then last night I also couldn't remember the rate we pay our assistant videographer. Again out came the iPhone, and in a matter of seconds I had connected to our online book keeping software, Kashflow, and found out how much we pay him. All that with the iPhone's inbuilt Internet browser, Safari.

There are many occasions when I feel I have my whole office in my pocket, simply by having the iPhone handy.

Microsoft Office on the iPhone: Create, Edit, Share

The average iPhone business user and professional would like nothing more than having the ability to edit, create and share Microsoft Office compatible documents.

This would be the epitome of the iPhone as a Mobile Office.

So far, there isn't one app in the AppStore with full Microsoft Office functionality. 

At this point in time, we can only view Microsoft Office documents as well as PDF files, iWork documents, MP4 videos and more with programs such as AirSharing, MobileStudio (formerly "MobileFinder"), Discover, MobileFiles et al. 

MobileStudio actually lets you create .txt files which can then be shared wirelessly with your computer.

There are signs that developers are actively pursuing apps with full Microsoft Office capability. For instance, it has been reported that DataViz are developing a program called Documents To Go for the iPhone. Their website promises "Word, Excel and Powerpoint files on your iPhone". 

Palm and Blackberry operating systems already feature this product and it is expected that the iPhone version, too, will provide full editing capabilities. There is no official release date as of yet but the DataViz website offers a sign-up that will inform of product availability. 

Quickoffice, the makers of MobileFiles, also seem to be working at Office compatible editors. When you fill in the MobileFiles Survey, it is asking you how high you would rate the ability to edit Microsoft Office files on your iPhone and how much you wo

uld be willing to pay for it. I wouldn't be surprised to see them releasing something similar.

Up until today I have only seen one iPhone app that comes close to full functionality of a Microsoft Office program. This app is called Spreadsheet. With it you can create, edit and share Microsoft Excel compatible spreadsheets. It is available from the AppStore for EUR 4.99. 

I have played with a few times (see screenshot), and so far I must say that I am impressed. The great thing about it is the inbuilt sharing capability using the WebDAV protocol. This means that at the press of a couple of buttons ("Import/ Export" and "Enable File Sharing"), Spreadsheet connects wirelessly to your computer and acts as a WiFi hard drive. One can easily drag and drop Excel compatible documents (.xml files) onto it or from it. The only time I ran into trouble was when I opened an .xml file from the shared iPhone with Microsoft Excel for Mac and edited it. When I tried saving it on the shared iPhone, Spreadsheet crashed.

 I will post a more detailed review for it soon.

All in all, business iPhone users and professionals looking for a Mobile Office with full Microsoft Office capacities live in exciting times- when DataViz or any other developer release their new program(s) we will be able to radically increase our productivity, efficiency and organization even when we're on the go.