QuickOffice Mobile Office Suite for iPhone Updated to 1.2.0

icebike says:

Well since I won this App in the birthday bash, ttp://forum.theiphoneblog.com/iphone-apps-games/171589-tipb-birthday-bash-quickoffice-mobile-suite-give-away.html I can't very well decline to review the new version.

Long story Short: Its pretty sweet.

The new interface improvements make the whole thing easier to use, and it seems much more iPhone-esc now that it is using the same predictive text engine and other iphone gestures. It seems more responsive than in the past too.

I've loaded some book length MS Word documents to the phone and can manipulate them (for as much manipulation as one would care to do on this small device), including document changes such as reformating, as well as simply additions, deletions and copy/paste between different documents, etc.

Positioning to specific text for additions or changes is even easier than the apple Magnifying Glass. You touch, hold, and the document is zoomed up, and the cursor enlarged. Now just drag your finger and position the cursor directly to where you need to edit.

I can only hope the Copy/Past functionality that Apple adds in Version 3.0 works as well as theQuickOffice's method.

For large documents, the auto-remember where you left off is nice, it saves a ton of scrolling to find where you left off. I had a 200+ page book that I transferred to the phone, and I needed to make revisions to dozens of places in the document. The find function, the copy/past function worked great for this. And when a phone call interrupted my work, QuickOffice remembered exactly where to resume.

Moving documents to and from the phone is simple.

There are two distinct methods.

In each case you have to first enable this within QuickOffice, and (strongly recommended) set up security (name and password).

Method One: Open a web browser on the PC/Mac and key in the URL shown at the bottom of the QuickOffice Screen, and enter the proper name/passwords. Its usually something like http://192.168.2.100:4242/ You can then upload and download via the web browser.

Method Two: Map the QuickOffice as a drive. Directions are given for both Mac and PC. This method allows you bi-directional Drag and Drop of documents, create folders, move documents within folders, etc. Very Nice. I tested this on XP and Vista, but didn't have a Mac handy. I also was able from two different versions of Linux by telling Linux it was a standard WebDav connection.

Method Three: MobileMe. I don't have a M-Me account and did not see it as worth signing up for one to test this functionality.

Method Two is nice because you can use the documents in the QuickOffice sandbox on your desktop by just double clicking them. Even if QuickOffice doesn't understand that document type.

Problems: 1)There is a Disable Sleep setting, used for when you are accessing the phone from your computer. It is supposed to keep the phone from going to sleep, and shutting down QuickOffice. It fails sometimes, and the phone will go to sleep while you are trying to access it.

2)Renaming a file name extension on the phone (using the phone, not doing it from the computer) will pop up the usual warning about loss of access to the document due to changing the type of file. If you confirm the change, it will correctly do it, but then leave you at a blank screen from which you can do nothing but exit and restart. Luckily it loads quickly.

3)When accessing the phone from your Computer via method two, above, it will occasionally decide to stop working if you leave it sit a while, and then it is problematic getting it to link again. Meanwhile it works via the web browser method.

I've traced this problem down to the authentication routines in QuickOffice. They are easily confused. If I turn authentication OFF (not recommended) I can regain access. Of course, even WITH authentication, you want to be very careful where you do this. Using free wifi might not be the safest place. Most Hotels/AttWiFi sites have the network set up to disallow client-to-client traffic, so it may not work in those places anyway.

4)Some Spread sheets come across with numeric colums displayed as all ### pound signs. I've had to go in and set the column format to numeric on the phone, and then its all ok again.

5) I've had a few crashes, but no data loss.

Limitations: No access to inbound email attachments due to the Apple Imposed Sandboxing. If the document originated from a another QuickOffice user you can make a setting to allow attachments to be saved in QuickOffice. This is accomplished by a html file that gets attached to the email. But there is no way to create this special attachment from your desktop computer. (and believe me, its one ugly chunk of html).

Would I Buy this App:

I do a lot of tech support, and find it nice to have all of the documents on hand in my phone. Its nice to be able to call up a template document, (such as a contract), change a few fields to customize it for a specific client and mail it out from my phone.

(Note this function works even if the file type is not one that the QuickOffice package understands. You can transfer anything to the phone, but the phone can't open all files. It can transport all file types and email them.)

I like the spread sheet support, but have not done a great deal of work with it.

The price is fairly high for an App Store App. But its meant to appeal to the business user on the road. Its under active development, and being improved. If your company is buying, have them buy you this app. Maybe you can actually go somewhere without dragging your lap top around.

Peter Bjorkdahl says:

Hi! Fine rewiew Icebike. I can not email a wordfile - have gmail. program say´s that it vcan´t connect to my mail server??? Gmail on the works fine? How do I get this to work?