Back in November, The Daily claimed that Microsoft was working on a version of its hugely popular “Office” application for the iPad.  It has now followed up its original story with a picture of Office running on the iPad and the notion that it is now complete and very close to being submitted to Apple for approval. The Daily even managed to grab some hands-on time with a working prototype of the Office application.

A brief hands-on with a working prototype of the software revealed a number of new things. The app’s user interface is similar to the current OneNote app, but it has hints of Metro, the new design language that can be seen in Windows Phone and in the as-yet-released Windows 8 desktop operating system. Word, Excel and PowerPoint files can be created and edited locally and online. But it’s unclear if Microsoft will support other Office apps at launch or at all.

Source: The Daily

CloudOn, a free iPad app that offered Microsoft Office functionality with Dropbox support, appeared briefly in the App Store yesterday before going up in a puff of smoke a short time later.

CloudOn has responded saying their app has "sold out", but we think this may have had something to do with server overload.

Thanks for your support of CloudOn! We're currently sold out. We look forward to the feedback we will receive as we continue to support the many users that have registered in this first phase.

The fact that CloudOn came with full Dropbox support for storing and managing office files on-the-go was a great idea for power users, and the overall offering is unique in respect to beating Microsoft to the punch at their own game. This could be another reason the app is no longer available, as Microsoft could have called shenanigans if CloudOn didn't go through the appropriate channels before release.

I gave it a quick whirl when it was actually up and running, and noticed the app was somewhat sluggish from the get-go (probably due to how much it relies on the cloud backend to get things done paired with the influx of users hammering their servers).

We'll let you know as soon as CloudOn is back in the App Store. In the meantime, here's its description:

• Use Microsoft Word, Excel and PowerPoint on your iPad to create or edit documents.
• Rename, delete and manage documents with your Dropbox account
• Display, edit or create charts, change formatting, spell check, insert comments, into any Word, Excel or PowerPoint files
• Track changes while reviewing Word documents
• Use pivot tables and insert formulas in Excel workbooks
• Display and edit animation or transitions in PowerPoint presentations
• Present in full PowerPoint mode (not in PDF)
• Open files directly from your iPad email accounts or Dropbox account
• Automatically save documents to avoid losing changes

Source: CloudOn

Have an app you’d love to see featured on TiPb? Email us at iosapps@tipb.com, tell us about your app (include an iTunes link), and we’ll take a look.

It seems Google has slipped in some improvement for Google Docs document viewing via iPhone and iPad (and Android). For quite a while, the only documents that really played nice (at least for me), were spreadsheets. You can now go to docs.google.com on your Android or iOS device and view formats such as .xls, .pdf, .ppt, .doc, and .docx. I didn't see anything about .pptx though, I guess we'll have to wait and see on that one. If they're supporting .docx, not supporting the newer Powerpoint format doesn't really make sense to me.

The only glitch I seemed to find is that Word documents aren't that pretty. Some of my old accounting Word attachments were formatted pretty bad. I checked them on the computer and it wasn't the actual document. That may be something that needs a tweak on Google's end.

Here's a quick tip for iPhone users as well. What I actually do is open the Google Mobile App and click Google Docs, it'll automatically route you to the docs.google.com page in Safari. So you can go that route as well.

Hit the jump for some screens!

[Google Mobile Blog via Android Central]

We just finished having a sit down with the fine folks from DocsToGo and they shared some exciting news about DocsToGo Premium: Desktop Sync and Google Sync are en route! They expect they'll be submitting the app to the Apple in a couple of weeks, so stay tuned for the release. DocsToGo is currently $14.99 in the App Store.

Document Sync with the desktop works just like you would expect it to: plug in and Sync. What's more exciting for me (and for cloud-lovers everywhere) is that you'll be able to sync with all the documents you've stored up at Google Docs. It's a full sync client - meaning that you can download and edit documents offline and then sync them up with Google Docs later. Another thing worth noting is that Google recently updated Google Docs to allow you to upload any file - which means you will be able to upload and store PDFs, images, and documents to Google Docs and then access them later with DocsToGo. (Video after the break!)

Otherwise, as it always is with major mobile conferences, the iPhone isn't officially here but unofficially it's everywhere. My completely unscientific method of "hey, what's in people's hands" poll shows that it's slightly edging out Nokia as the most popular phone at Mobile World Congress.

Very reasonably priced and there won't be a need to have a discount for existing customers...

What are you hoping for? Word, Excel and PowerPoint functionality? I would love the triple play. Do you think DataViz will deliver?

Dieter's on the floor at CTIA, and we're hoping he'll bring back a closer look, but in the meantime the fine folks at QuickOffice have just let us know that their new iPhone app, QuickOffice for iPhone will be available in the next few weeks, and will cost $19.99.

Quickoffice for iPhone has an intuitive user interface and supports comprehensive functionality including cut, copy and paste, font formatting, content selection and bullets within Word documents. Users can also leverage a wider keyboard to edit and create documents in landscape mode. Excel functionality includes extensive mathematical and statistical formulas.

Other useful features include file sharing capabilities via Wi-Fi desktop connectivity and access to one's MobileMe iDisk account. Editing is done with maintaining perfect data integrity, in addition to 'auto-save' to ensure none of your work is lost on-the-go.

We're guessing "next few weeks" means they'll be using a custom-made cut/copy paste implementation under iPhone 2.x, which means we're also guess there'll be a new version come iPhone 3.0 launch this "summer".

There have been other apps offering Excel editing in the paste, but Word editing is new for the iPhone (unless DocsToGo gets there first). Is it enough to get you over your document hurdle, or are there any power users still hungering for more?

What's that? iPhone news at MWC09? It's true. I just got back from a meeting with DocsToGo and they showed off an early version of their app. So far Word document editing is a go, Spreadsheet editing is definitely in the plan but not quite up and running yet. They're tossing in document viewing for both plus PDFs as well -- which means you can have all of your documents in one spot.

Read on to find out how it all works, where the iPhone kinks are (since Apple limits what developers can do easily), and how we're loving their implementation of (in-app) Cut and Paste!

Apple obviously won't let DataViz go in and mess with their mail client, so email attachments are going to be pretty rough (read: non-starter). However, and here's where things get mysterious, DataViz does plan on having a desktop client that will allow you to sync your documents over to the iPhone and back again and the DocsToGo app on the iPhone will be able to "get around the sandbox" of not being able to store files locally. How exactly will all this happen? DataViz will wink, but can't say yet.

I did get a pretty good look at the Word doc editing and I have to say it's pretty slick. There's a single editing bar at the bottom which you can swipe left and right to get at all the various options. Full support for inline images, formatting, outlining, and more is all here. Also here, Cut and Paste done in a very clever way. You can:

• Double tap a word to select it.
• Triple tap a paragraph to select it.
• In magnify view, you can hold down your finger with the cursor in the same spot until the magnifying glass "pulses," which will then let you select character by character.

Apple -- please make sure you let this app in and when you do, take a very close look at their text selection method, because we're liking it.

DataViz hopes to have the whole shootin' match (perhaps minus spreadsheet editing, depending on their dev timeline) sometime in Q2 2009.

We've mentioned the original, FREE, MobileFiles application before, which lets you access MobileMe's iDisk via the iPhone. Well, now we've also got MobileFiles Pro and along with the $9.99 price tag comes a killer feature that a lot of productivity mavens have no doubt been waiting for:

EDIT! native Microsoft Excel 2003 documents just as you would on your desktop. Save the edited Excel file on your iPhone, send to your iDisk account remotely, or upload to your desktop using WiFi - all while maintaining perfect data integrity.

MobileFiles Pro is developed by QuickOffice, so this definitely makes the kind of sense that does. The only question is: when will Word and PowerPoint editing follow?

Have you tried MobileFiles yet? If so, let us know what you think!