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DataViz Documents To Go the best?

Would you consider DataViz Documents To Go the best office suite for android? I
am planning on getting my nexus one soon, but at the moment I am compiling a list of apps I am going to buy and am currently looking for an office suite.

probably you won't need to by any app. in reference to office N1 allready brings somekind of office. at least mine did. only if you need highly especiallized apps... in that scenario probably will need to buy some apps. afirewall, doc to go (in case your nexus one do not come with office)...
Sent from my Nexus One using the XDA mobile application powered by Tapatalk

I came from a Windows phone and immediately bought Documents to Go for $20 since I was simply used to the ability to edit docs.
In the end, I've probably used it twice to open files, and maybe once to edit. I actually uninstalled it a while ago and haven't noticed it's gone. In fact, I rarely open any document that would even need the "QuickOffice" (default office viewing app, no editing).
I would suggest (at least for my purposes, and what I've noticed) is that it's probably more imperative to have a PDF viewer app. I'm not sure if QuickOffice does this because I have a specific app to view PDFs. I paid abotu $4 for the PDF app; there are probably free ones out there by now.
What other apps do you have on your list to buy? Maybe some guys on here can help you find comparable free versions.

depends on ur need... if u need to edit docs on the phone... it's good, else if u only want to view docs, the N1 has a built-in QuickOffice reader

craigacgomez said:
depends on ur need... if u need to edit docs on the phone... it's good, else if u only want to view docs, the N1 has a built-in QuickOffice reader
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This is accurate and ill elaborate. The n1 only comes with a document viewer. To edit documents you will need documents to go and the paid add on for editing docs, pdfs, and I think spreadsheets. The only other app I know of to edit documents is gdocs but to use that you'd have to have the document already in your gdocs account.
However I believe Google recently purchased a mobile documents company and I expect a native office application to be included in a future update, it just has to be because docs to go is the only way to edit those file types and I'm grateful for that app but it is not ideal.

[Q] Polaris Office and Google Docs Performance

Hey everyone,
I've been looking closely at the Transformer and it looks like an excellent tablet. The only qualm I have is if I'm going to have it replace some of my other devices for frequent use, it needs to handle Google Docs (or in this case, I suspect the syncing with Polaris Office is the better way to go).
Could anyone tell me how the experience is with syncing between Google Docs? Most importantly, I'm hoping that it can handle relatively complex spreadsheets.
I was going to post an example of the complexity I'm talking about, but I guess I'm too much of a noob to do so yet If you do a Google search for "Epizephyrii Pathfinder Character Sheet" it'll be the first result.
Regular documents are of interest too, but I suspect if it can handle spreadsheets well it'll handle text docs just fine.
Alternatively, how is direct access to docs and spreadsheets on the Transformer? I have an Archos 101 at the moment and haven't been impressed with the lagginess that seems to haunt Google Docs on it.
Thanks!

Locri said:
The only qualm I have is if I'm going to have it replace some of my other devices for frequent use, it needs to handle Google Docs (or in this case, I suspect the syncing with Polaris Office is the better way to go).
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I'd prefer using Google Docs directly - it's MUCH safer (Polaris Office doesn't auto save). Could someone tell if it's fast enough?

If you mean the Google docs website then I just tried it and it was basically unusable. Not sure why they don't have an app for it :S
Edit - just tried mobile site version and it was useable but really basic compared to the proper site

case0 said:
If you mean the Google docs website then I just tried it and it was basically unusable. Not sure why they don't have an app for it :S
Edit - just tried mobile site version and it was useable but really basic compared to the proper site
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Thats really bad news. Why was it unusable? Slow? Or problems with input?

Yeah, I would forget about using the Google Docs site, especially with those complex spreadsheets. I pulled it up on the stock browser and while it would display it, you couldn't really navigate or scroll around it.
I tried to log into to my Google Docs account through Polaris, but kept getting a log in error. Not sure if others are having this problem, but meant that I couldn't really test out that example spreadsheet.
However I do have two paid Office suites available (Docs to Go and Quick Office Pro HD) so I accessed the spreadsheet through those. Docs to Go struggled, in fact made the file read only since there were so many elements it couldn't display. Quick Office fared much better, it displayed the spreadsheet, I could navigate around it and enter text into the cells. Not sure how close it looks to the desktop version.
I would imagine that if a paid app like Docs to Go is struggling, then the free Polaris might also have some issues. At the moment Quick Office seems like your best bet.

You mean it's hard to navigate (touchpad/mouse and keyboard should help then) or doesn't work properly at all? I'm interested in the writing app more than spreadsheet (but simple spreadsheets must work too). Maybe it's better in some other browser? Firefox?

Magnesus said:
You mean it's hard to navigate (touchpad/mouse and keyboard should help then) or doesn't work properly at all? I'm interested in the writing app more than spreadsheet (but simple spreadsheets must work too). Maybe it's better in some other browser? Firefox?
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I found it hard to navigate because of lag, but text input didn't work for me either. Firefox displays websites in their mobile formats so couldn't test it on that browser.

Now that a few more people have the Transformer in their hands (lucky arses ), can anyone answer this question? How well does Polaris Office interact with Google Docs and especially spreadsheets?
I don't care so much that it doesn't auto-save, I can do that myself, but considering the poor showing of Google's Docs app, I'm hoping there will be something much better.
Thanks!

I have the Eee Pad Transformer and I have used the Polaris Office, however you can access the files and download them. I cannot seem to sync it back up though and so that means that the word doc has to be sent via gmail. Does anyone know what you are meant to do to get it to sync back up with Google Docs?

Polaris Office syncs very well with Dropbox... you open any Dropbox Doc or Spreadsheet, it opens, you make changes, close Polaris and Dropbox automatically uploads the doc with updated changes. Dropbox handles this very well. (I imagine the same is true for HD & QuickOffice)
However, Polaris's ability to edit Excel spreadsheets is very limited. I had been hoping to use this on the go, but in my few days of experimenting Polaris changes the format of cells and does not retain formulas, etc. For example, I have billing spreadsheet for work that need to update on the fly. I can update from the TF on Polaris, and access pretty quickly, view the spreadsheet fine. Dropbox uploads the edits just fine, but when I get back to the desktop I have lost formatting, the time and date formatted fields have changed to decimal numbers, date fields are no longer dates (as in 05/07/2011 changes to .40670). It is really more frustrating than useful, so for me it is not usable.
I'd love to hear more about others experiences with other Office apps.
I'm still experimenting with Google Docs... there is a new Google Docs app that I'm hoping will be my solution (although I haven't had a chance yet). I'll update in this thread when I do.
Edit: I also learned Polaris does not like .xlsx spreadsheets... saving as .xls 2003 format seems to work much better; although not fix the formatting problem

case0 said:
If you mean the Google docs website then I just tried it and it was basically unusable. Not sure why they don't have an app for it :S
Edit - just tried mobile site version and it was useable but really basic compared to the proper site
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Click to collapse
I dled one on the market made by Google...
But yes, it's very simplistic with no options. Not even bold or font change.
Also, with Polaris, is there a quick save option on the keyboard like ctrl+something? That can be an alternative to autosave.
And how come there is no spell checker?!

I finally got my Transformer yesterday and have done some quick informal testing on this issue (along with some testing already done by another forum member who helped me out outside of this thread).
The big takeaway is that while you can open documents from Google Docs, you can't sync them with Google Docs. Anything you modify has to be saved in an Office format and can only be saved locally not to the cloud. For the spreadsheet I was asking about it rendered okay, but I couldn't change any numbers relating to formulas without it sputtering out on me and some sheets it downloaded wrong and left me with a mess.
I'm interested in trying a combo of DropBox and Office, but for Google Docs it sucks.
I also tested Google Docs on various browsers to see how they all performed. The default Android browser rendered everything fine, but was dog slow. Dolphin HD was similarly pretty slow, although not as bad. Opera did a better job yet, but the top of the pack without a doubt ended up being Firefox! I had some problems with it constantly wanting to pop up the keyboard and editing things was a pain, but much less of a pain then the other browsers. For viewing only it was actually really good.
I still have hopes that Google will make some improvements with both the Android browser (why is it, again, that it can't just be a direct Chrome port? why are they bothering with the Chrome OS?), but at the moment there is no way that this could be my only portable device for lack of good Google Docs support alone. Or maybe some other online docs system will work better.

Locri said:
but the top of the pack without a doubt ended up being Firefox! I had some problems with it constantly wanting to pop up the keyboard and editing things was a pain, but much less of a pain then the other browsers.
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I wonder how it will work with normal keyboard (keyboard dock or bluethooth/usb one).
but at the moment there is no way that this could be my only portable device for lack of good Google Docs support alone.
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The same here. And if Google Docs doesn't work other web application will have problems too. Judging by the SunSpider test the tablet should be more than capable of working with such web apps.

A quick test between Polaris and quickoffice. Polaris has a much better ui for viewing and editing docs. As mentioned Polaris only downloads from google docs. It does not save. Quickofficehas a lot more syncing features with docs, dropbox and more.
Edit : I also wanted to point out that quickoffice has a phone and tablet version. You have to buy them separately though. (Just like docs to go). It seems that quickoffice HD has been ported from the mobile version with only some basic tablet features added. This is the likely the reason the ui isn't as good as Polaris. I would hope they update it to be better in the future.

I'm struggling with this too. I do all my school work (uni assignments and document storage) on google docs and I often jump between workstations (home, work, and now the eee pad). Currently the eee pad is the only one I can't just start working then stop and change where I'm working.
I'm going to try the dropbox solution.

RonSykes said:
I'm struggling with this too. I do all my school work (uni assignments and document storage) on google docs and I often jump between workstations (home, work, and now the eee pad). Currently the eee pad is the only one I can't just start working then stop and change where I'm working.
I'm going to try the dropbox solution.
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I've found that Docs to Go works pretty well. In terms of Google docs integration, it doesn't auto-save, so you have to go File - Save. Unlike Polaris though, it re-saves to the cloud directly.
That means that yes, you could pick up and work on stuff anywhere you go now

Dan76 said:
Polaris Office syncs very well with Dropbox... you open any Dropbox Doc or Spreadsheet, it opens, you make changes, close Polaris and Dropbox automatically uploads the doc with updated changes. Dropbox handles this very well.
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I cant get this to work. How do you do?
When i opnå docindropbox it open in polaris office, but when i save i get savede on the tablet not in dropbox

michaeltryl said:
I cant get this to work. How do you do?
When i opnå docindropbox it open in polaris office, but when i save i get savede on the tablet not in dropbox
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I just re-tested it and there's no configuring necessary... it just works. You have dropbox installed, open dropbox and tap on the doc to open it, it will open in Polaris. Edit any way you like, the make sure you click "save" in Polaris on the upper left. Dropbox will then automatically upload the file. I tested and can verify that this works perfectly!
A caveat though, Polaris can only edit Word and Excel 2003 documents. So if you have newer versions on your computer, save it as 2003 first. Otherwise Polaris will crash; in my experience.
I hope that helps.

thanks i used office 2010 doc.it works perfekt with 2003.

Better App than Polaris?

I REALLY dislike this Polaris app. My first real-world experience with it was today and I was taking notes on it. First thing that bother me is that it randomly indented the first bullet in a list and wouldn't unindent it. Its features aren't that great and are pretty clunky to get around.
BUT, the worst part and a HUGE issue is: no auto-save!!!
I was typing my notes, closed the TF for a while, opened it back up and my notes were GONE. The page was blank!
Point is: Where can I get a REAL Office app for honeycomb? I'll pay if I have to.

not saving is just a bad habit, period, i wouldnt blame that on the app.

rhettnis said:
not saving is just a bad habit, period, i wouldnt blame that on the app.
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Great sentiment. Fact is, you can never predict what's going to happen, so it's very easy just to blame it on him. Maybe an answer to his question next time?
Documents To Go, QuickOffice, and ThinkFree, are a couple of recommended ones, though I've never used any.

In my experience, documents saved with polaris office don't open in anything else (except perhaps, MS Office apps, which I have not tried); quickoffice fails to open them, as does openoffice and libreoffice.
This is completely unacceptable to me, so despite the nice UI and so on, I use quickoffice when I need to edit docs (though its far from ideal, and doesn't integrate that well with the keyboard dock).

doronster195 said:
I REALLY dislike this Polaris app. My first real-world experience with it was today and I was taking notes on it. First thing that bother me is that it randomly indented the first bullet in a list and wouldn't unindent it. Its features aren't that great and are pretty clunky to get around.
BUT, the worst part and a HUGE issue is: no auto-save!!!
I was typing my notes, closed the TF for a while, opened it back up and my notes were GONE. The page was blank!
Point is: Where can I get a REAL Office app for honeycomb? I'll pay if I have to.
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Click to collapse
If you dislike Polaris then you probably won't be very happy with any other current office suite. Check out my comparison (link is in the signature).
Sent from my TF101

Just had a look at your comparison (excellent, by the way!), and I think I'll be sticking with Polaris myself when my TF arrives.

Polaris is definately the most productive office suite yet on honeycomb.. and I have no problem opening its file in either google doc or ms office

*Daedalus said:
Just had a look at your comparison (excellent, by the way!), and I think I'll be sticking with Polaris myself when my TF arrives.
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I just updated the comparison and put it in the TF forum. New link is in my signature!

How about Google Documents? I use it and it autosaves

doronster195 said:
I was typing my notes, closed the TF for a while, opened it back up and my notes were GONE. The page was blank!
Point is: Where can I get a REAL Office app for honeycomb? I'll pay if I have to.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
This same thing happened to me. I typed some sentences in an existing document, the TF locked in power save and then when I unlocked, the document reverted back to the original document with the new sentences gone.
Just based on this, it isn't ready for prime time. This has nothing to do with the user.

just wait till Softmakers SoftOffice comes out for Android. their windows mobile version of Word was as featureful as Ms word.

haupman said:
This same thing happened to me. I typed some sentences in an existing document, the TF locked in power save and then when I unlocked, the document reverted back to the original document with the new sentences gone.
Just based on this, it isn't ready for prime time. This has nothing to do with the user.
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Basically exactly what happened to me. Was in class, started typing, then listened to my teachers lecture. Screen turned off. Turned back on to continue typing, all work was gone.
Have there been any new updates in the mobile word processing field?

Anyone notice you can't copy paste the text you have typed into Polaris office into anywhere else on the tablet? Like, you CAN copy paste within the application itself, but if you copy something and then try to paste it into, say, gmail, or something, it won't paste. It has its own clipboard or something. Very annoying.
I've been using "Jota Text Editor" because I can use the keyboard dock to hit ctrl+s or ctrl+o etc to save and open a document, but unfortunately the dev hasn't added support for bolding or italicizing, etc.
I wish in Polaris I could ctrl+b and ctrl+i and ctrl+u to activate and deactivate bold on things I highlight, that is a big thing for me. If this other text editor can register ctrl+o and such to open a file why can't Polaris?
Jota still has the same copy paste problem as Polaris however, but it is more user-friendly for me. It's like using Notepad on Windows, just a simple text editor.
/end mini-rant

Quick office seems good.....
Sent from my XT720 using XDA App

klau1 said:
just wait till Softmakers SoftOffice comes out for Android. their windows mobile version of Word was as featureful as Ms word.
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The beta of TextMaker for Android works very well in retaining document formats from Word & having a decent set of features, it is just very slow at the moment & not ready for release. I don't think it will be long though.
I have tried all the Office apps I can find, SoftMaker are the best for WP, not sure on spreadsheet. QuickOffice has a nice interface but screw up Word documents.

You can always just go to docs.google.com in the browser and use that, it works fine and has all these features.

the one flaw it has is that it cant save word 07 or docx files, docstogo can. But docstogo is to simple and cant insert pictures. i still like polaris a little better.

I was liking Polaris, until I discovered that you can't save a google doc back to the cloud without deleting it and re-uploading it (wiping out the revision history and any sharing settings). Are there any editors that handle this better (other than the crappy official gdocs app or the website)?

Best Word Processor?

What is the best word processor designed for Honeycomb thus far that gives many of the features that MS Word also gives, such as formatting options, spell check, ect.
I'm basically looking for the most complete world processor out there for Honeycomb.

Probably Polaris.. comes with the TF

Documents to GO has been my go-to app since the beginning.
It works flawlessly. Although Polaris looks a lot nicer.

Polaris looks the best but I last I tried I couldn't open a word or spreadsheet document created with it in openoffice or libreoffice (free MS office alternatives), which ruins it for me. I don't know whether they have updated or fixed this issue since I last checked..

Ohh, shoot, I haven't tried that yet. Hmm, I use openoffice on my laptop too, are you saving it in openoffice format or .doc?

I want to save them as .doc files so that I can easily switch between working on my PC with MS Word, and my TF with what ever word processor I end up using.

Have anybody tried Quickoffice Pro HD?

jwilliamf said:
Have anybody tried Quickoffice Pro HD?
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Wondering this as well. I want something as close as to Office as possible

Check out the link in my signature. Trust me, you are not the first one to ask this question. What is not in the review are the online programs like Google Docs and Microsoft Live Office. Both are pretty cool and the latter looks almost exactly like the real office programs!

What about the new thinkfree app?
http://tablified.com/business/thinkfree-mobile/
Sent from my ADR6400L using Tapatalk

This is a very neat UI! I just bought it and if I ever find time I will include it in my comparison. It definitely has a lot of potential although it has many shortcomings regarding formatting and TrueType interpretation. PowerPoint ("Show") seems to be affected in particular.
ayman07 said:
What about the new thinkfree app?
http://tablified.com/business/thinkfree-mobile/
Sent from my ADR6400L using Tapatalk
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funnycreature said:
This is a very neat UI! I just bought it and if I ever find time I will include it in my comparison. It definitely has a lot of potential although it has many shortcomings regarding formatting and TrueType interpretation. PowerPoint ("Show") seems to be affected in particular.
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Since you are the guru on this, please, tested and let us know how is it and what is your opinion.
I was looking at it last night and was close to buy the app, but I prefer for you to let us know what you think.
Thank you

This post is very helpful and seems related.
Also: no one has suggested just using Microsoft Word on your desktop/laptop via VPN. I know a couple of people like to do that.
My plan is to write documents using either the onboard application or Google Docs (depending on which app works better and if I am connected), then use something like TeamViewer or Logmein to do the nitty-gritty formatting.

Thank you for the compliment but unfortunately I don't have as much time as I used to I'll do me best though since I want to know myself! I'll update my comparison thread once I did it!
jwilliamf said:
Since you are the guru on this, please, tested and let us know how is it and what is your opinion.
I was looking at it last night and was close to buy the app, but I prefer for you to let us know what you think.
Thank you
Click to expand...
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I've tried a few word processing programs as I've looked for something as good as MS Word or Open Office. So far, I've not found anything that can replace these programs. All of them lack certain key features - including google docs, polaris, quick office HD, documents 2 go. I haven't tried thinkoffice yet, but it doesn't look much better. I just now tried MS Live Office, but it wouldn't work on the tab - i got a page that said I needed to use MS Explorer or Firefox to access it. It looks like the most full featured option, but unless we can get past this browser limit, it doesn't matter on the TF.
Polaris office is the best so far, though I haven't tried to open the documents in open office, so I can't speak to that problem. I used QuickOffice HD up until the 3.2 update because copy/paste in polaris was broken.

help with polaris
I need help. I am a new tf owner and I can not get polaris to work. I have tried two google and one box accounts. When I go to set up the account I get an error message saying that it can not connect to the Web server. I was able to connect to one google account once then I added files to it and could no longer connect, same error message. I even tried creating a new box account and that did not work. Any help would be great

Android office now has spell check

FYI, android office now has spell checker. This app is getting very very close to replacing msoffice. And it's only 6 bucks. Get it to support the dev.

How good is the spell checker? The gain I see over Polaris is being less (legally) tied to the tablet, give or take the corruption issues.
At least for me, my quality scale generally flows like this:
Google
Vi IMproved
Microsoft Word
Hunspell
aspell, MySpell, etc.
but is just based on experience over the past decade.
Sent from my Transformer TF101 using Tapatalk

To be honest Google Docs application doesn't really work for me - no layout, it looks like a notepad not an office application. :| And in browser even with USB keyboard it just doesn't work.

Magnesus said:
To be honest Google Docs application doesn't really work for me - no layout, it looks like a notepad not an office application. :| And in browser even with USB keyboard it just doesn't work.
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I think he's talking about Androffice.
He says the app is 6 bucks, Google Docs is free.

Google Docs also sucks massively if you are using the mobile version instead of the desktop facing website. Android Office should be worth the cash,depending on how you feel about Polaris (which can access files on Google Docs and Box)
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