Review: Quickoffice Mobile Office Suite -- edit Word and Excel files on your iPhone

The day has come.  We finally have the ability to edit Microsoft Word files on the iPhone, including cut, copy and paste.  For a while now, Quickoffice, Inc. has sold an app called Quicksheet which allows you to view and edit Excel files (and view Word files) on the iPhone.  (I reviewed that app two months ago when it was called MobileFiles Pro, and then the company changed the name to Quicksheet.)

The developer has now released Quickoffice Mobile Office Suite.  The app contains just about all of the features of Quicksheet plus it adds the ability to edit Word files.  (The missing feature is e-mail support, which as I note below is coming very soon.)  The Word or Excel files must be in Windows Office 97 through 2003 format or Mac Office X through 2004 format to be edited. (Windows Office 2007 / Mac Office 2008 files can be viewed but not edited.)

The app does a nice job of viewing Word files.  You can pinch to zoom in and out, and when you do so the text reformats to fit the screen so you don't have to worry about scrolling back and forth to read a file.  (Yeah!)  Indeed, even if you don't need to edit Word files on your iPhone, Quickoffice may well be the best app currently available for viewing Word files on an iPhone.

  

Selecting text to either format it or to cut, copy or paste works very well, and is a nice preview of what this feature will be like when Apple releases iPhone Software 3.0 this summer.  You double-tap on a word to select a word (or triple-tap to select a paragraph).  Then you can drag grab points to adjust how much text you want to select.  Once you have text selected, you can tap one button to format the font or style or to highlight the text, and tap another button to cut, copy or paste.

  

The text selection and cut / copy / paste features are currently unique to the app.  Thus, you cannot copy text from Quickoffice and then paste it into an e-mail.  However, a company representative told Macworld that the current proprietary text selection and cut / copy / paste features will be updated to conform with iPhone Software 3.0 when it is released this summer.

As a word processor, the features are limited.  You can add bold and italics, but you cannot add underline.  You cannot add or even see footnotes, although if you edit a document with footnotes and then transfer it to your computer, the footnotes will still be in the document when you open the document in MS Word.  You can create a bulleted list, but not a numbered list.  The app does allow you to view and edit files in either portrait or landscape mode, which is nice for those who prefer the wider landscape keyboard and can make it easier to view some documents.  However, typing on the app can be frustrating because the app lacks the standard iPhone autocorrect abilities; I have grown very used to just typing ahead on the iPhone with the knowledge that typos in my e-mail will be fixed automatically, but right now this app offers no suggestions and makes no automatic corrections.  The app also lacks any sort of a Find (let alone Find and Replace) feature.  And there are no advanced options for scrolling through a long document, so you just have to keep flicking the screen, which can become tedious in larger documents.

I found that the app worked fine with most Word files, even larger briefs.  However, I had trouble with cases downloaded from Westlaw in Word format.  First, I tried to transfer a large case, a 2.8 MB Word file.  I had no trouble transferring the file to the app, but the app hung whenever I tried to open the file.  I then tried a smaller Westlaw-created Word file, and while I could open it in the app, it was mostly gibberish.  The app just can't handle the advanced formatting that Westlaw adds to opinions such as graphics, bookmarks and live links.  I next tried to download the opinion again, telling Westlaw not to include KeyCite flags, live links or images.  Even then, the I could see the words in the opinion surrounded by a lot of gibberish.  Finally, I downloaded the same case on Lexis, and the coding in the file resulted in similar gibberish:

  

For information on transferring files to the app, see my review of the earlier version of this app (when it was called MobileFiles Pro). In short, you can use a web browser on your computer to transfer files to and from Quickoffice as long as your iPhone and computer are on the same Wi-Fi network.  If you use Apple's MobileMe, the app can upload and download files, which you can later access from MobileMe on your Mac or PC.  Quicksheet also allows you to send and receive files via e-mail.  Quickoffice doesn't currently support e-mailing files, but a company representative told Macworld that this feature is coming in about a week.  Another feature listed on the company's website as coming soon is the ability to mount the iPhone as a wireless drive via Wi-Fi and drop and drag files between your computer and your iPhone.  And the Macworld article referenced above notes other upcoming features including more powerful sync features and integration with other online services in addition to MobileMe.

Ultimately, Quickoffice, Inc. plans to offer four different apps, three of which are available now:

• Quickoffice Files is $1.99 and allows you to upload and download files from iDisk, transfer files to and from your iPhone using Wi-Fi, e-mail files from  your iPhone, and view a large variety of file formats including Microsoft Office, PDF, iWork, web archives, HTML, and MP3.
• Quicksheet is regularly $12.99 (although it is currently on sale for $6.99) and offers all of the functions of Quickofice Files plus the ability to edit and create Microsoft Excel spreadsheets
• Quickword is coming soon (it will also cost $12.99) and offers all of the functions of Quickoffice Files plus the ability to edit and create Microsoft Word documents
• Quickoffice Mobile Office Suite is $19.99 and offers all of the functions of Quickoffice Files, Quicksheet and Quickword.

While Quickoffice, Inc. is the first to release an app that can edit Word files, DataViz announced long ago that it is working on its own app, Documents to Go, that should be released within the next eight weeks.  Quickoffice is worth $20 for what it can do, but you might want to wait a month or two to see whether the shortcomings noted above are addressed and how this app compares to DataViz's upcoming Documents to Go for iPhone, which I imagine will be priced similarly.  Even so, kudos to Quickoffice, Inc. for being the first to bring such a powerful app to the iPhone.

Click here to download Quickoffice Mobile Office Suite ($19.99): 

Comments

[Morten Rank Jensen]

I have a question which i'm not sure of.
I have quickoffice installed on my Iphone 3g. Isn't there a way to move files (word or exell) from mails and directly into quickoffice.
I have seen that you can make an email and the app will attache a file witch can transfer the file into quickoffice.
But this only work when you receice an email and that email has been send from another quickoffice.
I really hope that there is a way other then moving it over wifi.
PS: My email application is setup over Gmail.

Best Regards.

Morten Rank Jensen
Denmark.

[Jeff responds: To my knowledge, there isn't a way to move an attachment directly from an e-mail into QuickOffice unless the e-mail was sent by another iPhone using QuickOffice. I think that this is a limitation of the iPhone itself -- Apple's desire to keep each app in its own sandbox with some exceptions. Apple is expanding these exceptions when it adds Copy and Paste in iPhone 3.0, so perhaps this ability will also come with a future iPhone upgrade.]

[Matt Sawyers]

I know ReaddleDocs utilities the email to app feature. What happens is, you are given a special e-mail, you forward the document to the given email. This uploads the attachment to their server and then when you open ReaddleDocs you sync with the server & it downloads the document to your iPhone.

[Matt Sawyers]

Sorry, forgot to add:

While ReaddleDocs does this, there is a way for it to be done, but they just don't do it... at least not to my knowledge.

[Rick B]

so if your office PC and your office WiFi are on separate sides of the firewall, you cannot transfer files with this application unless you spring a hundred bucks a year for MobileMe and iDisk? Can this be used with any other online storage sites?