Review: Documents to Go -- edit Word documents on the iPhone, access attachments to Exchange e-mails

It is no exaggeration to say that I have been waiting for DataViz to release Documents to Go for the iPhone since the day that I first purchased my iPhone 3G last year.  And since February of this year, I have been waiting for the app to be released "any day now."  DataViz has a long history of providing smartphones with excellent document management and editing abilities, and with the iPhone's amazing screen and touch gesture interface, I've always thought that Documents to Go on the iPhone could be the best platform yet for DataViz. 

Last week, DataViz finally released Documents to Go for iPhone and I immediately purchased it.  My high expectations and long anticipation made me somewhat afraid that no matter what the app could do, I would be disappointed.  But after using the app for several days now, I must say that DataViz has done an amazing job.  This is still a 1.0 product with lots of room to grow, but I think that it is already an essential app for almost every lawyer, especially any lawyer that uses Microsoft Exchange (Outlook) for e-mail.

It is impossible to review Documents to Go (which I will just refer to as DTG) without comparing it to its only real competitor, Quickoffice Mobile Office Suite, so I will do so throughout this review.  I love Quickoffice, but DTG is currently a better app in several ways that many attorneys will find significant.

Editing word documents

The killer feature of DTG is, of course, the ability to edit Word documents, and it does that quite well.  You can edit text and format it in many different ways, including not only adding (or removing) bold and italics, but also add or remove underlining (which Quickoffice currently lacks).  This is a key advantage because while caselaw is sometimes italicized in my documents, other times the case names are underlined in my briefs and I can see that in DTG but not Quickoffice.  Another huge advantage is the ability to see (although not add) footnotes (and comments, which are handled the same way as footnotes).  Just tap once on a footnote to see a pop-up balloon showing you what the footnote says.  In Quickoffice, the app simply ignores footnotes, and you don't even see an indication that the footnote exists but is not being displayed.  Here is an example of a brief in DTG that has a footnote.  Tap on the footnote to see the pop-up baloon as shown on the right:

  

DTG also has a ton of other formatting options, made possible by the fact that the status bar at the bottom of the screen can be scrolled by simply swiping left or right.  That ingenious feature means that you can have lots of icons to tap to access features.  In Quickoffice, there are only six icons at the bottom, each of which triggers a pop-up menu for more options:

1. Character formatting (bold, italic, font type and size, text color and highlight)
2. Paragraph (allign left, center or right, add or remove indent, and bulleted list)
3. Keyboard (used to start typing)
4. Find
5. Cut, copy, paste, delete
6. Undo, redo

In DTG, there are currently 13 icons, each of which triggers a pop-up menu for more options, and DataViz has ample space to easily add many more in the future.  The current icons are:

1. Save, save as
2. Cut, copy, paste, select all
3. E-mail the current document
4. Character formatting (bold, italic, underline, text color, highlight color)
5. Paragraph (align left, center, right, full justification, or distributed across the page)
6. Bullets and numbering
7. Add or remove indent
8. Find and replace
9. Zoom (from 50% to 200%)
10. Go to the top, middle, or bottom of the document
11. Undo, redo
12. Word count
13. Document details (title, size, modification date)

I don't see that you can change the font or font size in DTG, but other than that DTG includes all of the formatting features of Quickoffice and adds many more.  Both apps allow you to view or edit in portrait or landscape mode.  Quickoffice lets you zoom by simply pinching, whereas in DTG you have to tap the zoom menu button, but DataViz says that the 1.1 update will add pinch zoom.  Quickoffice also gives you the option to view a Word document full screen (without any menus taking up screen space) when in landscape mode.  This is currently missing from DTG but is said to be coming in the 1.1 update.

Like Quickoffice, DTG offers cut, copy and paste, but both of these apps currently only offer these features within the apps themselves.  Thus, you cannot copy text from a website and paste it into a Word document.  I presume that both Quickoffice and DTG will soon replace their proprietary cut/copy/paste features with the iPhone 3.0 built-in functions to solve this problem.  Indeed, I look forward to this because Apple's cut/copy/paste implementation is much more elegant than the implementation in DTG, although Quickoffice's implementation is much closer to Apple's implementation.

DTG, like Quickoffice, also lets you create a new Word document.

Transferring documents to and from DTG

There are three ways to access files in DTG.  You can access files that are saved locally to the iPhone.  You can access files that are local on the iPhone but also synced with a computer.  And finally, you can access attachments to Exchange e-mails.

One of the most compelling features that DTG offers but Quickoffice lacks is the ability to access attachments to your e-mails, assuming that you use Microsoft Exchange.  DTG does this by essentially including a simple e-mail app within the DTG app.  You have to first configure the e-mail app by giving it your Exchange server information, name, password, etc.  I had some trouble with this at first, but after I got it set up correctly it has been working great.  You can tell DTG to access your e-mails from the last 1 day, 3 days, 1 week, 2 weeks or 1 month.  Then you tap Attachments on the main DTG screen, tap the sync button, and the app will go through all of your e-mails from the specified time period and show you just the e-mails that have attachments that can be viewed by DTG.  You can then tap an e-mail and download the attachment.  You can also save the attachment to the Local Files on the DTG app so that you will always have the document locally even if you don't have e-mail access or the e-mail has been moved or deleted.  After you edit the document, you can then send a new e-mail with the revised document as an attachment, and this all takes place within the DTG app without even launching the normal iPhone Mail client.  The Exchange e-mail features are awesome and a huge advantage over Quickoffice.

The other way to get documents to and from DTG is to use Wi-Fi to sync with a computer on the same Wi-Fi network.  If you previously used DTG on a Palm device, such as a Treo 650, this will all look very familiar.  Using a program on your computer (available for either Mac or PC) you identify files or entire folders to be synced with the iPhone.  Whenever the document is changed on the computer, a sync will send the latest version to the iPhone.  Whenever the document is changed on the iPhone, a sync will send the latest version to the computer.

I really like the ability of Quickoffice to act like an external drive on your computer so that you can just drag and drop files to the iPhone.  DTG cannot do that, but Quickoffice lacks the DTG syncing feature that you can use to keep the latest version of a document on both the iPhone and the computer.  Which approach is better just depends upon your personal preferences and how you plan to use the app.

DTG also lacks the ability to access documents in your MobileMe iDisk, another feature of Quickoffice.  But I suspect that most attorneys will find the ability to download attachments from an Exchange e-mail far more useful than the ability to access files on iDisk.

Excel, PowerPoint, etc.

You can also view Excel and PowerPoint files using the iPhone's built-in viewer capabilities, but unlike Quickoffice, DTG cannot currently edit Excel files.  DataViz says that editing of Excel files is coming and will be a free upgrade when it is available. 

You can also view PDF files, iWork '08 files, web page (.htm or .html) files or image files (BMP, JPEG, GIF, TIFF, SVG and PNG).

Documents to Go vs. Quickoffice

Although DTG for the most part has more features, there are some things that I like more about Quickoffice.  First, Quickoffice seems faster to me.  DTG seems particularly slow when typing text.  I also like that Quickoffice has an option to require a PIN when launching the app.  I have added many sensitive files to my Quickoffice app, and in the event that someone else gets access to my iPhone -- whether it be a thief or even just my three year old son who likes to play with my iPhone -- he cannot get into my Quickoffice files and view or change them without the four digit PIN.

Although both apps can handle pictures, Quickoffice does a nicer job with them by including a slideshow feature and the ability to advance through pictures in a folder without having to go back to the folder list to select a new picture.

I am sure that as I continue to use both apps, I will find more aspects of each that I prefer over the other.  Both apps are cheap enough that I suspect that many attorneys will want to have both Quickoffice and DTG on their iPhones.  Each app has different strengths, and as both apps are improved and add new features over the coming months and years, there may be times when you prefer to use one over the other.

I have been raving about the Exchange e-mail capabilities, but for those of you who don't use Exchange for your e-mail, you'll probably prefer Quickoffice.  Quickoffice can send a file to your iPhone's Mail app, so you can attach a file to an e-mail no matter what e-mail provider you use.  With DTG, if you don't use Exchange, than you can't attach a file to an e-mail.

Buy it now!

DTG is a great app that will only get better as it is updated.  If your law firm or company uses Microsoft Exchange e-mail (and I suspect that most readers of iPhone J.D. use Outlook as a mail client, so this means you) then I encourage you to buy this app immediately.  Even with great apps like Quickoffice and DTG, editing files on an iPhone (or any other smart phone) is not ideal.  For any real word processing, it is always better to use a real computer.  But you never know when someone will send you an e-mail with a Word file attached and you will have the desire to make just a few edits to the file and then e-mail the file back or to another person.  With DTG, you can do this on your iPhone even if you are far away from your desktop or laptop computer.

Even if you don't want to edit a Word file, both DTG and Quickoffice are great apps to just view Word files.  Of course, the iPhone can already view a Word file attached to an e-mail, but by opening the attachment in DTG you can easily zoom in or out to make the text more readable without needing to pan back and forth because DTG (like Quickoffice) automatically reformats the document margins as you zoom.

I especially urge you to buy the app now because until June 30, 2009, the app costs only $9.99.  Starting July 1, the price will increase to ... well, I'm not exactly sure to what, but the full version of Quickoffice currently costs $19.99 so I would expect a similar price for DTG.  There is also a $4.99 version of DTG, but it lacks the ability to work with Exchange e-mails.

Click here to get Documents to Go with Exchange (currently $9.99): 

Click here to get Document to Go without Exchange (currently $4.99): 

Comments

[nmisscommentor]

I have to ask this:

I'm a serious legal writer on a computer, and have been for a long time.

I'm a serious user of an iPhone, though not from the very beginning.

Essentially always, I have a laptop at hand, and almost always am in wireless range. I can't imagine really, seriously trying to edit a document in any kind of serious way on a phone if I could do so on a laptop. And I don't ever see myself unable to do so on a laptop. I'd find it easier to talk to staff on the phone telling them what changes to make than to do the changes on a phone (on the other hand, I'd find it easier to make the changes on a laptop than to tell staff...).

So I'm trying to figure out the utility of editing Word and Excel documents on the phone. When do you use the phone instead of a laptop?

[Jeff Richardson]

Tom -- a/k/a NMissCommentor -- you make a valid point. For any serious writing, I want to have a laptop. But there is still a time and a place for making edits on an iPhone. For example, sometimes you are out of the office in a CLE, a deposition, etc. and you don't want to lug around a laptop. With programs like these, you can make a quick edit to a document that someone else sends you for review. Or another example, I was out of the country all last week and didn't want to bring a laptop. With my iPhone, I was able to easily stay in touch with my work while I was on the road. I didn't have Documents to Go up and running last week, but if I had, I would have used it to make some simple edits to briefs that others in my office were drafting in my absence. Instead, I was forced to draft e-mails describing my changes -- on page 6, fourth line, add XXXXX. That sort of thing.

Having said that, I used a Treo 650 for many years and I used Documents to Go all the time to read documents, but I can probably count on one hand the number of times that I used the product to edit a legal document.

The main reason I love products like Quickoffice and DTG is that they let me take documents with me so that I have them at my fingertips when I want to refer to them. Being able to edt them is just a nice plus.

[michael]

I wish would could have the best of both worlds. Syncing capabilities with a hardwire connection. While the wifi connect has worked at my house, it doesn't on a larger wifi network, or even at hotspots like Starbucks.

I also wish I could "export as email" or something similar w/o worrying whether it's an exchange attachment or any other doc.

Last wish: simply preview (e.g., like what's built into iPhone email). Sometimes I just need to read something quickly, or see a preview of what it looks like at 8.5x11.

[Charles Jannace]

Firstly, thanks very much for the clear and concise post and comparison of these two apps. I used my DTG app while I read your article and now fully appreciate the icons in the app.

I don't have Exchange (my office only has a peer to peer network, no server) and although QuickOffice has a large advantage by being able to send a file via iPhone email, the truth is that I use my laptop (Dell Latitude XT Tablet) to compose or edit word processing docs. Over the past two years, I've gotten used to using the iPhone to simply view docs sent via attachments.

Also, since downloading DTG, I've used it to sync pdf files onto my iPhone for two different trials that I've had, just for quick reference. (I scan all documents received and forwarded as part of pre-trial document production into separate client folders.) While I used the laptop during the actual trials to pull up documents, I used the iPhone during breaks and lunch to locate and briefly review documents. (Acrobat allows me to add Bates numbers to the documents which easily makes sorting of multipage documents.)

It would be nice if DTG allowed editing of pdf files but Acrobat for the iPhone would be better. Dream on.

[used computers]

I've always thought that Documents to Go on the iPhone could be the best platform yet for DataViz.

[Viva]

Hello: someone please tell me how to remove a document from the
"recent files" list? For example, in the graphic example on this site, what if I wanted to remove Scott Appeal, but keep the other two that are in "Recent files.?" Any help will be greatly appreciated.

Thank you.