Jeff Richardson

For lawyers and many other professionals who work with Microsoft Word documents every day, one of the most-requested apps for the iPhone and iPad has been a version of Microsoft Office that is fully compatible with Office for the PC and Mac.  Last week, Microsoft released Microsoft Office Mobile for the iPhone.  Unfortunately, this version 1.0 of Microsoft Office Mobile is so lacking in features that it will not be the right solution for many lawyers.  Microsoft Office Mobile works with Excel and PowerPoint documents, but this review is focused on Microsoft Word documents.

Viewing Microsoft Word files

The iPhone has the built-in ability to view Microsoft Word files, but the built-in viewer has limitations.  For one thing, the text of a document is tiny using the iPhone’s built-in viewer, and while you can pinch to zoom in, you have to then scroll back and forth so it is not very useful:

 

Microsoft Office Mobile reformats line breaks so that the text is larger, which makes a document easier to read.  But unfortunately you cannot make adjustments.  You cannot zoom out to see more words at one time, and if you zoom in you once again need to scroll back and forth, so it is not very useful:

 

I far prefer the way that Documents to Go views documents because you get the best of both worlds.  You can zoom out to see more words at one time, or if you zoom in the line breaks reformat to fit the screen.  Thus, you can pick the best compromise between the size of the text and the number of words you can see at one time on the screen:

 

Another problem with viewing documents in Microsoft Office Mobile for iPhone is that you don’t see footnotes or track changes.  The iPhone’s built-in viewer has the same shortcomings, but other apps such as Documents to Go, Quickoffice, Pages and Office² do show track changes, and Documents to Go, Pages and Office² can show footnotes too.  The track changes omission can be a trap for lawyers, so be careful.  If a colleague sends you a document with tracked changes and you just look at the document in Microsoft Office Mobile, you won’t know that the tracked changes are there.  If you then forward the document to opposing counsel, you risk sharing your confidential work product or attorney-client communications.  Ouch.

Fortunately you can see comments in Microsoft Office Mobile.  Text with a comment is highlighted in blue and you can tap to read the comment:

 

It is also difficult to work with long Word documents in Microsoft Office Mobile — anything but they shortest of briefs — because you need to flick a million times.  Other apps like Documents to Go have a handle along the right that you can drag to quickly move through a document.  But fortunately there is a Find option so if you are looking for a specific word in a Word document, Microsoft Office Mobile will get you there.

Thus, as a viewer of Microsoft Word files, it is difficult to recommend Microsoft Office Mobile.  It offers little over the built-in viewer beyond Find and the ability to see comments.  The other third-party apps that can view Microsoft Word files can do far more, with Documents to Go being my favorite.

Editing Microsoft Word files

The iPhone’s built in viewer is just that, a viewer.  The only way to edit Word files is to get a third party app.  Surprisingly, the Microsoft Office Mobile app has a drawback that I didn’t expect to see; it cannot edit .doc files.  It can only edit .docx files.  Sure, .docx has been the default format for Word files since Word 2007 for Windows and Word 2008 for Mac, but I suspect that you probably have far more .doc than .docx files on your computer, and when other attorneys send me Word documents, they are in .doc format at least 50% of the time.  If you try to edit a .doc file in Microsoft Office Mobile, this is what you see:

Ugh.

If you do have a .docx document, you switch from the view mode to the edit mode by tapping the middle icon at the top right.  Upon doing so, you see a blinking cursor and a keyboard so you can type, and that middle icon changes to a formatting icon.  Formatting options are limited.  You do get bold, italic, underline and strike-through, which, to be honest, for many lawyers will be enough.  You can change the font color, but only to red, yellow or green, and you can highlight text, but again only in red, yellow or green.  You can also tap – or + to change the font size, although Microsoft Office Mobile doesn’t tell you what font size you are using.

 

Any formatting more complicated than that cannot be done in Microsoft Office Mobile.  You cannot change the font.  You cannot change the formatting of paragraphs, even simple formatting like a bullet list or a numbered list.  You cannot change the justification or the line spacing.  You cannot change the left or right indent.  You cannot view a word count.

I mentioned above that you cannot view track changes, and obviously that means that you cannot make them either.  If you want to use track changes to edit a document on an iPhone, you need to use another app such as Pages, Quickoffice or Office².  (Documents to Go will show track changes but you cannot create redlines.)

You can create new documents, and you can open documents from a Microsoft SkyDrive or from SharePoint.

 

It is a shame that the Word document edit function in Microsoft Office Mobile is so limited, but I will admit that in some circumstances it will be sufficient.  If you just need to add a few words to a document and make a few simple formatting changes like put something in italics, then Microsoft Office Mobile will do the job.  And although you cannot use a track changes mode to make your edits obvious, you can manually format your edits using bold, underline, one of the three font or highlight colors, etc. to make it obvious to someone else reading a document that you want to change something. 

Moreover, in my tests, Microsoft Office Mobile does an excellent job of preserving the formatting of the original document.  You might not be able to see footnotes or change the style of a paragraph, but all of that information remains in the file even when you make edits, so you can send the edited file to another person and then can work with it using Microsoft Word on a PC or Mac.  This is one drawback of using the Pages app by Apple.  It has a nice track changes feature, but whenever you use Pages your Word document is first converted to Pages format.  You can convert back to Word, but I often see something lost in the Word-to-Page-to-Word process such as some of the document formatting.  This is another reason that I like Documents to Go — it also does an excellent job of preserving the attributes of the original file when you edit a file.

Price

Microsoft Office Mobile is either free or expensive, depending upon your perspective.  The app itself is free to download, but you need to be an Office 365 subscriber to use the app.  If you are already a subscriber, then the app is free.  Otherwise, you need to purchase a subscription.  From within the app itself you can purchase a one year subscription for $99.99.  Or you can go to the Office page of the Microsoft website and select one of many different options including:

• $9.99/month or $99.99/year for the Home Premium plan which lets you install Microsoft Office (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, etc.) on up to 5 computers (PC or Mac).
• $15/month per user or $150/year per user for up to 25 users with the Office 365 Small Business Premium plan which includes lots of other features such as SharePoint internet sites
• $15/month with an annual commitment for the Office 365 Midsize Business plan for up to 300 users

Other plans are available. And if you sign up for a monthly plan on the Microsoft website (which is what I did), the first 30 days are free, enough time for you to kick the tires and see if the service and the app are right for you.

Office 365 subscribers get 27 GB of space on SkyDrive, Microsoft’s cloud storage service.  When you save files in Microsoft Office Mobile, the files are uploaded to SkyDrive (when you have Internet access) and local copies are kept on the device (so that you can still read a file on a plane).

Wrap up

I’m glad to see that we finally have a version of Microsoft Office for the iPhone, and my hope is that in the future we see more features added.  For now, however, the version 1.0 of Microsoft Office Mobile is very limited.  If you are already an Office 365 subscriber, you might as well get the app because it is free, and it gives you a quick way to perform the most simple of edits to a document.  As Microsoft encourages its users to subscribe to Office 365 instead of purchasing software only once or twice a decade, perhaps one day many of us will already be Office 365 subscribers.

But if you do not subscribe to Office 365, for most people it will not be worth spending $100 each year just to use Microsoft Office Mobile.  You can get Documents to Go or Pages for a one-time purchase of just $9.99.  Office² for iPhone is only $5.99, and Quickoffice Pro for iPhone is only $14.99.  Heck, you can buy all of these apps for less than half of the annual subscription price for Microsoft Office Mobile.  Even customers who just prefer to go “name brand” and who would normally buy the app sold by Microsoft over anything sold by a competitor, regardless of features, will probably pause before spending $100 a year for this app.

My critical review of this app is tempered by the knowledge that Microsoft traditionally releases limited 1.0 versions of software and then gradually improves the software over time.  If Microsoft improves this app by adding support for the iPad, footnotes and track changes and adds a few more interface tweaks, I could see this app one day becoming the best way to edit Word documents in iOS.  On the other hand, Microsoft does sell its own tablets and its own phones with the major selling point being that those devices can work with Microsoft Office documents.  Will Microsoft keep its iOS apps limited to make Microsoft hardware look better?  We’ll see.  Keep in mind that my favorite Word document viewer for the iPhone and iPad, Documents to Go, is made by DataViz, and while the DataViz doesn’t advertise this fact on its website, DataViz is actually now owned by BlackBerry, an Apple competitor.  And as of last year, Quickoffice is now owned by Google, which is of course makes Android and is another Apple competitor.

I’m not satisfied with the current 1.0 version of Microsoft Office Mobile, but if we see improvements in the future, perhaps one day this app will live up to its potential.

Click here to get Microsoft Office Mobile for iPhone (free, but subscription required):

It’s been a big week in the world of the iPhone and iPad thanks to Apple’s preview of iOS 7 earlier this week.  The more I look at the photographs and videos related by Apple on iOS 7, the more that I like the new look and the opportunities that the new iOS gives Apple for the future.  And now, the news of note from the past week:

• New York lawyer and TechnoLawyer publisher Neil Squillante reviews Penultimate, an iPad note-taking app.  My favorite app for taking notes on an iPad is still GoodNotes, but I know that there are many other good apps out there.
• New York lawyer Nicole Black tweeted a link to a list of 50 iOS 7 features by Josh Smith of GottaBe Mobile.  It’s a pretty good list of all of the new features.
• California attorney David Sparks tweeted a link to a great post by Steven Sommer in which he shows you how to create an iPhone password that is longer than four numbers but still uses only numbers and therefore uses a number pad, not a keyboard, to enter the password.
• The iPad app iAnnotate PDF, which you can use to read and annotate PDF files, was updated to version 2.5 this month, adding the ability to auto-sync documents to cloud storage services.
• The WestlawNext iPad app was updated this month to version 2.9, adding an improved history tab (including the history of documents you printed from the iPad), the ability to browse using the West Key Number System, and the ability to view and annotate user uploaded documents.
• The Lexis Advance HD iPad app was updated this month to version 3.8, adding the ability to browse through a statute or treatise, the ability to save multiple documents to an email or to a folder, and the ability to print on an iPad-compatible printer.
• The funny folks at Scoopertino (a humor site I discussed here) offer their own live blog (ahem) of the Apple announcements at WWDC this week.
• And finally, yesterday Apple posted the following video called Making a difference. One app at a time.  It shows off some iPad apps that truly change people lives.  The video is almost 10 minutes long, but it is powerful and inspirational.  Worth watching:

Connected Data, the maker of the Transporter, was a sponsor of iPhone

J.D. earlier this year, and recently there has been a lot of activity at
the company.  First, the company is merging with Drobo, which makes
sense considering that both companies make unique storage devices, plus the folks
who started Connected Data previously helped to invent the Drobo.

Second,
Connected Data is about to release version 2.0 of the software that will
bring lots of improvements and make the software more like Dropbox. 
I’ll be sure to post about it once the 2.o software is available. 

Third, and the reason for this post, the company is hosting a sweepstakes for iPhone J.D. readers.  One lucky iPhone J.D. reader will win a Transporter!  But you need to hurry if you want a chance to win.  Simply click here to register before midnight (Pacific time) on June 15, 2013 and then cross your fingers.  I really love using my Transporter, and whichever of you is the lucky winner will be very happy.  Good luck!

To kickoff Apple’s WWDC conference yesterday, Apple CEO Tim Cook and other Apple executives announced many new Apple products and services, including a really cool looking and super-fast version of the new Mac Pro computer.  But today I want to focus on the new iOS 7 features that I think will be of the most interest to lawyers.  There’s a lot to like, and I am really looking forward to the release of iOS 7 later this year.  (No date was provided, but I presume it will come out around the same time that the next version of the iPhone comes out — my guess is around September.)  Here are the highlights:

• Comprehensive redesign of the user interface. The new interface looks flatter, but at the same time looks more three-dimensional because of the use of layers.  For example, if you have a photograph on your home screen behind your app icons, as you tilt your device there is a parallax effect that makes the apps appear to move and float over your background photograph.  The interface also uses a neat, thin font and the built-in apps seem to take better advantage of the full iPhone screen.  It’s tough to describe in words; click here to see pictures on Apple’s website of the new design of iOS 7.  iOS 7 will look very different from every prior version of iOS, and the new design seems to add a lot more functionality as well.
• When a developer comes out with an update to an app, the app will update automatically.  No need to manually update apps.
• Control Center.  In iOS 6 you often need to dig into the Settings app to flip a switch for something like WiFi, Airplane Mode, etc.  In iOS 7, you will be able to swipe up from the bottom of the device to flip those common switches.
• And because of Siri improvements, you may not even need to use Control Center.  Siri is more powerful in iOS 7, which includes, for example, the ability to just tell your iPhone to turn on Bluetooth or increase brightness.  Siri also has an improved voice and is much smarter.
• AirDrop.  If someone else in the room has an iPhone or iPad,  you can easily and quickly share documents or photographs.
• If you use folders to organize apps and are frustrated by the limit of only 16 apps per folder on an iPhone 5 (or 12 apps in the iPhone 4S and earlier), iOS 7 will let you have multiple pages within a folder.
• In many apps you will be able to swipe your finger from the left towards the middle to go back to the prior screen in an app.  This should make it faster to use critical apps like Mail.
• If you often switch between apps, you’ll like the multitasking improvements.  Apps that you use all the time are allowed to run pretty much all the time.  And thanks to intelligent scheduling, apps that you frequently use at a certain time of the day (such as when you wake up) will be already running when you go to use them.  The net effect should be to make everything more responsive and the apps more powerful.  Plus, iOS 7 has a cool new interface for switching between apps that includes a preview of the app’s screen, in addition to the icon.
• Safari.  Safari looks vastly improved.  You can have even more tabs open at once and there is a cool new 3D interface for flipping between tabbed webpages.  Plus more of the screen is devoted to the webpage itself.

Just a few of those features would be great, having all of them is fantastic, and that’s just the tip of the iceberg for iOS 7.  Apple also has other new cool features such as new versions of the Camera and Photos apps, iTunes Radio to stream music (similar to Pandora), the ability to view annotations in PDF documents, enterprise improvements that will especially help some lawyers at medium and large firms such as single sign in and per-app VPN, etc.  And yesterday, Apple only showed off the iOS 7 features that work on an iPhone; I’m sure there will be even more cool iPad-specific features in iOS 7.

iOS 7 will be a significant redesign for the iPhone and iPad, and we will all get a chance to use it in just a few months.  I can’t wait.

Today
is the start of WWDC, Apple’s developer conference in San Francisco.  Most of the
conference is confidential, but the event always starts with a public
keynote that provides details on what Apple has planned for the future.  Apple CEO Tim Cook will give the keynote presentation today
at 10:00 a.m. Pacific / 1:00 p.m. Eastern.  I am sure that there will be
many announcements that relate to the iPhone and iPad, such as a preview of the next operating system, iOS 7.  Indeed, this will be the first major update to iOS since Jony Ive — the designer responsible for Apple’s hardware — has also been placed in charge of the look of Apple software.  I suspect that we will see Apple announce a different look for the iOS, design changes that improve how the iPhone and iPad work.  There are also rumors that Apple will announce a streaming music service.

If you want to
follow the event as it happens today, there are a number of websites
offering live coverage.  Based on their coverage of prior events, I
suspect that these will be some of the best (click to jump to their page
with live coverage):

• Macworld
• The Verge
• Engadget
• Ars Technica

UPDATE:  Apple is also offering a live stream of the event.

I’m excited to see what Apple announces!

Many of us let our kids play with our iPads, and it is always amazing to see how quickly young kids figure out how to use these devices.  When used in moderation, I consider using the iPad a good thing for kids, but I do sometimes wonder how using an iPad might influence a child’s development.  Hanna Rosin wrote a great feature for The Atlantic entitled The Touch-Screen Generation to explore this topic.  It’s a great read.  I’m not surprised to see that Rosin has a way with words.  When I was a high school debater, Rosin and her partner David Coleman debated for Stuyvesant High School in New York.  They were one of the smartest and best teams in the country and one of the toughest opponents that my partner and I ever faced.  And now, the news of note from the past week:

• St. Louis attorney Dennis Kennedy and Larry Port, CEO of Rocket Matter, gave a presentation on iPhone apps at the ABA’s 2013 Spring Law Practice Management Section meeting.  The presentation was titled “Planet of the Apps” and the amusing slides that went along with their presentation are available here.
• Jim Calloway of the Oklahoma Bar Association told me that iPhone J.D. readers might appreciate this list of 40"secret” iPhone tips and shortcuts from Kevin Whipps of AppStorm.  The list is over a year old, but there are some good tips that might be new to you.
• South Carolina attorney Ben Stevens of The Mac Lawyer reviews the Lynktec TruGlide Pro Precision Stylus.
• Karl Burnett of TouchArcade reviews Ace Attorney: Phoenix Wright Trilogy HD, a free iPad/iPhone game in which you play the role of an attorney.
• Florida attorney Mitch Robiner created Stick Texting, an app that lets you add funny animations to your text messages.  He recently released a new, rated 17+ version called Stick Texting – The College Series.  This YouTube video shows off some of the new animations.  Click here to get Stick Texting – The College Series ($0.99):
• South Carolina attorney Justin Kahn reviews PDFpen for iPad.
• That reminds me: Jean MacDonald of Smile — maker of the PDFpen apps for iPhone and iPad — founded App Camp For Girls, a summer camp for girls age 12 to 14 to
  
  teach them how to write iPhone apps.  The goal is to try to do something about the
  
  small number of women who write software; this year there is just one camp, but in the future they hope to expand around the country.  Sounds great to me, and you
  
  can support the effort by making a tax-deductible donation on the App Camp For Girls page on Indiegogo.
• The iMore website recently started a Hall of Fame section honoring apps that are more than 5 years old and have earned their place in iPhone history.
• Joanna Stern of ABC News previews August, a device due out later this year that will let you lock and unlock your door using an iPhone.  You can even send someone a virtual key that stops working whenever you want, making it unnecessary to leave a spare key under the door mat. 
• If you travel in your car a lot, Christopher Null of PC World has tips for using your iPhone and other devices to be a mobile road warrior.
• And finally, if you are worried that using an iPhone to make phone calls makes you too modern, Pyle Audio offers the PRT55I, the Authentic Classical Themed Home Telephone System.  The device resembles an old-fashioned rotary phone with a wood base and brushed copper parts and can be used with both your landline and an iPhone.  The list price is $164.99, but you can get it for only $68.26 on Amazon.

One of my most-used accessories for the iPhone and iPad is my MOBiLE CLOTH.  This micro material weave cloth is by far the best cleaning cloth that I’ve ever used, and I always keep one on my desk, in my briefcase, in my study at home, etc. so that I can quickly and completely remove the smudges on my iPhone or iPad.  It is nice to have a clean iPhone and iPad screen, not just for yourself
but especially if you are showing off something on your device to a
client.  A MOBiLE CLOTH also works great to clean smudges off of a pair of glasses, a camera lens, and similar surfaces.  I’ve reviewed them in the past (1/11/11, 5/31/11, and 2/13/12), and I mention them again today because for a limited time you can get a 25% discount plus free shipping on custom packages, and on any other order over $20.

They come in two sizes — a Classic 9" x 9" size that is a great size to keep on your desk and a Nano 4" x 4" that is smaller and easier to carry around.  Sometimes I think of the big one as being for the iPad and the smaller one as being for the iPhone, but in reality I use both sizes with all of my devices.  The prices vary based upon what you order, but they start at $9.99 for a pack of two and then get cheaper per cloth if you order more.

As I noted last year, my law firm has also taken advantage of the promotional and custom services offered by the company so that we can give out MOBiLE CLOTHs with our law firm logo on it.  Clients always appreciate receiving them, so you might want to check out those services for your own firm.  Unless you consider your firm a competitor to my law firm, in which case I encourage you to not do any innovative marketing at all.

John Hartigan, the founder of MOBiLE CLOTH, tells me that in the early days of his company, many of his initial sales were to iPhone J.D. readers who learned about the MOBiLE CLOTH after I posted my first review back in January of 2011.  So as a thank you to iPhone J.D. readers, and for a limited time, MOBiLE CLOTH is offering a 25% discount plus free shipping on all of its custom/promotional packages (a cloth with a custom logo) and a 25% discount plus free shipping on all regular orders over $20.  Hartigan tells me that the free shipping is in the continental US only, other restrictions may apply, and the offer expires on Friday, July 5.  To take advantage of the offer, add items to your cart, click on the cart icon, and then type IPHONEJD in the Coupon Code field.

If you haven’t tried out a MOBiLE CLOTH yet, I encourage you to take advantage of this discount to check it out yourself.  These cloths work really well, and they are a great way to keep your iPad and iPhone looking great.

Click here to order custom MOBiLE CLOTHs printed with a logo that you provide.

Click here to order MOBiLE CLOTHs for yourself.

I am pleased to welcome Clio as a sponsor of iPhone J.D.  Clio offers web-based practice management, time & billing and client collaboration services (including document management) for small and mid-sized law firms.  When you use Clio, your important client data is securely accessible anywhere that you have Internet access.  Of course that means that you and everyone in your law firm can use a PC or a Mac.  But even on an iPhone, you can log in to the Clio mobile interface.

You can use the Clio mobile interface to do virtually everything you can on a computer — tracking time, tasks, expenses, documents, etc. 

The few tasks that you cannot do from the mobile interface (such as creating a new matter) are the tasks that you are unlikely to want to do on the road.  But even then, if you really needed to you can switch to the full desktop view of Clio from the mobile version and do anything you could do at your desktop.

You can also connect your Clio Calendar to the Calendar app on the iPhone with just a few simple steps.  You can also sync your Clio calendar and Contacts to your iPhone via Google.  And you can also use Clio Sync for Outlook to access your Clio calendar, contacts and tasks with Microsoft Outlook, even if you are offline.  Plus, you can sync your iPhone/iPad with Outlook so that Clio is synchronized with both Outlook and your iPhone/iPad.  Clio also offers e-mail integration so that you can easily associate an e-mail (using Outlook, Apple Mail, Thunderbird or Gmail) directly with a matter.

If you have been thinking about trying cloud-based practice management, Clio offers a free 30 day trial so it is easy to find out if Clio will work for you and your law firm.

When I think of iOS, I think of iPhones and iPad, but of course there is also the iPod touch, aka the iPhone-without-the-phone.  I’ve heard of a few lawyers who used an iPod touch, but that was a while ago and was because they had to use another smartphone too (such as a BlackBerry back when some firms required that) and they wanted something to run iOS apps.  Nowadays, I suspect that virtually all lawyers would find an iPhone far more valuable than an iPod touch.  Nevertheless, it was interesting to see that this week Apple announced a new, cheaper version ($229, with of course no cell phone contract) of the iPod touch, a 16GB version that comes only in black and lacks a camera on the back.  I agree with Jim Dalrymple of The Loop that it looks like a great portable game machine for kids.  With the new iPod touch, Apple also announced that it has sold more than 100 million iPod touch units.  By my count, Apple has sold over 350 million iPhones and over 140 million iPads, so that means that historical iOS sales are about 59% iPhone, 24% iPad and 17% iPod touch.  That’s actually more popular than I would have expected for the iPod touch … but still doesn’t make me want to launch iPod J.D.  And now, the rest of the news of note from the past week:

• San Francisco attorney Morgan Smith describes four apps that make his life easier.  I only use one of those myself (TripIt) but that app is essential for me when I travel.
• Earlier this month, Dallas attorney Tom Mighell compared four apps for annotating PDFs on an iPad, and I forgot to link to the article.  Better late than never.
• Eric Slivka of Mac Rumors reports that, according to research firm IDC, tablet shipments were surpass notebook computer shipments in 2013, and tablets will take over the entire PC market in 2015.
• Peter Cohen of The Loop reports that Apple hired former EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson to head up Apple’s environmental efforts.  Jackson grew up here in New Orleans, and after getting a B.S. from Tulane and a Masters from Princeton in chemical engineering, spent most of her professional life working for the EPA and the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection.
• I became a big fan of 1Password when I started using it late last year.  I still use the app every single day, and I like the app even more now than when I wrote my review four months ago.  If you haven’t tried it yet, now may be the time because, for a limited time, 1Password for iOS, Mac and PC is 50% off. 
• A few weeks ago, I ended In the news with the video of Candian astronaut singing David Bowie’s “Space Oddity” on the International Space Station.  The Economist has an interesting article on how copyright works in space. 
• And finally, how many times have you been frustrated that you couldn’t access a floppy disk from your iPad?  Okay, probably never, but did you know that you can actually use Apple’s iPad Camera Connection Kit to access photos on a floppy disk if they are organized the right way?  YouTube user “napabar” shows you how to do it in this video.  Useful?  Perhaps not, but interesting.