Word and excel

[babypink]

I need some of the end users with iPads to amend documents created in either excel or word (nothing complicated) what app best works with docs created in these two Microsoft applications

Example a table in word needs to be completed each week with names and details of sites visited then emailed?

Thanks

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[jojoba]

I have installed Pages and Quickoffice for that purpose, but haven't tested them out yet. Pages has a counterpart that it is supposed to deal with Excel, I can't remember what it's called now but it's part of a package that mirrors the Microsoft office applications. The one for PowerPoint files is called 'Keynote'.

[TheRambler]

Found this, see if it explains what your after

Documents To Go

I have been using DataViz’s Documents To Go applications for years on my smartphones and iPhone and IMHO they took the lead from Quickoffice back in March with their added support for cloud storage solutions. DataViz released their iPad optimized version in early June and the update came in the form of a universal application so it was free to existing iPhone Documents To Go owners. The Documents To Go Premium version (iTunes link) is available now for $11.99 while the regular suite version (iTunes link) costs $7.99. The Premium version gives you support for PowerPoint, Microsoft Exchange, and online storage services. Documents To Go is currently the only other Office suite for the iPad I could find that supports PowerPoint editing and creation (Keynote being the other) so if PowerPoint on the go with your iPad is important then you need to check out Documents To Go.
After testing out the iWork suite and then Documents To Go, DTG became my favorite for the cloud file support, Word, Excel, and PowerPoint import and export support, and familiar user interface. You will see that Documents To Go is not near as flashy as the iWork suite and there is lots of work that can be done to improve the user interface on the iPad. DataViz brought their DTG version to the iPad as a larger iPhone version without much additional work on iPad/tablet interface elements. However, it is the most powerful in terms of connectivity, functionality, and Office document support.
Documents To Go version 3.3 starts up in the file browser page showing you folders for your local files (transferred to the iPad via iTunes or email attachments), desktop files (way to browse your desktop via the desktop application), and cloud files. Documents To Go supports Google Docs, Box.net, Dropbox, iDisk, and SugarSync online storage services and you can even add multiple accounts for each of these. New file formats can either be in MS Office 97-2004/XP or MS Office 2007-2008 formats. Your recent files appear on the lower half of the file browser display. In the upper left corner you will find an icon to access settings and add desktops and cloud accounts. In the upper right you will find an icon that lets you create a new Word, Excel, or PowerPoint document or an email with attachments.
When you launch the word processing module you will see a full row of icons along the bottom that are in white on a black background and actually look a bit old school. Tapping some of these icons pops up a subset of icons (for example the paragraph icon pops up 5 icons for justification options) and tapping these makes the action occur. There are icons for save, email, text formatting, paragraph alignment, bullets & numbering, indent and tabs, find, jump to top, middle, bottom, undo and redo, word count, document info, and full screen toggle. The icons are pretty self-explanatory, but I would like to have seen slightly larger icons with some color added. The traditional iOS tap and hold zoom functionality is supported, as well as the iPad keyboard.
The spreadsheet module has the same bottom row of icon design with slightly smaller icons and different functions that are made for spreadsheet functions. These include icons for common number formats, locking cells or spreadsheets, inserting rows and columns, and removing rows or columns. The functionality is great, but the user interface could be slightly improved. Double tapping a cell lets you get into the cell details where you can tap the fx icon to see all the available functions and enter them into the cell. You can also double tap and hold to select multiple cells. Chart creation is not supported in DTG.
Working with presentations is about the same as the other modules with a line of icons along the bottom, but these are quite different than in the word processing and spreadsheet modules. The icons represent the following functions; jump to page, change slide views, rotate left and right, save, document info, email the presentation, and full screen toggle. There is a slide sorter view as well. When you choose to create a new presentation you have three template options; casual, corporate, and simple. Creation is pretty basic and not something I would ever really do on my iPad, but at least the capability is present.


iWork suite

Apple released their iWork suite for the iPad as three separate applications, each available for $9.99. I have to honestly say that Apple has made working with Office documents more fun than I ever thought work could be and I do enjoy using the applications. There are a couple of fairly major limits with the apps, but being that they are made and promoted by Apple they are some of the top selling applications for the iPad.
Pages (iTunes link) is the word processing application and Apple has a slick video showing off the main features. You can view and edit Pages and Word documents and export documents in Pages, Word, and PDF formats to share your document with others. Joel mentioned that there are issues with round tripping documents so if you need to keep document formats intact then you may want to try out another application. When you launch Pages you will see any existing documents you have on your iPad in large preview mode or you can tap the + icon to create a new document or duplicate an existing document. One very cool feature when you select to add a new document is the 16 templates that Apple provides. You can select one of the templates and then simply tap on the elements in the document to edit and customize the document for your needs.
You will find document editing and formatting controls on the top of the display with main editing features having buttons (bold, italic, underline, justification, tab, etc.). Tapping the “i” icon in the very top bar gives you quick access to text style (including font type and size), list, and layout options. Tapping the picture icon lets you insert media, tables, charts, and shapes. Tapping the wrench icon gives you access to document setup, find, help, and edge guide/spelling toggles. It is easy to access all of these formatting tools and the part of the application that makes editing and creation fun is that you can tap and drag tables, photos, etc. around the document for placement and design of your document.
Numbers (iTunes link) is the spreadsheet application associated with the iWork suite and as an engineer I find this application to be even more user friendly than Pages. Apple has a video of Numbers in action as well. Similar to Pages you start in a preview browser view of loaded spreadsheets with options to share or export spreadsheets, create a new spreadsheet, or delete a spreadsheet. Unfortunately, one of the major limitations for me is that you can only export Numbers spreadsheets as Numbers or PDF files with no support for Exporting as an Excel spreadsheet. This fact alone makes Numbers pretty worthless to me as I need to edit Excel files and then send them along as Excel workbooks. I have never seen spreadsheets this intuitive to work with though as you can move elements around as flawlessly as a drag and drop on the display.
Apple does a good job of keeping the user interface similar across their three iWork applications with the main formatting and editing controls positioned in the upper right of the display. The “i” icon gives you access to formatting cells (color, positioning, borders, number, currency, etc.), tables, header editing, and more. Media, tables, charts, and shapes can be inserted into your spreadsheet. The real meat of working with spreadsheets is creating and editing cells. You simply double tap a cell to have a new keyboard appear with quick options to cell functions, simple math functions, date/time, and text keyboard input options. Multiple sheets are supported and Apple makes it easy to navigate around your workbook.
Keynote (iTunes link) is Apple’s presentation software and again they have a slick video showing you the software. Keynote works only in landscape mode and again has the same controls in the upper right corner. Also similar to Numbers you can export only in Keynote or PDF formats so there is now PowerPoint export or sharing in Keynote. It is just as intuitive to move elements around your presentations too with drag and drop support. You can move, scale, and rotate objects in your presentation and it really is a slick user interface to work with on the iPad.
If you use iWork on your Mac then it is probably a natural fit for you to purchase the iWork apps, but if Excel and PowerPoint export are important then you will want to look at one of the other applications available for the iPad.

Hope this helps, Chris

[iFrog]

Here is a little info that richsadams post before....

Here's a copy of a post I made on another website answering a member's questions about what business apps work best on the iPad...

Funny you should ask. I did some research for my company before we issued iPads to the field teams recently. Like most companies our business uses MS Office primarily and I had to determine the best software for the iPad to be able to read and save Word, Excel, PowerPoint and PDF files. For day-to-day use Pages, Numbers, Keynote and GoodReader were fine. However when it came to editing and saving documents in Word and especially Excel, Pages and Numbers weren't up to the task.

So I downloaded and tried some other office apps. Besides Apple’s iWork Suite (Pages, Numbers, Keynote) these were the highest rated:

- Office2 HD ($7.99)
- Documents to Go ($9.99)
- QuickOffice ($14.99)

I was able to open and manipulate several basic spreadsheets, Word documents, PDF’s, etc. without any issues in all three programs as well as Apple’s apps.

However when I began throwing some heavy duty spreadsheets at them there were issues. Depending on the size of the file, some programs opened them faster than others, but due to size it did take a little time for the largest files (about 6MB) to open. Some programs including Numbers and Documents to Go would not open the larger Excel files at all due to size. Others had trouble with formatting, sheet protection or unsupported formulas however they would open as “read only”.

Office2 HD was the only program that would allow me to open all of the files, make changes and save them. I was able to export them to my company computer, however upon import some non-destructive formatting changes were made and although the figures were fine, they lost some color coding, etc. The more basic files I opened and saved in Numbers, QuickOffice and Documents to go exported with the formatting intact.

Even though everything in the iPad is solid state/Flash memory which makes it very snappy, the somewhat low RAM causes a bottleneck when opening and saving such large files. (Since the iPad 2 has a little more horsepower it should do better in this area) but we need to keep in mind that the iPad isn’t a replacement for a computer or even a full-fledged laptop.

At this point all I can say is that all of the programs work well with Word and PowerPoint files as well as “average” Excel spreadsheets, but may not with larger, more complicated spreadsheets. One work around if you just need to share a complicated spreadsheet would be to create a PDF.

After using all of these apps for a while I still use GoodReader, Pages and Numbers for day-to-day work. For more detailed work I'd probably go with Documents To Go. The other two are fine but DTG has the most intuitive and elegant UI IMHO. If I had to deal with large spreadsheets it would be Office2 HD, but it's very kludgy compared to DTG. I don't think you'd go wrong with any of the three though.

Hope that helps!

[iFrog]

The thread can be found in here as well.... Hi All!

[Wolfpuppies3]

Both are Apple apps.

[viktor.balaban]

But what about free software, anything?

[richsadams]

But what about free software, anything?

AFAIK there are no free apps that will do what the OP needs.

[Bob Maxey]

I have installed Pages and Quickoffice for that purpose, but haven't tested them out yet. Pages has a counterpart that it is supposed to deal with Excel, I can't remember what it's called now but it's part of a package that mirrors the Microsoft office applications. The one for PowerPoint files is called 'Keynote'.

Pages works well; it is not Word, but it works well. Numbers is for spreadsheets/Excel. I have found both programs highly useful. One thing to consider, Pages and Numbers do not play well with Word and Excel macros. Also, some formatting is not compatible. All in all, they are great programs.

I give Pages four out of five Pilcrows.

I have tried other spreadsheet and WP programs and I always return to Pages. I hope a JB arrives for iOS 5.0.1 so I can update Pages. I hope the Pages update is worth the wait for an iOS 5.0.1.

[jduncan]

What about using google docs?