Polaris Office v the rest

[lynch1194]

Has anyone downloaded Polaris office yet? Any feedback? How does it compare to the usual office apps available?

 

[Taq]

Bought it yesterday and have had a quick play. Initial thoughts:

1) Handles xlsx, docx and pptx files
2) Any file I've looked at so far looks like it does in MS office (non-supported fonts not withstanding)
3) no support for Calibri font yet and defaults (I think to Veranda) so some text boxes may be slightly off
4) can add images in any type of document - both editing existing and adding new
5) can sort and filter rows in spreadsheet, although date filtering needs a bit of work (shows the code instead of the date which is a bit confusing)
6) can email files and download from box.net, although I haven't worked out how to get it back uploaded. Support for Dropbox is coming next week apparently
//update - ah right one of the tutorials tells you how - actually really easy. supports google docs too

7) Support for charts
8) some of the menus are a bit odd to work out
9) wingding fonts render as bullet points
10) support for tables and images in word


So far I'm really impressed - it does far better at not messing up the formatting and has more features than the other office apps I've read about (I only have Office2 to compare it to as having actually used it). Certainly worth the £5.99 it's on offer for at the moment!
Office2HD would not display images in spreadsheets (something I really need) and would not display some of the images in my powerpoint file.

 

[xonkluap]

Hi

I am looking to create a spreadsheet with click boxes on it to record data does Polaris or the other apps you mention support these boxes?

In effect I want to collect lots of data as I survey a house, then use the spreadsheet to add up all the info in a summary screen. I know how to do the in excel, would this be the best route or can someone suggest a better route

Paul

 

[michali]

I am so tempted to buy Polaris Office but it appears to only open and process 2007 - 2010 Microsoft Office documents. Is this so? I am still using Office 2003. Will I be able to use Polaris successfully? If it can, my next question would be can it create graphs from Excel spreadsheets?

 

[Taq]

There is support for xls, doc and ppt as well as the 2007+ formats so you should be fine. You can also create charts in their version of excel - I tried it today and it seemed to work pretty well. It also imports charts from existing excel files pretty well as long as they aren't overly complicated. There's a tutorial for making charts on the Polaris web site.
One thing it doesn't do is pivot tables - if you open an excel file with a pivot table the information will be there but in a standard sheet.

 

[michali]

Thanks for the information. I think I will purchase the app!

 

[lynch1194]

Let's us know your thoughts after you've purchased it.

 

[michali]

Not sure yet. It does not read a couple of my files as well as I had hoped. I still like Quick Office for ease of use.

 

[skallal]

I pulled the trigger on Polaris Office last night and bought it from the App Store. I had very high expectations for it, even though the cloud support is lacking. Oddly enough I can live with the lack of cloud support. In fact, setting it up on Box Net was easy. Dropbox would be the preferred cloud service.

But I had two really big glaring issues. First it would not save my font. It defaults to Times New Roman, but I prefer Arial. But when closing and reopening the document, the new font is not saved. Second it is very difficult to select a word or group of words. Selecting a sentence or paragraph is nearly impossible. Text selection does not behave like other iOS apps. I was trying to update my resume and found it nearly impossible. I kept fighting to make the app do basic tasks. I eventually gave up and went back to Quick Office Pro HD. At least it works.

Oddly the reviews in the App Store, were mostly complaining about the lack of cloud support, and not so much about obvious bugs. Maybe I'll have to try Pages. But I'm not a Mac person.

Anyone else have these kind of problems?

 

[michali]

I have to agree...wish I had not bought it really. I find Quickoffice documents much easier to edit and manage generally. Love the way you can download from so many cloud storage options in Quickoffice. I guess the only thing missing is the ability to insert an image into a word document. It also does not render one of my word files well, but neither does any other iPad word processing app.

 

[Layth]

Aside from missing Dropbox support which is supposed to be added as soon as the update is approved by Apple, this is much better than Quickoffice Pro. I tend to lose my formatting with Quickoffice Pro and can't do basic stuff on its word processor such as justify text, insert images, and adding tables. I'm glad I took advantage of this introductory price, I was hesitant cause I felt burned by my Quickoffice Pro purchase.