Which office program is best for college?

[inferno_711]

am a college student and I use my iPad for nearly everything on a day to day basis. But I will soon jeed to be writing reports and group projects and I need an office program to use. My school uses Microsoft Office 2010, so my group will be using this for our projects. Which office program for the iPad works best with Office 2010?

I am an engineer, so I will be using Word, Excell and Powerpoint a lot this semester.

 

[Tim SPRACKLEN]

One of our members carried out a survey of Office apps for his company; you can see his conclusions in this thread...

http://www.ipadforums.net/new-member-introductions-site-assistance/22431-hi-all.html

Another comparison was undertaken here....

http://www.ipadforums.net/iwork-forum/36629-office-app-comparison.html


The Apple iWorks Office suite for the iPad has a set of useful Help pages that show their capabilities here...

Pages is Word compatible and can read .doc and .docx files and save in .doc and .pdf

Keynote is PowerPoint compatible and can read .ppt and .pptx files and save in .ppt and .pdf

Numbers is Excel compatible and can read .xls and .xlsx files and save in .xls and .pdf

Apple - Support - iOS Apps - Welcome


Tim

 

[RedCoil]

QuickOffice has pretty good MS Office compatibility and cloud support as well. However, it's somewhat limited in terms of function. iWork has alot more functionality but it can cause alot of formating issues going between the iWork and MS Office formats regularly.

What specific tasks and functions are you looking to do with the iPad? Also, are you planning to create alot of documents from it or just edit them? I have several of the office suits of the iPad, if you give me a bit more info on what you're looking to to I can give you better advice.

 

[giradman]

Hi Inferno - welcome to the forum -

I'm assuming that your are an 'engineering student' @ the moment?

You've already been given two outstanding links that review the various 'business apps' that may integrate w/ their MS counterparts, i.e. MS Office.

Please read them which will help your decision; I've put the iWork suite on my iPad and have both transferred a number of Word/Excel/PPT files and have written 'new' files in each program - I'm impressed w/ the quality of these apps for a tablet; NOW, these just do not offer the extended features of the full computer versions so simplification and limitations will exist; please let this help you in deciding on a choice(s).

Also, if you plan to be typing in a lot of material into these iPad apps, strongly consider a BT (Bluetooth) keyboard - I have the Apple which works well. Good luck in all of your selections!

 

[inferno_711]

QuickOffice has pretty good MS Office compatibility and cloud support as well. However, it's somewhat limited in terms of function. iWork has alot more functionality but it can cause alot of formating issues going between the iWork and MS Office formats regularly.

What specific tasks and functions are you looking to do with the iPad? Also, are you planning to create alot of documents from it or just edit them? I have several of the office suits of the iPad, if you give me a bit more info on what you're looking to to I can give you better advice.

I have several group projects which will be mostly done with micorsoft office. I have office at home, so I will be looking to read and edit documents from time to time when I am not at home. The majority of my typin will be done at home. I also might need to use an extrenal monitor from time to time for informal powerpoint presentations, the major group presentaions being done on classroom computers. I will be working on spreadsheets, but they will mostly be simple calulations. A few of my classes have notes and documents in Word and Powerpoint that I would like to be able to read and make notes on during class.

I have read many of the reviews for these programs, and I just don't know which ones, if any would be useful enough to spend the money on.

 

[RedCoil]

I have several group projects which will be mostly done with micorsoft office. I have office at home, so I will be looking to read and edit documents from time to time when I am not at home. The majority of my typin will be done at home. I also might need to use an extrenal monitor from time to time for informal powerpoint presentations, the major group presentaions being done on classroom computers. I will be working on spreadsheets, but they will mostly be simple calulations. A few of my classes have notes and documents in Word and Powerpoint that I would like to be able to read and make notes on during class.

I have read many of the reviews for these programs, and I just don't know which ones, if any would be useful enough to spend the money on.

If you're willing to spend the money, the iWork set is pretty nice. I own it, QuickOffice and Docs2Go and I use iWork almost exclusively. The downside is that getting edited documents out of iWork can be a bit frustrating. Hopefully, this will improve in the fall with iCloud. Converting from MS Office, to iWork and back to MS Office can occasionally cause weird formatting glitches.

If you want to save a bit of cash or want the transfers from to and from the iPad to be painless, I would recommend QuickOffice. It is updated with new features far more often than D2G is and it can do PowerPoint presentations. QO can also save to the .docx or xlsx formats, where the others can only do the older formats.