With smartphones and tablets all the rage in portable computing these days comes a big need: Compatibility to Microsoft’s Office programs like Word and Excel. While Microsoft doesn’t make Office for such devices, a slew of other companies have apps that that will let you create and read Office files on your tablet or smartphone just like you can on a computer.
Documents To Go is the granddaddy of Office-compatible apps, working with just about any smartphone and almost all tablets from the iPad to the Droid. Cost is $16.99 for the premium version but from Powerpoint to Pdf files, Word documents and Excel files, it does it all.
I really like Quickoffice Pro. It’s $19.99 for the iPad and $14.99 for smartphones and also works with pretty much all mobile platforms. It lets you access, create and share Microsoft Office files with your computer or remote cloud services like Dropbox or Google Docs.
There are two new free Office conversion apps that use online cloud storage. The newest player is OnLive Desktop. It works with the iPad and Android tablets.
The second is CloudOn. It’s iPad only and works with the Drobox service.