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Topic: Mobility

Need Office on your iPad now? Try these capable alternatives (screenshot gallery)

Summary: We may not see Office for the iPad until late 2014. Don't worry though, there are plenty of capable alternatives available now, especially when you consider people don't do much heavy lifting on a tablet.

Matthew Miller

By for The Mobile Gadgeteer |

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(Image: Screenshot by Matt Miller/ZDNet)

Quickoffice Pro HD is still my favorite iPad app

We heard the news this week that Office for the iPad may not be coming until late 2014. If I have some heavy lifting to do with the full Office suite on the go, I use my Surface Pro. However, you can do plenty with Office documents on the iPad using one of these capable alternatives.

I would love to see some study results documenting how many people actually use an Office-compatible program on their iPad. I consider myself a power user and rarely use my iPad to create or edit Office documents and wonder if there is a real need for the full Microsoft Office suite or if these available, low-cost alternatives will meet most people's needs.

I wrote my first iPad Office app showdown in 2010 and wrote about the iWork suite, Documents To Go, Office2 HD, and Quickoffice. I then followed up a year later in my 2011 showdown that added Documents 2 and Smart Office to the lineup.

As I went back to my iPad and updated to the latest version, I found that the original four I looked at in 2010 have all been updated and are the ones I recommend you check out. There are new features, such as track changes and print support that really make these alternatives likely just fine for the majority of people.

Do you use an Office-compatible suite on your iPad and if so, which one do you prefer? What limitations do you find that require the full version of Microsoft Office for your iPad?

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Topics: Mobility, Apple, iPad, Tablets

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36 comments
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  • From the article: "people don't do much heavy lifting on a tablet"

    Most people aren't MS Office power users and, therefore, don't do "heavy lifting" on their desktops and laptops either.

    This is why Google's QuickOffice, via native client in the Chrome browser, could be interesting for the Windows, OS X and GNU/Linux desktops. [At the moment, this feature is available only in the Chromebook Pixel.]
    Rabid Howler Monkey
    Reply 2 Votes

    • any word

      when it's coming to the browser/other chromebooks? I'm doubtful it will really be that good based on what the android app looked like before google bought it, but I'm interested to take a look. android and chrome have some decent office suites, but I'm not totally satisfied with any of them.
      theoilman
      Reply 1 Vote

    • You are full of it

      How pathetic that the same losers who claimed the year of Linux every single year, keep claiming the year of the demise of MS Office every year. First it was Corel Office, then OpenOffice, and now the last victim is QuickOffice

      LOL
      markbn
      Reply 4 Votes

      • Surface ...

        ... is the answer. Doesn't it blow away all alternatives? When you are running Office, it really is Office. I would think that would be the only way to go, not these lightweight pseudo-office things.

        Not the Pro either, just the Surface.
        Schoolboy Bob
        Reply Vote

  • ms office on ipad

    You can run ms office on your ipad by using software such as thinserver

    Http://www.aikotech.com/thinserver.htm
    ThinkFairer8
    Reply Vote

    • Touch interfaces were invented for a reason

      Good luck trying to complete your thesis using a touch screen VNC as an interface for full blown office.
      Alan Smithie
      Reply 2 Votes

      • It works just fine on my tablet

        "Good luck trying to complete your thesis using a touch screen VNC as an interface"

        I use remote desktop on my Surface RT and it works just fine.

        Oh right, I forgot, ipad doesn't support any precision pointer devices and has the industry's worst keyboard support.

        Once again proving that the problem isn't with the software or the workflow, the problem is that many of you simply bought the wrong device.
        toddbottom3
        Reply 3 Votes

        • remote desktop?

          I was under the impression that the Surface RT was coming with a local MS Office installation and this was it's strength over the iPad?

          Was the MS Office removed from the Surface RT during some firmware update? Or you prefer remote desktop? It can't be that MS Office on RT is unusable, right? :)
          danbi
          Reply Vote

          • Windows RT comes with Office 2013

            now the remote desktop is there too for doing more stuff at your work
            dugbug11
            Reply 1 Vote

    • Office is also available using Skydrive on the iPad

      You can also use the web version of MS Office on the iPad just by opening a document in Skydrive. I use the iPad version of the Chrome browser for this. If I remember right, if you use Safari you can view a document but not edit (I may be wrong on this since I haven't tried it in awhile).

      My resident iPad writing app is QuickOffice. I find it more intuitive for my use, and more Word document friendly than Pages which I also have. Also, QuickOffice handles password protected Word documents which the Skydrive web version of Word seems to reject (doesn't recognize the doc file). The problem with QuickOffice and password protected Word files is it asks for the password, opens the document, allows you to edit it, but then saves the file in unprotected form. I don't know of any iOS friendly app that will write out a password protected word document that MS Word will recognize. If anybody does know of one, it would be great if they post the information here.
      dachba
      Reply Vote

  • Android

    I'm partial to Office Suite Pro on Android. I don't have much of a need for Office suites but to the limited extent I do I like this package. One thing I like about it that you don't find on other office suites is a selection of fonts to choose from. Surprising how much being able to choose your font adds to the word processing experience.

    One thing I find puzzling is that the suite seems to support all sorts of formatting options that cannot be created natively with the app. So I've created a bunch of template documents so I can open them up and edit. I've got page templates with page numbering and columns and stuff like that. The app obviosuly supports them, and supports editing them. So why can't you natively create them?

    Very peculiar.
    dsf3g
    Reply Vote

  • Or do what I did, dump the ipad and get a good tablet

    None of these workarounds or bandaids or issues with my Surface RT.

    It just works.
    toddbottom3
    Reply 6 Votes

    • Sucky keyboard on surface

      Except their keyboard sucks...just tried one out and I hate that crappy little felt thing for typing
      Stevejobs11112222
      Reply 2 Votes

      • it wasn't difficult to understand

        even if you just left your signatures there saying its not good
        dugbug11
        Reply 1 Vote

  • I laugh at the idea

    of anyone trying to do powerpoint or spreadsheets on an iPad. it can't even use a mouse.
    theoilman
    Reply 7 Votes

    • You know, the keyboard

      I use a BT Keyboard with my iPad and it has, wait for it, arrow keys. For years they work just fine with Spreadsheets.
      itguy10
      Reply 1 Vote

      • arrow keys alone

        are not enough. on a large spreadsheet you would still have highly reduced productivity.
        theoilman
        Reply 1 Vote

        • Not really...

          Being productive away from a laptop and being able to work on the spreadsheet is pretty good.

          Also... I don't know if this came up, but it does have a touch screen. I use numbers and cloud on just fine on my tablet.

          There's hybrids and flip tops, netbooks, basically power office is best done on a 13 inch plus laptop or desktop. Everything else is a compromise of portability. I have a Bluetooth keyboard that I rarely carry: that's what my air is for - portable full computing. I just can't be bothered to carry a whole bunch of pherials with a tablet.
          MarknWill
          Reply 1 Vote

    • I laugh at the idea too

      Who in their sane mind will do a Power Point presentation on an iPad, when they can use the more powerful Keynote? :)
      danbi
      Reply Vote

  • Which Quick Office are you using? Mine sucks!

    Cause my QO Pro on the iPad sucks big time.

    Use it without a keyboard and the on screen keboard never remembers the setting when changing cells. It constantly defaults to _not_ the regular keyboard. It's been a bug for over a year. They know about it and fix nothing.

    Use it with a keyboard and the arrow keys don't work for navigating cells.and it defaults to editing vs navigating.

    It's slow to load spreadsheets and just not that good at all. I only use it because I don't want to waste my $20.
    itguy10
    Reply 1 Vote
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