Price: $14.99 Score: 7/10 Category: Business
QuickOffice Connect Mobile Suite for iPad is a smooth, all-in-one productivity suite for the iPad that allows you to carry documents with you and make basic edits on all of the stock processing programs except PowerPoint.
It might not be the most robust of editing programs, but what it lacks in features is made up for with a clean design and great usability. The developers of this app really hit the money on an intuitive design for QuickOffice.
When you first open the app, you’re brought to a home screen that shows your main file manager and some basic options for creating documents and syncing your iPad to various entities in the cloud.
Setting up QuickOffice to sync with a program is basic and straightforward. Tapping on the plus sign in the lower left hand corner lets you easily add Google Docs, Dropbox, Box.net, and MobileMe. When you add something from the cloud it shows up in the left hand column of the app and then organizes your documents in a hierarchical folder structure, which you can easily edit within the home screen on QuickOffice.
To move, copy or delete an item, you tap on a file or folder and drag it either to another folder or push it over to the email or delete buttons on the bottom dashboard. As soon as you start to bring a file down with your finger, the trash and email buttons grow significantly, making it extremely easy to put your document exactly where you want it to go.
If you’re managing a lot of files consistently, QuickOffice does a great job of making everything both easy to organize and easy to find. The only thing it lacks though, is a search button. Still, if you’re generally organized, this isn’t anything that should make you shy away from QuickOffice.
When you come across a document that you want to view, you tap on it. The document loads quickly and scrolls just like anything other document viewer on the iPad. If you tap and hold the right hand side of the screen, thumbnail sized pages illuminate in a slick preview mode. If you click on any of the pages in this thumbnail version you skip right there, making this one of the coolest features QuickOffice offers.
When it comes to actually editing and creating documents, QuickOffice is basic and easy to use. You can do all the basics like changing fonts, bolding, formatting, alignment and much more. There’s also a handy undo button and options for Saving, Saving As, or not saving at all. Excel works extremely well with multiple sheets (incorporated with a page flipping effect) and the app lets you work in currency, dates, times, and much more. What I couldn’t find though, was the ability to use formulas.
Perhaps most important, QuickOffice seems to have totally ignored Powerpoint. You can view PowerPoint files in the viewer but when it comes to editing, this app doesn’t even let you touch a file. This is a significant gap in the so suite, but if you don’t work in Powerpoint I suppose it’s not something you should care about.
After all, when it comes to basic needs, QuickOffice is smooth and easy to handle right out of the box. There’s a quick guide for anyone who might need it, but chances are you’ll never have to glance at it at all.
Bottom Line: QuickOffice might be the cleanest of the apps that I’ve reviewed layout wise, but it doesn’t allow you to work with Powerpoint, which is a significant loss. If you’re looking for smooth, QuickOffice currently beats Documents To Go, but Documents To Go is much more robust.
