One of the best advantages the users of smartphones get is they can perform advanced operations and edit Microsoft Office files while on the go by using the apps available on these phones.

Office apps are run the best on Windows Mobile and Windows Phone 7 devices, i.e. the mobile phone versions of Microsoft Word, PowerPoint and Excel. However most of the users of smartphones use an iPhone or an Android device. It is interesting to see what to do when these users need to open, read or edit or make documents or spreadsheets or slideshow presentations which are well-matched with their computer running Windows.

Quickoffice

There are plenty of Office productivity apps available for Android and iPhone. However most of them come for a cost. You are able to view a document in the document viewer apps which are pre-installed on most of the phones. However you are not able to edit them and there is also a possibility that rich documents are not displayed appropriately. There are several paid or free viewer apps, but if you need something more than just viewing the documents, you will need a complete office app and Quickoffice is one such Office productivity app available for BlackBerry, Apple iOS, Symbian and HP webOS. It has different versions for different costs.

Quickoffice has three apps viz. Quickword, Quickpoint and Quicksheet and also a PDF reader. With the help of these, you are able to create, view, edit and share Microsoft Office documents, even the newly introduced xml-based ones. These apps also incorporate with cloud services like Dropbox, Google Docs and Box.net and you are able to search on your device as well as in your cloud storage account.

You can also cut and paste with the apps and moreover there is text-to-speech and voice dictation facility, together with many of the same features like Mobile Office. This also includes email incorporation with Exchange.

Documents To Go

DataViz’s Documents To Go is another useful app available for wide range of phones like iPhone, BlackBerry, Symbian S60, Android, Palm and Maemo of Nokia too. This too, like Quickoffice, has apps to work with Microsoft Office documents. And it offers a free version too available in Android Market. And just by pressing the ‘full version key’ you can buy it, i.e. the premium features are unlocked and you need not uninstall it. By purchasing it, you can edit the files, while with the free version you can only view them. It also offers a very useful feature of ability to view the edits you have made earlier. Password-protected files is also a useful feature. The apps have been given apt names like Word To Go, Slideshow To Go, PDF To Go and Sheet To Go. You are also able to download, see and edit your documents from your Google Docs account and sync with your computer by using a USB cable. Though Documents To Go is a costly app, its functionality too is excellent.

There are plenty of apps on the market which enable you to work on your Microsoft Office documents on your smartphone. It depends on what you want to do and which smartphone platform you are using, to choose one of them. If you want to only view your documents, free versions of these apps are sufficient. But if you want to do more operations, paid versions are good choice, and the more expensive they are, the better experience you get!