Polaris Office
- Thread starter JGoodish
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Never tried it.
When I need to read something WordPerfect will not read (rare, but it happens), I use LibreOffice (same code base as OpenOffice) and it works great.
When I need to read something WordPerfect will not read (rare, but it happens), I use LibreOffice (same code base as OpenOffice) and it works great.
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I agree, but I'm looking for something for MS Office compatibility (read/write) on a mobile OS.
JKG
Gotcha. Now I'm going to have to watch for someone who has experience, too!
I decided to buy Polaris Office 4 ($10) to give it a try.
So far, in limited testing, it seems to do a fairly good job importing Word, Excel, and PowerPoint documents, with reasonably good fidelity. Of course, I doubt that it would provide functionality for documents with macros, VBA, etc., but for basic display and editing, it seems to do well. One small issue (likely common to any non-Microsoft app) is the occasional missing font, in which case text may be rendered in a substitute font. As you might expect, most of the modules (word processor, spreadsheet, presentation) provide only basic functionality for data entry and manipulation. You won't find ore advanced formatting features, although some basics like text formatting, borders, and lists are included. I have not yet tested creating or editing a doc in Polaris Office to see how those edits show up in the native desktop applications.
I was really interested in perhaps using the tablet to do presentations, and it seems like this may be workable for simple presentations. Some transitions are supported, but it seems to get tripped up on multiple transitions per slide. On the whole, though, the fidelity is decent even for more complex graphics and text, so my cleanup time as been minimal so far. In my case on the iPad, Apple's Keynote app may be better as a presentation app, though slide cleanup would likely still be required for decks imported from PowerPoint.
JKG
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So can you say, bang out a letter in Word easily without a separate keyboard?
How about basic Excel manipulation?
SkyHog
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Everything Offends Me
My phone came with Polaris Office on it. It was free.
It works ok - unfortunately, most Office documents look and function like poo on a mobile device. I doubt anyone's gonna find a way to make it work better. There's just not enough real estate to handle large documents.
It works ok - unfortunately, most Office documents look and function like poo on a mobile device. I doubt anyone's gonna find a way to make it work better. There's just not enough real estate to handle large documents.
There is on a tablet, and Polaris Office seems to do a pretty decent job, at least on the iPad. I assume that the iPad version is simply a port of the Android version, so that its capabilities and performance would be similar on that platform as well.
The problem that you mention is one of the big reasons why I do not have a smartphone--it's really tough to be productive on a screen sized small enough for a phone.
JKG
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You can create .doc or .docx without a problem, and even import images or insert images directly from the camera (if your devices is so equipped.). There are basic formatting tools, but nothing super fancy.
Regarding Excel, you can do basic manipulation, an assortment of formulas, text and cell formatting, chart and image insertion, etc.
Everything works with the on-screen keyboard, but for heavy text entry, I usually use a Bluetooth keyboard. Keyboard support is present, including support for arrow keys in the spreadsheet. You can select text and images and drag and drop them using your fingers on the screen.
JKG