Two Strong MS Office App Options

Two Strong Office Apps 

Need to open a Microsoft Office document on an iPad? Well, the world of iPad and Office just got better with two very strong apps.  Each one has features that shine and the good news is the basic version of either is free.  Every accountants favorite four letter word, FREE.

CloudOn (free)

CloudOn supports Dropbox, Box, Google Drive and reads directly to and from these sites.  You will need decent Internet access to make CloudOn work correctly.  With no access you have no use so you will want to improve your Internet access options.  CloudOn supports Word, PowerPoint, Excel, and PDF documents.

According to their website (www.cloudon.com) here is the official description….

CloudOn brings Microsoft Office to your tablet. All of it. Of course you can format text, change fonts and catch that typo, but imagine being able to track changes while editing Word documents, use pivot tables and insert formulas in Excel and present your PowerPoint slides complete with transitions.

 Another nifty little feature is the ability to view PDFs (including 3d PDFs) and fill out PDF forms on your workspace! You also have a universal viewer that lets you view virtually any file – from raw Photoshop images to everyday image files like PNG, JPEG and GIF.

OnLive Desktop (basic version free and premium account $4.99 per month)

OnLive Desktop requires that you sign up for the account via an Internet browser before the iPad app will work.  Also, files need to be uploaded to their site with a web browser.  They start you at 2GB free.  I found this one to have the best Microsoft Office interface. to date.  By the way, where is the world is Microsoft? 

This one is so close it looks exactly like Windows 7 and Office 2010.  If you ever need to load an Excel file and convert (Save As) to a PDF this is the tool for you.  While it does not support your cloud data sites until you upgrade to the monthly subscription it still is very impressive.

According to their website (desktop.online.live) here is the official description….

Access a Powerful PC from Anywhere!

•PC Microsoft® Office with 2GB cloud storage FREE*

•Full-featured document viewing and editing

•Instant-action, media-rich Windows® cloud desktop

•Lightning-fast Web browsing with Adobe® Flash®

•For iPad and Android™ tablets. Coming soon to PC, Mac®, TVs