Tag: Office »

Kingsoft Office Software, Inc. has just released WPS Office 4.0. The new update comes power packed with new features.

The spreadsheets have received new formatting features, the ability to merge cells and freeze panes, full support for formulas, and now users can save spreadsheets to XLS and XLSX formats. For presentations, users now have access to new slide layouts, transitions, animations, and can insert, crop, and resize images in slides. The slides can also be directly exported to PDF format now. Lastly, for writer, users can manage their comments within a document better and directly export files to PDF format.

Mr. Ke Ge, CEO of KINGSOFT said, "With WPS Office 4.0 we introduce what we believe to be the best free office suite available to iPad and iPhone users, but this is just the beginning. We will be launching many additional features and innovations in the coming months.” So it looks like we can look forward to more updates soon.

You can download WPS Office 4.0. for free on the App Store.

Today Microsoft has confirmed that Office is on its way to the iPad. In fact, the entire suite (Word, Excel, and Powerpoint) is available now for free, with a subscription service available for full functionality.

Word is in many ways the same word processing program that you're no doubt already familiar with, only retooled for touch screens. Tables, charts, graphics, a table of contents, and all those other useful features are available on your iPad. Charts and other images that have been imported from Excel can be edited from within the app, and text will dynamically adjust around these items as you drag them around the page. Co-op features are also built in, which will allow multiple users to edit a document simultaneously in real-time across a number of different devices. No worries about things getting too confusing, though. It's also possible to display markup so that you can see what edits have been made, have conversations with your fellow users within the margins, and so on.

Excel carries over all the familiar features from its PC counterpart, along with the obvious changes for a touch-based interface. You can sort through chart layouts quickly and easily, and the app will even make recommendations for you with samples that use your data. Even the keyboard has been adjusted to cater to iPad users, with a customized numeric keyboard that should make data entry a lot easier.

PowerPoint allows you to import and edit your slides and images, includes all those popular transitional effects everybody seems to love, and has added some new functions that are specific to touch screens. First, you can call up a digital laser pointer by tapping and holding your finger on the screen, in order to make it easier to point out specific elements in a presentation. Second, you can add annotations by drawing highlights directly on the screen.

All of the apps in the Office 365 series also share data across multiple devices (iPhone, iPad, PC, etc) using Microsoft's OneDrive service. The entire collection is available now, for free, and uses the Office Mobile subscription-based model. So you can opt to pay $9.99/month or $99.99/year (family) or between $60.00/user/year and $180/user/year (business) in order to access the complete list of features across Word, Excel, and PowerPoint.

Microsoft Office, which debuted on the iPhone in June of last year, is finally expected to come to the iPad next week via Satya Nadella's first press event as CEO of Microsoft. Members of the media have been receiving invites to this supposedly mobile-first and cloud-first press conference, and according to sources for The Verge the event will mark many major announcements - with Office coming to Apple's tablet being only one.

The iPad version of Microsoft Office is expected to be much like the iPhone version, and as such will require a subscription to Microsoft's Office 365 service to be able to edit documents. Document types supported in this mobile version are the same as the iPhone version; you'll be able to edit within the Word, Excel, and PowerPoint apps.

We'll be sure to let you know here at 148Apps when the app is officially announced.

This week at 148Apps.com, Carter Dotson asked the question that so many iPad owners have thought to themselves: "Why can't I work from just my iPad?"

"I’m sick of desktops, laptops, and netbooks. The iPad is lightweight, has great battery life, and I don’t have to take it out of my bag when I’m flying. Most of the work that I do is writing, covering iOS and Android, so it seems appropriate to primarily do this work from mobile devices, right? That’s what I want, but there’s still just so many shortcomings that keep it from being a regular reality.

"What I find is that for basic tasks, the iPad is great. I like the focus that the iPad’s limitation of running a single app on screen at a time provides, especially for writing. I use a portable Bluetooth keyboard, and while it’s not full-size, the benefits I get from being forced to focus on what I’m writing is a huge benefit. As well, with the customer support job I work with that uses Zendesk, I discovered that it’s actually quite easy to do it efficiently through Safari and the Zendesk mobile app. I didn’t feel like I was any less productive in working from the iPad than I do when I work from my Mac in this case. But it’s the exception to the rule."

Read more of Carter's home-to-work manifesto at 148Apps.

Meanwhile, Amy Solomon at GiggleApps.com took a trip to the zoo via ABC ZooBorns: "My son, a fan of these other apps, was excited to hear about ABC ZooBorns, asking me about a list of his favorite animals, all of which are included – much to my son’s excitement. I too enjoy the list of animals included – be it more traditional zoo animals, such as tigers or zebras, but also including some unique choices such as Ural owl, wombat or quokka. We do love to look at these animals as babies, especially those are simply precious to look at such as baby Gorillas or Elephants."

Read Amy's complete review at GiggleApps.com.

Finally, AndroidRundown.com featured a story about a fascinating new KickStarter project named InstaCube. Joseph Bertolini writes, "It streams photos directly from any user’s Instagram account and displays them on a large 6.5″ LCD touchscreen. Display those photos from the park yesterday or randomly check in on some friends, because what good are those photos if they are stuck on a tiny phone screen all the time. Probably the greatest element of InstaCube is its ability to stay away from being one dimensional by including full access to Instagram. Doing this allows for photo browsing, ‘liking’ of photos, and InstaCube will even display live photos of sunrises and sunsets from around the world."

Sound intriguing? Read more about it at AndroidRundown.com.

Summer's heading to a close, but we still have so much more to offer across the 148Apps network. Keep track of all the latest happenings, as well as reviews and contests, by following us on Twitter or liking us on Facebook. You'll be glad you did.

Quickoffice has a new app available, one that promises that no document will wind up lost on one device, or in the wrong cloud storage service.

Connect by Quickoffice is designed to let users access their data from anywhere, with automatic file synchronization. Connect comes a free-to-download native app for iOS and Android, with PC and Mac clients, and a web portal available from any web browser. Connect supports a dozen cloud services at launch, including but not limited to Dropbox, Evernote, Box, Basecamp, and Microsoft SkyDrive. Files can be accessed from any device synchronized with the service, with remote access available to these devices as well. Files can be shared to social networks, and there is peer collaboration available through a commenting system. Importantly, all files created and edited through the service will retain their support with Microsoft Office formats.

Connect by Quickoffice comes in three tiers of service. Basic lets users view documents, access cloud files, have five shared folders, sync two devices, and sync up to 5,000 files for free. Premium adds document editing, an aggregated search, unlimited shared folders, 4 device synchronization, remote access, and 125,000 synced files, for $44.99 per year, with a $19.99 per year sale price at launch. Professional will add six devices for synchronization, file versioning, and 250,000 file sync capacity. That's a lot of files! The app is available now.

When it was originally reviewed, ReaddleDocs was regarded as a brilliant file viewer offering some impressive document management capabilities. It's an app that opens mostly anything anyone could ever want, from MS Office based files to Apple iWork files and the likes of MS Visio, PDFs and a variety of different images. Accessing the files is just as easy with the option to access files from PCs, web sites, email attachments, iDisk, Dropbox and numerous other methods. Now in its Version 3.0 form, ReaddleDocs promises to be even better.

Many new features are included in this iteration. Users can now search from within MS Office, TXT and RTF files. Everything is much speedier to use with the PDF and TXT viewer in particular being both faster and more stable to use. Underline and strikeout annotations have also been added for PDF files. The Image Viewer is also faster to load large pictures. Users can now view Open Office Writer files via ReaddleDocs. The MP3 player now supports playlists and a background mode as well as other more subtle features. There's even a much needed RAR unarchiver bundled in.

The UI for ReaddleDocs has been completely redesigned and promises to be much more intuitive to use. A new 'Recents' section ensures it's easy to consult previously opened files quickly. The built-in browser has been similarly improved with the ability to access bookmarks from the browser start page and a Google search field making things easier to use.

Last but not least, Network Protocol improvements have been implemented with the ability to sync FTP and SFTP servers with the iPad and everything generally working much faster.

In all, ReaddleDocs promises over 300 fixes and improvements. It's great to see already excellent apps improved even more and that's certainly the case here. ReaddleDocs's update is available now.

While Apple was undoubtedly first with their top quality office productivity apps for the iPad, I hear they had an inside advantage, Documents To Go and QuickOffice haven't been but a couple months behind.

Documents To Go was updated recently to a universal version -- meaning it's optimized for both the iPhone and iPad. So if you had the iPhone version, you would get the iPad version for free. QuickOffice decided to take a different route. But, what they've added may make it worthwhile.

Released just earlier tonight, QuickOffice Connect Mobile Suite for iPad has all of the features of the iPhone version, but rather than just expand all of the on screen controls to allow the app to fill the screen, QuickOffice have made redesigned it somewhat to take advantage of the iPad with newly redesigned controls.

QuickOffice have made it clear that they are not done innovating and adding new features to this app. And I look forward to see where it goes. QuickOffice for the iPad is available now at an introductory price of $9.99.

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