Best Office Suite for Android

Posted on April 13, 2015 by resourcefulman

Android has come a long way when it comes to productivity on the go. You have a variety of options to stay productive on your phone or tablet, and while the best will cost you money, you can get respectable features for free if you want. We think OfficeSuite 8 from MobiSystems is the best option for Android, but if the price intimidates you, we have more options.

Regardless of which office suite you choose, you probably won’t want to write a novel on your phone anyway, but updating documents, editing spreadsheets, and even viewing presentations isn’t nearly as painful as it was even a few years ago. Your Android tablet, on the other hand, is a different matter . Some of these productivity packages are so advanced that they are quite serviceable and familiar enough with their desktop counterparts for you to be able to do some real work.

OfficeSuite 8 is arguably the most mature, well thought out suite we’ve tested, with the most desktop-like features in a mobile-friendly interface. However, this is not the only option, and we will come back to it later.

OfficeSuite 8

Platform: Android Price: Free ($ 20, In-App Purchase) Download Page

Functions

Includes a robust word processor, spreadsheet creation and editing tool, and presentation tool.
Beautiful desktop-style user interface that’s still easy to use on mobile devices, it’s easy to zoom in and out of large documents, or zoom out and view the entire document in one window
Lets you view, open, and edit Microsoft Word, Excel, and PowerPoint documents, including Office 2013 documents.
Expanded support for additional document and office formats such as Open Office files, ZIP archives, formatted and plain text, and more.
Supports conditional formatting and filters in Excel files and new spreadsheets, formatting in Word documents and new files, and also supports adding camera or gallery images to documents
Can open documents and sync with cloud storage and document management services such as Google Drive, Dropbox, Box, OneDrive, Amazon Cloud Drive, and more.
Offers a robust file manager that guides you to recent documents, recently edited documents, your personal documents, files stored locally on your phone or tablet, and documents saved in the cloud.
Supports image viewing and remote viewing of files in the app
Allows you to convert text and .doc documents to secure PDF files.
Allows you to convert PDF documents to Office documents or ePub files.
Includes a PDF reader and editor that supports annotations, digital signatures, permission management, and password protection.
Supports file templates so you can get started quickly
Supports change tracking for multiple authors and shared documents
Allows you to manage the storage of your Android device through the file manager, as well as delete, create and rename files and folders.
Allows you to send and share files via email, via Bluetooth, direct transfer via Wi-Fi,
Allows you to display documents and presentations on an external display and control it from your Android phone.
Allows you to view ZIP archives like regular folders
Available in over 50 languages

Where is it best

OfficeSuite 8 is probably the most mature, beautiful, and easy-to-use Office suite available for Android. It borrows a bit from some of the familiar Android elements you’ll find in other tools (most notably Google Drive, which we’ll come back to shortly), but when it’s time to get down to business and get started, you’ll find an interface that looks like looks and feels like work packages on your desktop. That doesn’t mean it’s particularly pretty or anything, it’s just refreshingly familiar, but not so hard to use and crammed with buttons and menus that it’s hard to work on the go.

As we mentioned, using it on your smartphone will still be a small issue, and just about any office suite is probably best for small edits, viewing and reading files, or opening documents to share with others. However, on your tablet, if you have the luxury of using a Bluetooth keyboard with an Android tablet alongside OfficeSuite 8, you can easily fool yourself into thinking that you are working on your desktop. That’s how flawless everything is.

There are some additional useful features not mentioned above as they are limited to the latest version of OfficeSuite 8.2 designed for Lollipop. These include freehand drawing on presentation slides, the ability to quickly digitally sign PDFs, and the ability to stream presentations to other supported devices – a feature we could actively use if you’re traveling and want to launch your presentation. a projector or someone else’s computer without unnecessary letters or unnecessary hassle.

Where it fails

OfficeSuite 8 is a great tool, but it’s not perfect. Many of its best features are premium only available, which means you’ll have to shell out that $ 20 “lifetime” license to get them. For starters, we’re skeptical that “time to live” actually means “time to live” or just the lifetime of OfficeSuite 8. After all, OfficeSuite has been around for many years – long before Google Drive was what it is today, and before Google acquired QuickOffice. , our previous pick for the best office suite for Android.

However, even the free version of the app is serviced and includes more than enough features to be productive right out of the box, so you don’t have to think that you have to buy a premium right away to try something. You’ll only whine until you do this, and the application will do what everyone hates: it will chat a function or button in front of you, and when you click on it, it will ask you to install the companion application. or “Go Premium!” to use this. In addition, many of these companion apps are also more expensive, such as the $ 4 Oxford English Dictionary or the $ 10 Microsoft Compatibility Font Pack, which are thankfully included in the premium version (but not the $ 10 “Pro “Which is quite kind of a step between the free and premium versions and a product we don’t recommend at all. Upgrade to the premium or stick to the free version – all” offer an option for half the price in between, which you end up upgrading anyway for a different fee. ” – less than admirable pricing tactics.)

If you can get around the semi-awkward package prices and hectic attempts to get you to upgrade, you’ll find a beautifully designed productivity package that’s truly in a league of its own. It’s just those little annoyances and annoyances that make the otherwise stellar app feel a little sloppy.

Competition

Google Drive (free) is probably the suite most people would expect to see in the first place, but to be honest, it just isn’t there when it comes to editing office files. Viewing, checking, reading and making minor edits and adjustments, this is fine. However, while Docs works pretty well for almost everything, slides and tables are just a pain to use for creating detailed documents. Regardless, they’ve come a long way too, and they’ve included a lot of features that Google took from QuickOffice before shutting it down, they’re still not that great if you’re a spreadsheet ninja or have dozens of slides. you need to remember or make adjustments before a big presentation.

However, if you really need a text editor, or if you’re on a budget and don’t want to pay for mobile productivity, Drive is a great option. That said, if you can save some money, we think it’s best to use Disk to quickly view, share and store files (especially since you probably already have it installed), and then OfficeSuite 8 if you really need to work. …

Microsoft Office for Android phones and tablets (free for personal use, requires $ 10 / mo Office 365 Subscriptions to use Business or cloud storage) is your next best choice here, perhaps even more so than Google Drive … Not so long ago, we pitted them against each other during this confrontation , and in the end Microsoft knows how to create an office suite to increase productivity. Love it or hate it, you’ll get the smoothest and most realistic workflow out of these apps, and you’ll be able to work with all the documents you’re likely to work with on your desktop without worry. about file conversions, formatting, or any other issues that come up when you inevitably open a .doc in a file that says it supports it … except for the formatting you just used of course.

Office for Android is truly awesome and well polished. It’s easy to use, great for both viewing and editing documents, presentations and spreadsheets. It simply lacks many of the supporting features that make other competitors so useful, such as the ability to support multiple cloud storage services (Office for Android supports Dropbox and OneDrive and is designed to be used in conjunction with cloud storage from the top down), PDF reading and editing features. as well as reliable exchange tools. Of course, it has come a long way in a short amount of time and can easily overtake our top pick in a short amount of time. Obviously, stay tuned – Microsoft plays an important role here. The most interesting thing is how they will make money. Office for Android is free right now, and you’re going to run into some strange roadblocks if you don’t have an Office 365 subscription, but you can do a lot with it locally if you try. Lack of clarity is another hit we had: it’s unclear where “personal use” ends and “business use” begins, and it’s unclear if this has to do with how you use OneDrive or Dropbox with it, or something- something else. … It’s free to download anyway, so it’s worth a try.

WPS Office (Free), formerly called Kingsoft Office, used to be a paid application, but the developers decided to release the package for free. It used to be almost a one-off option, but since it’s been renamed and renamed the package is really really good, and probably one of the best editing options you’ll get for free that isn’t associated with one of the big names above. We’d recommend it to people looking to finish editing – again, nothing fancy, but enough to get the job done – on the go without the burden or limitations of Office and without a lot of overhead like OfficeSuite 8. The interface is clean. and easy to use familiar to desktop users (down to the file / edit / view menu, etc.), and while its document support is largely limited to Office documents, you can open documents from cloud storage, save to cloud storage, and even integrate with Evernote. It is also a multifunctional PDF reader and manager, which is always useful in such applications. If you don’t want to spend money and prefer editing rather than viewing, take a look at this.

Polaris Office (free, $ 4 / month subscription or $ 40 / year for premium) is another well thought out shareware option that offers great features like seamless document management between desktop and mobile, document support Microsoft Office, cloud storage support for all big names and more. These are perhaps the most notable features, although it is a really well-polished presentation tool for both viewing and editing – it is one of the best we have tried and it supports complex operations not found in other tools, such as adding charts and shapes and drag and drop. -drop to change the order of the elements in the slideshow. Of course, like any free tool here, the free features end there, and the premium gives you things like extra cloud storage support, PDF export, password-protected documents, and more. There’s nothing particularly compelling about Polaris Office, but it’s a good tool and a strong alternative to the bigger names here.

Docs to Go (free, $ 14.99 pro version ), formerly called “Documents to Go”, is a DataViz offering. DataViz has been involved in the development of mobile office suites since the Palm and creates a robust suite of applications. Late last year, they made the free “Viewer Edition” of Docs to Go a true document editing tool. It has not been updated since then, so the question of whether this will remain a priority for DataViz. It offers basic editing tools – nothing fancy, great viewing and reading capabilities, and even offers some wired desktop sync and support for password-protected Office 2008 (and earlier) documents that QuickOffice doesn’t. Its interface has undergone a much needed cleanup, but in terms of features, it really doesn’t compare to others here. This is great if you have an older device, don’t need anything special, or want a lighter app.

There are many other contenders here, such as Zoho Docs (free), Smart Office 2 (free), and ThinkFree Mobile Pro ($ 10), but to be honest, they are both unremarkable at the moment (unless you’re already in their ecosystem, in the case of Zoho), and instead you have much better, more feature-rich, constantly updated and often improved versions. They have their pros and cons, but let’s be honest: most of us are likely to settle for Google Drive, Microsoft Office, or hopefully OfficeSuite.

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