App Aims: Mobile Word Processing And More For Your Wandering Ways

Reviewer’s Comments
The basic version of Documents To Go lets you view, create and edit Microsoft Word documents including MS Word 2007 and 2008. It also allows you to view Microsoft Excel, PowerPoint, PDF and iWork files. This premium version of Documents To Go lets you do all of the above, plus send and receive attachments using Microsoft Exchange.

A desktop application is included in both PC and Mac formats and allows you to synchronize MS Word files on your computer with those on your iPhone or iPod touch via WiFi. Once the connection is set up, any changes made to files existing on both devices will be updated each time you sync your iPhone. No more trying to figure out which doc is the most recent; Documents To Go keeps track for you.

DataViz, Inc continues to improve this app. MS Excel editing should be released as a free update any day now and even more is planned on the horizon. With the current version you can view XLS docs, PDFs and Power Point presentations. Each comes through very nicely on the iPhone we used in testing. The only complaint we have is that some minor formatting in the XLS we tested didn’t come through exactly the same, but it didn’t have any effect on seeing accurate data.

Once you have the Microsoft Exchange server configured, you can view, edit and send email attachments using Documents To Go. Getting the files from your email into the app won’t work until you set this up. Also, in order for the 2-way sync feature to work you need to have a WiFi connection between your computer and your iPhone. This feature will not work with the USB connection but that may be improved in a future upgrade.

Integration with Google docs would be a great next step because it would offer a secondary option for anyone not using a Microsoft Exchange server. This would also provide remote access to shared office documents where WiFi isn’t an option.

Viewing PDF’s and MS PowerPoint presentations is already available and we are hopeful that DataViz will soon make them available to edit. More viewing options and placeholders would also be nice for the PDF’s.

You can copy/paste, pinch/zoom, view a doc in full screen, change font types and sizes, email attachments and shake to redo/undo. In testing each of these features we were able to find a few things that we think this app needs. For instance, when you start a new paragraph the first letter is not automatically capitalized. While the app uses predictive text and auto corrects some words, there is no spell checker so some misspellings are ignored. These are pretty basic features in a word processor and we hope DataViz adds them soon.

Overall Documents To Go is a great app and anyone working with MS Office docs regularly should have it. The MS Word portion of the app alone is more than worth the $9.99. We suspect there is much more to come from the developers at DataViz and can only see this app getting better as time goes by. Grab it at this price while it lasts. Check out our music and movie download reviews as well as our other iPhone App reviews to help you get the most out of your iPhone.