While many are content to use their Palms as electronic date books, savvy professional users, like the those who read this website, are certainly looking for ways to extend the usefulness of their handhelds. If that's you, you're first purchase should be a word and spreadsheet suite, which will let you edit documents and crunch numbers even when you're away from your desktop computer.

In this roundup, we surveyed the top office apps and found, to our surprise, that they're all fairly good buys. Some have more features than others and offer a wider variety of tools, but they all do a decent job of letting you read and edit documents, then sync them with your computer. The core tools are similar and they're all easy to use.

--Introduction

--Documents to Go

--Quickoffice

--WordSmith, Office 2004 Professional & Office Companion

Documents to Go

Perhaps the best known of the Palm office products is DataViz Documents to Go, which has been synching Word documents for years now, and has earned its good reputation. It comes bundled with many Palm OS handhelds.

If you need to purchase it, however, Documents to Go comes in several flavors: the standard version delivers text document and spreadsheet abilities only and sells for $29.99. It works with Windows and Macintosh computers. At the high end is Documents to Go Total Office, which sells for $89.99 and includes tools for synching with Outlook and with Access. It requires a Windows PC.

To use Documents to Go, open the desktop app that it installs on your computer and use it to load the documents you want. You can specify if they should be stored on your handheld or on an expansion card. Create a list and every time you sync, Documents to Go will make sure that the latest changes are in both the local and Palm versions.


Documents to Go's main screen lists all your stored documents,
shows you what type of file they are, and lets you know if there
are changes that need to be synched.

Document to Go's Palm interface is clear and well-arranged. For text documents, you'll see bold, italic, and underline buttons along the top, as well as buttons to change the alignment or to add bullets. Buttons to change the font and paragraph settings are on the bottom of the screen, as are the search and bookmark options. Working with spreadsheets can be a bit more challenging because of the scrolling involved, but the program makes it easy to move around, edit cell contents, and add formulas.

If Documents to Go came with your handheld, don't look further because you've already got an excellent application. If you're looking to buy a good document editor, this one is a sound choice.

--Introduction

--Documents to Go

--Quickoffice

--WordSmith, Office 2004 Professional & Office Companion

Quickoffice

Quickoffice from Mobile Electronics has also made a name for itself as one of the leading Palm office apps. The basic version works with Word documents and Excel spreadsheets, and has a charting tool, as well. It goes for $29.95 and works with either Windows or Macintosh computers. Two higher-end versions cost $39.95, but offer different sets of features. Quickoffice Premiere's main selling point is that it can open documents directly, without a hot sync. That means you can receive documents by IR beam, Bluetooth, or as e-mail attachments. It also includes Quickpics, a photo viewer. Quickoffice Pro is like Quickoffice, except that it includes Quickpoint, a PowerPoint viewer. These two higher-pried versions require a Windows PC.


Quickoffice's Quickword displays viewing and editing controls at
the top and bottom of the screen, all of which can be hidden to
give you more room to work.

Quickoffice's Word editor, Quickword, provides a colorful, clear interface that's heavy on customization. Create a new document and controls along the bottom of the screen let you change the background or text colors, change the font or alignment, add bullets, add bold, italic, or underline, and call up a search tool. You can also click to hide the tool bar, a convenient option that gives you more room to work. We also like that it has a scrolling option at the top of the screen that makes the document you're reading scroll automatically. It's useful when reading e-books or long documents.

--Introduction

--Documents to Go

--Quickoffice

--WordSmith, Office 2004 Professional & Office Companion

WordSmith

One lesser known tool that deserves to be better known is BlueNomad WordSmith, which sells for $29.95 and works with Windows, Macintosh, and Linux PCs. Open WordSmith and you'll get a tabbed screen that lets you view either all your memos or all your documents.


WordSmith can display either editing or
viewing controls on its toolbar.

Office 2004 Professional & Mobipocket Office Companion

Two unrelated office apps share the prefix "mobi-" in their names, so you're forgiven if you have trouble telling them apart: MobiSystems MobiSystem sand Mobipocket Office Companion. The similarities end at their names, however.

Unlike the others in this roundup, Mobipocket Office Companion isn't an editing tool, but only a viewer. It does a good job of reproducing office documents on a small screen. The standard version costs $19.95 and lets you view Word, Excel, Outlook, and PowerPoint documents. The professional version sells for $29.95 and adds Access, FrontPage, and Visio tools. Mobipocket works with the version of Word on your PC, letting you automatically send documents to your handheld from within Word. It's a strong doc reader, offering easy controls for you changing the screen orientation or automatically scrolling through your document.


When you send a document from your computer to your Palm,
Office Companion's on-screen controls let you select what
type of compression and security options you'd like.

If you need to work with Word or Excel documents, you can't go wrong with any of these apps, since they all provide clear, easy access for Palm users. Find the combination of price and features that works for you so that you can make your Palm even more useful.

--Introduction

--Documents to Go

--Quickoffice

--WordSmith, Office 2004 Professional & Office Companion