Smart Office

Smart Office 2.1

By Picsel

$9.99/£7.74

Available for Android and iOS mobile platforms

This app I think has gone up in price since I purchased the app last year.   Normally price changes are in the other direction, hey ho.   I purchased this app on the basis of recommendations by my students.   It was worth investing in this app, it provides software office functionality on your tablet and one the few apps that renders MS office documents as you intended them to be viewed when you designed and edited them in MS office applications on a PC.   With other apps I have found you lose graphic and text or definition, size, and location.  Still looses MS specific PowerPoint slide specific graphics if you embed them in slides.

Prior to a presentation, I always uploaded my presentation on to this app on my iPad from my email attachment.   This enables me to rehearse my presentation.   However, on a number on occasions I am grateful I have upload the presentation onto my iPad.   As in the last year at various events the desktop provided has failed for various hardware or network reasons.   I have been able to deftly resolve the issue by whipping out my iPad continue my slide show using Smart Office either connected to the projector or showing my iPad to the audience.   The latter of course only works where you have small audience, but has certainly saved my day.   

All documents can be imported from email attachments and cloud storage Google Doc, Box and DropBox locations.    You can edit cloud based documents on-line, but if you want to work off-line the documents have to be downloaded, but once edited the files cannot be backed up to the cloud storage from the mobile device.  The work around would be to email the file, transfer the file from your email account to a desktop to the cloud storage. 

One advantage of the app is that MS tables are less of issue to edit than in other word processing apps on the iOS platform.   Should be noted you only have basic word processing tools, but for reading and editing office documents on the go it is ideal.