The office suite found on most Windows Mobile Smartphones is truly pathetic - hell, you can’t even create new files… . DataViz’s DocumentsToGo is considered the king of office suites for Palm OS- can it stack up on Windows Mobile Standard?
General appearance
People who know DocsToGo from the Palm OS are used to having a desktop conduit - this is no longer the case on WMS. Instead, data is put onto the device via ActiveSync…and then open the file from the file manager. Alternatively, the DocsToGo folder in the launcher can be used to access the individual apps(and open the files via a slightly confusing dialog):
Word support
I tortured the program with a small word document(loan form) - the program had no problems rendering it:
Innovatively, the selection of text is handled via a toggle. Once selection mode is enabled, text can be selected with the 5way(it usually moves the cursor):
The program also allows you to add tables, bulleted lists, hyperlinks and page breaks on the go - unfortunately, images cannot be added. Stylesheet-based editing is not supported either.
A variety of zoom levels are supported - unfortunately, some of them produce at least slightly unreadable text(I never liked ClearType):
Excel
The version of Excel included into Documents To Go supports most business spreadsheets. I tortured it with a few, and had no major issues:
Adding new functions is not particularly difficult due to a well-done function picker; the program seems to support all commonly used functions:
Charts can be generated comfortably on the go:
Unfortunately, the product lacks support for conditional formatting and pivot charts - however, they remain in the file when saving and can be used again when a desktop or laptop is closeby.
The parts that I have seen so far leave me convinced that all works like it always did at DataViz’s. The product covers the essential features(except for inserting images and stylesheets) - and literally beats the s*** out of Microsoft’s embedded solution.
Tune in soon to find out about the PowerPoint, Zip and PDF support!