Editing Documents on a Phone or Tablet

More and more I hear from people who don't want to deal with carrying around their laptops with them.  Phones and tablets are much more nimble.  But we are also a document driven world. Working with documents on mobile devices can take some setup.

WordPerfect

First I have to say this is one big area where WordPerfect is a near total failure.  There is no good way to edit WP documents on a phone or tablet.  Corel has a WP Reader app that will let you read but not edit WP documents on your device, at a cost of $5.99.  Further, because so few people use WordPerfect anymore, no third party app I have found is compatible with WP documents.  To get around this problem, you can save a document in Wordperfect as another format.  I prefer RTF (rich text format) since it is a widely accepted default format that works across many different browsers and maintains almost all formatting).  Saving as RTF will make it easier to access from other programs.  You could also save as an MS DOC file or as PDF.

Most formats other than WordPerfect allow many options.  Various Microsoft documents, PDF, and a wide range of open source documents are supported by a great many apps.

WPS Office

My favorite is WPS Office (formerly known as Kingsoft Office).  This is a free app available both on Apple's App Store as well as Google Play. It does a very good job reading and editing all Microsoft documents as well as a host of others (including RTF).  It can also serve as your default PDF reader.  You can also connect to your Google Drive, Dropbox, or several other cloud based storage services. I make it my default document reader on all of my devices and heartily recommend it.

MS Office 

Microsoft also recently made an Android and IOS version of MS Office available as a free download.  Early versions only allows you read, but not edit documents.  The most recent free version does allow editing.  Still, the product is considered "freemium" meaning you can use the basic functions for free, but many advanced features require a subscription to Office 365.  For example, you cannot use the compare documents feature in the free version (although you can do this in the free WPS Office).

I am not a big fan of freemium products since it is typically the company's ultimate goal to get you hooked but then frustrate your experience until you fork over your money.  But if you prefer to use the basic version of MS Office rather than WPS Office, it is an option.  If you want to read more about the benefits and limitations, you might this article from PC World worthwhile.

Google Drive

The program I most commonly use on my mobile devices is the Google Drive App.  Again, this is a free download from the App Store and Google Play.  It gives me access to all of my documents stored in Google Drive and allows me to edit them.  I mostly work with documents in the native Google format, but you can also work with documents that you have uploaded in various Microsoft or some other formats as well.  My preference, however is to use WPS Office when working on non-Google files.  But since I keep almost all my key documents on Drive and in Google's native format, I get full functionality on the Google Drive App.

A major benefit of the Drive App, is that you can save a Google Drive document for offline use.  I like this on my tablet, which is not always connected to the Internet.  I can work on my Google Drive documents offline, then have it sync automatically back to my Drive when I am back online again.

Other Apps

There are several other pretty good free Apps, including Office Suite, Docs To Go, and Polaris Office.  Any of these will work well for most functions, but without going into lengthy explanations, I will just say that WPS Office remains my favorite of the bunch.

Options for Editing

Once you have decided on the App you like, you should also consider how you will edit these documents.  Typing a quick message on your screen is fine for a sentence or two, but not for a multi-page document.

You might want to consider investing in a Bluetooth keyboard for typing.  There are many different ones out there.  You will need to decide mostly if you want a full size device for maximum comfort, or want something smaller and lighter for easier mobility.

For me, the best option is dictation.  As with virtually all Android or IOS Apps, you can dictate directly into your device using the microphone that shows up on the pop-up keyboard on your device.  I find that the dictation is very accurate.  The big negative is that there are almost no voice commands for editing.  You will still need to do that with your thumbs.