Microsoft Office for iPad and Android is greatly anticipated, and a new rumor says we may finally see it this year.

When the The Daily reported that Microsoft planned to launch Microsoft Office for iPad and for Android, Microsoft denied it.

Now, the sometimes wildly speculative, Boy Genius Report claims Microsoft Office for iPad will arrive in November.

I hope this time the rumor is true.

More users choose the iPad as a tablet computing than any other platform. The iPad has shifted Apple to the top of the personal computer market, and an Office iPad app would provide Microsoft with a large customer base who already use Microsoft Office software on a desktop or laptop in both Windows and Mac

The iPad dominates the mobile tablet market just like Microsoft Office dominates the office suite market. I’d personally love the ability to save my files, written in Word, on Skydrive and open them up in a Word for iPad that linked to Microsoft’s online storage site. This would cut out my need for SugarSync to sync my Office files.

Microsoft Office for iPad would end or limit the need for Onlive Desktop and CloudOn Desktop ,both of which provide a virtual Windows environment so with full versions of Office on the iPad. The move would also fend off the flow of people switching from Microsoft Office to Apple’s iWork for iPad users or Google Docs for Android users. Many made this switch to gain better integration with mobile apps. Check out the current Office for iPad experience using CloudOn in the video below.

Even though Microsoft Office for iPad and Android makes sense for users and would deliver a financial benefit to Microsoft, don’t get too excited. Microsoft isn’t known for making the best user experience decisions. It’s likely that Micorosoft will use the company’s dominance in the office suite market to push Windows 8 tablets and Windows Phone 8 devices, much like Apple and Google do with their respective products.

I’d really like to see Office for iPad launch in November, but I’m not putting a lot of stock in Boy Genius Report’s “anonymous source”.

While we wait for Office for iPad to launch, check out these 5 Office for iPad Alternatives.

Microsoft Office for iPad and Android Launching in November? is a post by Kevin Purcell from Gotta Be Mobile.

There are a number of Office apps for Android, but when it comes to a full featured Office experience fitting the collaboration needs of corporate employees most of the apps out there don’t bring everything to the table.

CloudOn impressed me with the iPad app that delivers a very full-featured Office for iPad experience, even though there are limitations, and today the company announced CloudOn for Android.

CloudOn for Android is a new Office app that includes Word, Excel and PowerPoint Office apps, complete with the ribbon bar that most corporate workers are familiar with. Check out our early hands on with CloudOn for Android in the video below.

Unlike the CloudOn iPad app, the ribbon bar isn’t blurry, but it still presents a challenge for tapping as the targets are not made for fingers in mind. Careful taps work well, but anyone using the app on a daily basis would do well to invest in a stylus.

Aside from the touch issues in the Ribbon bar and in accessing the CloudOn menu bar, the biggest imitation is the need for Internet access to use CloudOn. Thankfully most Android tablets are sold with 3G or 4G connectivity, so this shouldn’t be an issue.

CloudOn allows users to connect to Dropbox, Box and Google Drive to access and edit documents. After the changes are made, they are synced back to the desktop and to other devices.

When working on Word documents, it is possible to track changes and add comments to the document that show up natively in Office for Mac and Office for Windows.

In Excel, users have full access to functions and are able to create and edit pivot tables. Pivot tables make it easy to summarize data from a long list of numbers and figures.

The PowerPoint part of CloudOn includes the ability to create and edit PowerPoint files and to view them in full presentation mode.

CloudOn is available free in the Google Play store, and worth checking out for anyone looking for a full featured office experience on Android Tablets.

CloudOn for Android Delivers Full Office Experience on Android Tablets (Video) is a post by Josh Smith from Gotta Be Mobile.

The official Microsoft Office for iPad app remains missing in action, but that doesn’t mean that corporate users are without options.

CloudOn is the latest Office for iPad service to emerge, competing with Onlive Desktop for a place on corporate users’ iPads.

(Read: 5 Office for iPad Alternatives)

Unlike many of the Office iPad alternatives, CloudOn delivers a virtual version of Word, PowerPoint and Excel. This means that users get a traditional Office interface and several other features, including the ability to track changes.

Can CloudOn Deliver a premium Office for iPad solution? Read on to find out how it handles in our Cloud On Review video below.

CloudOn only offers access to three Microsoft Office apps on the iPad, which means there’s no Outlook or Access support. CloudOn is a free app and service, using Dropbox and Box.net for accessing and storing files. If corporate policies prevent users from storing files on third-party services CloudOn won’t work.

Until Microsoft decides to ship Office for the iPad, users will need to make compromises, but with CloudOn users can get past a few restrictions that plague iPad Office apps.

Positives

A big plus for current Office users is that CloudOn’s Word, Excel and PowerPoint apps look almost like they do on PC or Mac, complete with the ribbon. Unfortunately the Ribbon doesn’t look quite right on the iPad and the user interface isn’t suited for touchscreens. The text also blurs while scrolling and selecting text is a pain.

Users can track changes in office documents on the iPad, which is a huge deal for users that must collaborate on documents. The app allows users to view and track changes on Word documents, which appear on the desktop when saved to Dropbox. Comments can also be added to the document just like in Word on Mac or PC.

CloudOn is an Office app for Ipad that allows users to track changes.

A group of employees could take turns editing a word document in a shared Dropbox folder to collaborate with tracked changes, though it is not the most elegant solution.

Drawbacks

Despite the benefits, CloudOn comes with a collection of issues that could easily be deal-breakers.

The app would not allow me to copy text from another iOS app into a Word document in CloudOn. That means no quoting a webpage or adding information from an email. This is a major hangup for me.

There is no offline mode, so users cannot download a document to work on while on the road or in the air. This is unavoidable, but a problem for many users.

The Word ribbon is not ready for touchscreens.

CloudOn is optimized for the iPad, but Word, Excel and PowerPoint are just as they are on the desktop. That means users will need to tap small menus and options, designed with a mouse in mind, not a finger.

 Still Waiting for Office for iPad

CloudOn offers several benefits over iPad Office apps, but in the end it falls short of delivering a stellar Office experience on the iPad.

Many users are able to get by with Office for iPad alternatives, but for those who can’t the wait continues.

With millions of iPads in use at schools, businesses and in homes, Microsoft must feel the pressure to deliver an official Office for iPad app. The only question is how long will it take.

Office for iPad: CloudOn Attempts Full Featured Office on iPad is a post by Josh Smith from Gotta Be Mobile.

The iPad is a great tool for writing, blogging and note-taking with the right tools.

I use my iPad to write on a regular basis, and these apps make it possible to get work done on the iPad, even replacing a laptop on short trips.

The key to content creation, note taking and writing on the iPad is using the best apps. I share the top 10 writing apps in the video below. From note taking and research to writing and posting online, these iPad apps are the best available.

Top 10 Writing Apps

iAwriter ($0.99) - iAwriter is the best way to write without distractions on the iPad. Even without an external keyboard the extra row of punctuation and navigation keys speed up typing dramatically. Thanks to iCloud sync, I can work on a document on my iPad, pick up on my iPhone and then finish on my iPad later. There’s also a Mac app. Any article I write on the iPad begins in iAwriter.

Blogsy ($4.99) – Blogsy is a great tool for WordPress users, offering a built-in browser, great image placement options and much more. Blogsy is the best way to use WordPress on the iPad.

Pages ($9.99) – Pages is the best app for creating and editing word documents on the iPad. iCloud syncs documents between the iPad and iPhone for easy editing on either device.

WordPress (Free) – The WordPress app is good for small edits and changing post options, but is too limited to use full-time. I never compose an article in WordPress, nor do I place images using the app.

GoodReader ($4.99) – GoodReader allows users to keep documents and PDFs on hand for easy retrieval. I like that the service can hook up to storage solutions like Dropbox.

Evernote (Free) - Evernote is my favorite research tool. I post any article, idea or note I take to Evernote for retrieval when I am ready to write. Evernote makes these notes searchable, even handwritten notes.

Bamboo Paper (Free) – The Wacom Bamboo Paper app is a simple note taking app that offers a good solution for notes in simple situations.

Penultimate ($0.99) - Penultimate is the note taking tool I keep coming back to. It’s not perfect, but the options and good inking experience is one of the best.

Notability ($0.99) - Notability is quickly replacing Penultimate as I learn how to use all the features. I love the palmrest that helps users avoid issues with palm marks. The app also handles PDF annotation, audio recording and more.

TouchDocs ($3.99) - TouchDocs is the best way to use Google Docs on the iPad. I’m still not a fan of how it handles spreadsheets, but for word documents it is stellar.

–

When I am serious about writing, I use an external keyboard like the Kensington Keyfolio Pro 2, which allows me to remove the keyboard from the case and prop my iPad up at a perfect angle.

With these iPad writing apps and the Kensington case my iPad can replace a laptop for a trip to the coffee shop.

Top 10 Writing Apps For the iPad (Video) is a post by Josh Smith from Gotta Be Mobile.

Apple’s new iPad, either iPad 3, iPad 2S or iPad HD, will be out this month and many new users will hope to create documents on their shiny new tablet.

We’ve heard pretty compelling rumors that Microsoft will release an iPad version of their industry standard Microsoft Office suite for the iPad. They already have OneNote on the tablet, so why not Word, Excel, PowerPoint and maybe even Outlook or Access? We might even see Microsoft launch Office for the iPad on stage with Apple.

Until they do, you will want to pick one of the five suggested apps below. We rounded up five Microsoft Office alternatives for the iPad last fall and not much has changed since then with one exception.

Here are the best five office alternatives for the iPad.

OnLive for iPad

Here’s the one change from our fall roundup. Just because I listed it first, doesn’t mean it’s the best, but it’s unique among the five. With OnLive (Free), instead of running an office app on your iPad, you log into a full Windows Desktop interface and run an actual installation of Microsoft Office along with other apps, including Flash within Internet Explorer. Earlier I did a quick review of the app and wasn’t glowing in praise. Yet, it still offers one of the best ways to do real Microsoft Office work on your iPad.

Below you can see a video demo of Onlive for the iPad, with access to Office tools your are used to on your dekstop.

Below read more of my review:

You get access to Microsoft Word, PowerPoint and Excel. You also have Paint, Calc and Microsoft Surface Collage. The interface requires a stylus because those applications are not designed to run on an iPad. I kept clicking the wrong thing while trying to use my finger to navigate and select the tiny buttons or menu items.

OnLive Desktop would work great for complex PowerPoint presentations. If you use Windows instead of a Mac, PowerPoint works best for running presentations with video and a lot of dazzling transitions. You have to compromise these things with most of the apps that display PowerPoint presentations on the iPad. OnLive Desktop lets you run the file without simplifying transitions and effects.

You can contact OnLive to find out how to set up your own enterprise level service. Other service plans include the free account that comes with the app, or a $9.95/month account that gives you priority access and 50GB of storage. You can also add PC applications and browse the web with the paid account that’s coming soon. Right now you can only get the free plan.

The paid version showed up recently and as we said above it lets you run Flash on the web through Internet Explorer. OnLive has made improvements to the app, and it now functions better than it did during my initial review.

I wouldn’t pick OnLive first among this collection, but share it with you if you have the specialized needs mentioned in my review. Consider one of the four native iPad apps mentioned below (from my earlier roundup).

Apple iWork Apps

iWork technically isn’t a full suite but three different apps. The Apple iPad Office apps include Pages ($9.99), which is a word processor and even limited desktop publisher; Numbers ($9.99), a spreadsheet with some advanced calculations and the ability to create charts/graphs and Keynote ($9.99) for making or creating presentation with nice templates, attractive transitions and the ability to play media files.

I'd rather use Keynote and my iPad than anything else, including my notebook, to make presentations

The iWork interfaces are the most attractive of these. With the integration of iCloud, it’s now easier to move docs in and out of the apps. Apple’s Open In… feature works too if you use DropBox or SugarSync apps.

The three apps look nice and have all the features I need for creating content on my iPad or in the case of Keynote, doing presentations. If you only need one of the apps you can save some money over some of these other suites. However, combined, the three apps will be the most expensive “suite” here. I think they are worth the extra cost.

I use Pages not only for word procession but also when I'm doing public speaking to hold my notes

Using AirPlay to make presentations on my Apple TV makes iWork an obvious choice. For word processing and limited desktop publishing, Pages wins out although Quickoffice HD comes in a close second.

All three iWork apps handle Microsoft Office files well. Of course you can work with the iWork desktop file formats too.

If you don’t want to pay $30 for a suite, then the best alternatives include those below.

Quickoffice Pro HD

Quickoffice HD has a nice spreadsheet tool

Quickoffice Pro HD ($19.99) – If you don’t use AirPlay and iCloud, QuickOffice Pro HD is a great office for iPad alternative that is affordably priced. The spreadsheet tool has plenty of features and word processor is acceptable, if you don’t need to insert images or graphics.

Quickoffice Word Processor is very limited

Even if the word processor is limited, the spreadsheet and presentation feature in Quickoffice Pro HD measures up nicely to Numbers and Keynote. It integrates with the following cloud services:

• Google Docs
• Dropbox
• Box.net
• Evernote
• Catch
• SugarSync
• huddle
• egnyte
• MobileMe (hopefully they will replaced it with iCloud soon)

In addition, you can drag a file to the sharing toolbar buttons to email your document or post it via the following:

• Twitter
• Facebook
• LinkedIn
• Yammer
• Slideshare
• .docstoc
• Scribd

Quickoffice HD’s file management features rank first of these apps, beating out the iWork apps. It saves in Microsoft Office 2003 or 2007 format and can open Office 2010 or 2011 for Mac files.

Documents To Go Premium

Documents To Go Premium ($16.99) includes tight integration with online services and has a simple interface with plenty of the basic formatting tools. Unfortunately, the presentation app in Documents to Go doesn’t make nice presentations. It works with PowerPoint files, but you don’t want to use it to create presentations. You also cannot insert graphics or images into your word processing documents. The spreadsheet tool has all the basic formulas you need, but that’s about it.

Due to the weak presentation creation features, save a little money and get the cheaper version ($9.99) that doesn’t allow for presentation editing. You can still view PowerPoint files created on a computer.

Documents To Go handles all formats of Office files and integrates well will the following:

• Google Docs
• Box.net
• DropBox
• iDisk
• SugarSync

Office HD

Office HD ($7.99) is the poor man’s Documents To Go, meaning it has decent editing features and useful file management tools, however, it costs half as much.

Office HD hides the editing toolbar - slide it to show advanced features

The interface is not as intuitive as the others. You can miss half the features because the toolbar doesn’t show all the buttons until you swipe to slide the toolbar to the left revealing things like bullets, numbering, tables, image insertion, etc. When you realize this you learn that Office HD has more than meets the eye at a great price.

Here's the advanced editing toolbar which you have to show by sliding

The app handles all Microsoft Office files. You can only get them off the iPad via your web browser using a special IP address when the iPad and your computer both connect to the same network or when hooked up via USB. You can get documents into Office HD via the Open In… feature which allows you to open up documents emailed to you or accessed via DropBox or SugarSync.

Recommendation

If we don’t get a Microsoft Office for iPad soon, my first choice is Apple’s iWork apps. The apps work well and have all the tools you need to create documents, spreadsheets and presentations on the iPad. My second choice would be QuickOffice HD because of the polished interface and value of the app features.

Office for iPad: 5 Alternatives for the iPad is a post by Kevin Purcell from Gotta Be Mobile.

After having been available for Apple’s iOS-enabled iPad, OnLive is bringing its OnLive Desktop app to Android tablet users. The software is essentially a client to access a hosted remote desktop on OnLive’s server, where users would get their own partition with Microsoft’s Windows 7 OS and access to Microsoft’s Office suite–including Word, Excel, and PowerPoint. Users of the hosted remote desktop software and service will also have Adobe Reader access, to view PDFs, access to Adobe Flash content, and also 2 GB of virtual hosted cloud storage to save their work.

At this point, the Android release is limited to just Android tablets, though OnLive promises that smartphones would get supported in the future. The app and basic service is free through Android Market, though OnLive does promise more premium features for users who need more.

For instance, there’s OnLive Desktop Plus, which costs $5 per month, and comes with accelerated web browsing with support for Adobe Flash in Internet Explorer on the remote desktop. With accelerated web browsing, coupled with a fast connection like through a 4G mobile broadband network, users can potentially view Adobe Flash videos and content even if their tablets did not support that, which would be more useful to iPad owners than Android owners as tablets running at least Android 2.2 Froyo will most likely come with Flash support.

For those who need even more storage than the 2 GB of cloud storage, OnLive Desktop Pro promises up to 50 GB of storage along with enterprise support for $10 per month.

The service will be beneficial to those who work remotely or on the go and prefer not to carry around a full netbook or notebook. This would give users access to a hosted remote desktop. Unlike regular remote desktop service, this one does not require you to leave your home or work computer turned on for the service to work. Additionally, users who require complex Excel commands or work on complicated PowerPoint presentations will benefit from Microsoft Office as mobile apps that promise Office support may either not have all the usual commands that users are accustomed to on the Microsoft suite, or have these commands in different locations than what they’re used to.

OnLive Desktop Brings Microsoft Office Suite, Windows 7 to Android Tablets is a post by Chuong Nguyen from Gotta Be Mobile.

Though Microsoft is trying to create similar experiences for its Windows 8 releases for ARM and x86 processors, the software giant has admitted that Windows on ARM may not be suitable for business environments. According to Microsoft, Windows on ARM won’t offer businesses and IT managers manageability features that help corporations deploy vast numbers of PCs to office workers. Microsoft said that ARM devices could still be used in un-managed settings:

Although the ARM-based version of Windows does not include the same manageability features that are in 32-bit and 64-bit versions, businesses can use these power-saving devices in unmanaged environments.

A main feature of Windows 8 for x86 architectures–as used by Intel and AMD–is the ‘Windows To Go’ feature, which allows businesses to run, access, and open apps all on a thumb drive.

Growing mobility and consumerization trends pressure IT professionals to provide users with secure access to a corporate operating system and apps in situations when a device or network is out of the IT department’s control. Windows 8 includes the ability to provide users with a full corporate copy of Windows (along with user’s business apps, data, and settings) on a USB storage device.

As Microsoft is trying to play catch up in the tablet space, where Apple’s iOS operating system and iPhone and iPad hardware are building a stronghold with enterprise workers thanks to the consumerization of IT trends, the company will have to prove its products to deliver value beyond what Android and iOS are offering in the corporate sector.

Via: All Things D

Windows on ARM Leaves Businesses Behind is a post by Chuong Nguyen from Gotta Be Mobile.

We’ve heard that Microsoft is working on Office for the iPad for months now. Today there’s proof that such an app actually exists. It’s not in the App Store just yet, but it should arrive soon.

The Daily has a photo of Microsoft Office running on an iPad. Well, at least the splash screen for Office is running on the iPad. The image shows the splash screen asking you to create a new document. The app supports Word, Excel, and PowerPoint, the three main apps in the Office suite.

The app uses Microsoft’s Metro UI, the same design that’s used in Windows Phone 7, Windows 8, and the Xbox 360. It means that the app also looks like Microsoft’s OneNote app for the iPad, especially after and update which will bring more Metro to that app.

Bringing Office to the iPad makes sense for Microsoft because many companies are rolling out iPads to their employees instead of laptops. Many of those professional users have used Microsoft Office for years. If Microsoft can make the UI familiar or intuitive enough it would make sense for many of those professional users to use Office for iPad over Pages. If nothing else Office for iPad guarantees word documents, spreadsheets, and presentations will be compatible with the rest of the office without having to go through any extra steps.

Microsoft isn’t giving into Apple at all with this new app, it’s just making sure that it’s Office suite gets on as many popular platforms as possible. Office is one of Microsoft’s most successful products, so it makes sense that Microsoft would put out another version if it’ll make money.

Apple offers a similar office suite, but it’s three separate apps. Microsoft could position Office for Mac as the “buy one app and get everything” alternative to Pages, Numbers, and Keynote. Plus it’s a more recognizable brand that both casual and professional users know (even if they don’t love it).

The only thing Microsoft can’t do with Office for iPad is charge too much for it. Apple’s office suite goes for $30, so anything higher than that could turn off users.

Microsoft Office for iPad Gets Pictured, Should Be Coming Soon is a post by Shawn Ingram from Gotta Be Mobile.

With Microsoft’s camp relatively silent regarding the next version of the Office suite for Windows, there is now some speculation that Office 15 will not be fully touch-optimized as intended. The reasoning behind that, according to sources to The Verge, is that Microsoft is battling time and resources constraint. Instead of a full UI lift to make it consistent with the Metro UI, Office 15 will have a more modest refresh with a radial menu system, flatter appearance, and more white space to make it easier for touchscreen users and allow customers to focus on content.

Additionally, there may be a separate variant of Office 15 for ARM users that will be running in a more limited mode that’s designed for efficient consumption of power.

It’s said that Microsoft had originally intended to re-do Office to make it consistent with Windows 8, but that the company made the compromise to keep the planned release date for the productivity suite. As such, the suite will be comprised of desktop apps underneath, rather than the more modern HTML5-style Metro UI apps.

However, there may still be exceptions in the form of Lync and OneNote, which will, unlike the rest of the Office products, be built upon the WinRT Metro UI design language. As those apps are less complex than other Office products, it may be easier to port those first to Metro UI. The move is smart as well, as OneNote has been a staple of Microsoft’s Tablet PC users, offering the ability an easy way to collect, annotate, and store notes. With Metro UI, finger-friendliness meets digitizing pen may help Microsoft different its tablet products further from consumer-based Android and iOS tablets.

A beta of Office is expected to come in summer.

Office 15 for Windows 8 Rumored to Lack Metro Design UI is a post by Chuong Nguyen from Gotta Be Mobile.

According to multiple sources to CNET, Windows 8 is now said to be running stable on ARM processors, and the new ARM-compatible build will be distributed to developers in February. News of the developer released was not delivered directly from sources from within Microsoft, the online publication says, but through hardware-makers who are expected to release devices with Windows OS and ARM chips.

The move will be significant to Microsoft and the PC industry as utilizing ARM chipsets may serve to reduce the costs of devices, including tablets, and make them even more affordable to consumers. Compared to PCs, tablets, and laptops running Intel or AMD’s x86 architecture, ARM chipsets will cost less.

“The bigger implication is, with [Intel-based] ultrabooks you’re popularizing the idea that you have this thinner design that turns on faster, that lasts longer [battery life]–but then you have Windows 8 on ARM that’s built at a price point that’s much lower. And does all of those things too. This is setting up the ultrabook to head right into the teeth of their [ARM] competitor,” according to the source.

One source said that a high-profile device, that was undisclosed, shown at CES with Intel chips will cost hundreds of dollars less on ARM chipsets.

Sources say that Microsoft may also target all three chip platforms at the same time, rather than staggering the launch for devices running Intel, AMD, and ARM CPUs.

The biggest challenge, still, with ARM chipsets is that devices running on ARM may not be compatible with legacy apps, and still missing in any preview from Microsoft is compatibility with the OS-maker’s Office suite. Though Microsoft claims that Office will be compatible, no one has yet seen a preview or demo that has Office running on ARM.

For ARM, Microsoft has largely demoed HTML5-based full-screen applications based on the Metro UI language.

So far, Microsoft has said and shown little publicly about its ARM-based efforts.

Windows 8 Now Said to be Stable on ARM CPU is a post by Chuong Nguyen from Gotta Be Mobile.

Slashgear is pointing to an article in The Daily that have sources saying Microsoft is thinking about porting parts of its Office Suite for the iPad. We’ve heard this before certainly, and if you get past the emotions of rivalry and into the land of dollars and cents it only makes sense.

While the focus is on Word, Excel and Powerpoint, Microsoft does have one of its Office products already available for iOS and that’s a sort of lackluster version of OneNote. That App is intended for the iPhone but can be used on the iPad.

Given how every company has its own Cloud these days it would be interesting to see if Microsoft can make this work with its Office 365 and the Office Hub in Windows Phone. I’m sure that’s the intent, and not surprisingly, there is an opportunity there as Apple has yet to release good iCloud functionality for its suite of iWork Apps for other than mobile devices. Of course timing is everything these days.

Speculation on this speculation is that the price points would be around $10 for each App, following Apple’s lead with Pages, Keynote, and Numbers.

Let me just say this. I think it is a natural for Microsoft to do this and expect it to happen someday. Less natural, but more needed is for Microsoft to focus some effort on its iOS OneNote App. But then we all know that Microsoft likes to keep anything OneNote related as a big secret.

Rumors Circulate that Microsoft is Looking at Office for iOS is a post by Warner Crocker from Gotta Be Mobile.

Quickoffice for Android has now been updated to version 5.0. The new update could be found on Android Market, though curiously Amazon’s Appstore for Android still lists the older 4.x version number. With version 5.0, which we previewed on tablets about a month ago at CTIA Fall 2011 in San Diego, California, there’s an improved user interface, more cloud support for connecting to various cloud storage systems, and support for Microsoft’s latest Office 2010 file formats. You can find out the latest changes and features in the press release below or in our preview video:

Press release:

Quickoffice Updated to Version 5.0, Brings Increased Cloud Support is a post by Chuong Nguyen from Gotta Be Mobile.

At CTIA a few weeks ago in San Diego, California, I caught up with the QuickOffice people to see what they’re working on. The latest update, version 5.0, is forthcoming and the developers of the office productivity suite, now available for both Android and iPad tablets, will come with better cloud integration, a more tablet-optimized user experience.

The tablet user experience is optimized to give consumers a better experience, rather than scaling up from a smartphone OS. For example, the three-pane view will give users the ability to arrange their files into drives and folders. Cloud-storage solutions, like those from Dropbox and Box.net, will be mounted as drives. Users can tap, hold, and drag to move files around.

Additionally, QuickOffice 5.0 will support Office 2010 features, which supports formats such as .docx, .xlsx, and .pptx. Users can manipulate images, resize, and rotate as if they would on Microsoft Office on the desktop. The app supports live preview so you get to see what you’re doing in real time. Text formatting is also available in real time.

Enterprise users will be happy to know that SharePoint integration through third-party apps will be available. Users can make changes to files on SharePoint and save the files right back to the SharePoint cloud storage.

The update will be available in November. If you work in the cloud and choose to do productive work using a consumer tablet, QuickOffice will be a great choice for those that need to view, create, and edit on the go.

QuickOffice for Tablets to Be Updated with Better Cloud Integration (Video) is a post by Chuong Nguyen from Gotta Be Mobile.

Several sites are reporting that Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer, in a Q&A at this year’s Financial Analyst Meeting, has hinted positively at Microsoft Office in the Windows 8 Metro interface. Only one problem: he didn’t.

Here’s the line that’s giving folks hope.

“…we are rethinking and working hard on what it would mean to do Office Metro style.”

The Steve Ballmer I know doesn't pull punches.

Sounds like they’re serious about bringing Office to the Metro interface. Great news, except that’s not what Ballmer really said. Here’s the full exchange on the question about Office in Metro (transcript from Microsoft).

QUESTION: Thank you. On Office, I know there’s a development effort for Office for ARM. The question is Metro interface for Office. How critical is it to Windows 8 adoption to have software that takes full advantage of Office with Metro? It’s now only been about 15 months since the last release of Office. If we’re, say, a year away, still kind of on the cusp, I’m not sure if you had to choose to add functionality to Office, or you say let’s just do a Metro infrastructure. If you can kind of share with us your thoughts, particularly as it pertains to the adoption rate of Windows 8.

STEVE BALLMER: Yeah. No, we’re certainly — as I said in my remarks this morning, supporting our platforms and having our platform support innovation in our applications broadly remains super important to us.

The brilliance of the Windows 8 strategy, though, is we get all of the applications that come from Windows on X86, as well as applications that have gone through the process of rethinking how they might work in a Windows 8 world. When we have something that we want to talk about, we will, but certainly you ought to expect that we are rethinking and working hard on what it would mean to do Office Metro style.

Notice how the first part of the second half is dismissive of the notion that they need to bring Office to Metro. Why should they? Windows 8 delivers all the applications you have now, including Office, so it doesn’t need to be in the Metro side.

The last part is far less affirmative than is being interpreted. “Certainly,” he says, “you ought to expect” that they’re thinking about “what it would mean to do Office Metro style.” So will they do it? I don’t know. Do they know what it means to do it? I don’t know. Are they working on what it means to do it? I don’t know. Should we expect them to be working on what it means to do it? Absolutely!

Seriously, Ballmer? You think we should expect you guys to think about how Office could be Metro-fied? Because me, Warner, Kevin, and a bunch of other past and present users of Windows tablets think Office in Metro needs to be ready to go when Windows 8 launches. We don’t expect you to think about how to do it. We expect it to be done.

I realize Ballmer may have been imprecise with his obfuscation, but lack of Office support was a serious hindrance to Tablet PC adoption from the beginning. If it’s still not fixed with this second (or third) try at tablets, well, don’t say nobody warned you.

Will They or Won’t They Metro-fy Office for Windows 8? is a post by Sumocat from Gotta Be Mobile.

On a recent trip to the east coast to visit the in-laws I got into a long discussion with one of my wife’s cousins about working from home. He works for one of the world’s biggest banks as a database engineer and absolutely loves it. Why? It’s not because he got a big pay raise, a promotion or extra vacation time this year. It’s because the bank now allows him to work from home full time.

We talked about how there’s really no excuse for a lot of people to work at an office and how it’s a drain on resources all around. Companies pay thousands of dollars (sometimes 10′s of thousands) per year for each employee to have a cubical or office, equipment and other facilities at a central office. Employees spend countless hours commuting to and from work, which means that eight or nine hour work day is more like 10 or 11 hours away from home, especially in major metro areas.

The worst aspect of working in an office, at least in many cases, is coworkers and bosses. The endless chit-chat about ball games, politics and personal business takes a serious bite out of the work day. My wife’s cousin doesn’t deal with any of that any more, instead chatting with co-workers about WORK when needed.

He no longer lives in North Carolina, a place he didn’t particularly enjoy living since his family and friends are all in the Tri-State area.  He now lives in New Jersey and is as happy as can be working for the same bank. He says he gets a lot more done these days in fewer hours. He completes his work on time, but he works when he wants to.

Another thing we talked about is how much time work takes out of your day before you even get to work. Showering, shaving, getting dressed, doing laundry, dropping off shirts at the dry cleaners are all things that eat into your work day. Obviously, you’ll have to do some of the above items at some point, but the ability to wake up at 6a.m. and be at work as quickly as you can open a laptop and punch in an RSA security number is really important when you’re on a tight deadline.

As I ate a late breakfast this morning in my home office, I visited Ted.com to catch up on the Ted Talks series. Jason Fried, the founder of 37 Signals, gave a talk about Why Work Doesn’t Happen at Work. He addressed many of the issues my wife’s cousin and I discussed. He added that meetings and managers are two of the biggest time wasters at work. I couldn’t agree more.

My wife’s cousin says he’ll never be able to go back to working at an office full time again. His company is allowing workers to work from home for two primary reasons. The first is to save on office costs. The company doesn’t have to build more offices, buy office equipment or make food for those that work from home. The other reason is so that it can retain employees with what many consider the ultimate perk. While he currently resides in New Jersey, he’s toying with the idea of living and working from Brazil for a few months since his boss really doesn’t care where in the world he is, just as long as he’s getting things done.

This TED Talk brought back flashbacks of my former corporate life. When I used to work at a big corporate media company, I spent well over half of my day not working. Instead, my typical Monday looked something like this:

7 a.m.: Leave home, drive to work on one of the most congested streets in downtown San Francsico. Drop off wife at her office

7:45 a.m.: Park (thankfully work gave me a parking spot) and run to coffee shop.

8 a.m.: Run upstairs to get to conference room in time for 8 a.m. meeting w/manager and colleagues. Spend first 15 minutes hearing jokes (‘Where’s my coffee?’), wait for everyone to show up (Oh my Gosh! Theere was Traffic…sorry!) and how awesome some club was on Saturday night.

8:15 a.m.: Manager would go over some goals for the week (same as every other week), highlight a few successes (that co-workers already bragged about last week) and then talk about his wife’s charity, his new car, trip to N.Y., etc for the remainder of the hour. For added fun, he’d scold me every so often for playing with my phone (in front of everyone), despite me showing him that I actually used my Palm Treo for things like taking notes, scheduling and alerts…

9 a.m.: The team would head down to Starbucks to get that coffee I didn’t bring them. I’d be hungry by this point and would join them to grab a bagel or pastry.

9:45 a.m.: Return to office. Begin work…

9:46 a.m.: A co-worker would stop by and recount how awesome his sons did in their hockey games (I think the oldest was 9). Yes, every day since super-dad coached the hockey team. If there wasn’t a game, we’d hear about practice. Or travel plans for the next game.  Or what new piece of hockey gear he was going to buy one of his sons….

10 a.m.: Start working again. Phone calls, emails, spreadsheets, reports, complaints from clients…apologizing to clients for co-workers’ mistakes. Scheduling meetings for the next few days.

11 a.m.: ‘So where do you want to eat lunch today?’ e-mails start coming in. Indian take out, Subway, burritos, Japanese noodles? A group discussion would ensue…

12 p.m.: Lunch time!

1:15 p.m.: Stagger back towards the office to get laptop, head out to meetings.

1:30 p.m.: Drive for an hour to meet client in Palo Alto

2:30 p.m.: Meet with client, talk about how we could help them. Chit chat about tech.

3:30 p.m.: Drive to the nearest Kinko’s to check email. Yes, we all did this as work was too cheap to pay for BlackBerry devices

4:30 p.m.: Leave Palo Alto…sit in traffic.

6 p.m.: Arrive in downtown San Francisco to pick up wife…wait for half an hour as her boss or clients always seemed to have a crisis or two towards the end of the day.

7 p.m.: Arrive home…check email to make sure I didn’t have anything urgent. Get sucked into a work discussion of some kind

7:30 p.m.: Done for the day

In the year 2010, there’s simply no excuse for herding hundres or thousands of employees into a single office building, most of whom never interact with more than a handfull of others. It’s an extraordinary waste of resources for many of these people to commute. The daily grind of commuting and dealing with all the distractions can be far worse than work itself.

If my former boss had axed those early morning meetings, I could’ve accomplished the same amount of work in about a third of the time. I could’ve met with my clients in the middle of the day, reducing my travel time. I probably would’ve been far happier as a result and sold more widgets.

Too many companies are mis-managing their human resources, forcing them to work in the same manner as they did 40 years ago.Of course not every job can be done remotely, but there are millions of people sitting slouching in cubes right now that should be happily working away at home, in cafes and libraries with smiles on their faces.

Why Work Doesn’t Happen at Work (TED Talk Video) is a post by Xavier Lanier from Gotta Be Mobile.

Take this with a grain of salt (preferably the kind that melts snow), but T3 is reporting some loose conversation with a Microsof’s Mike Tedesco, the Senior Product Manager for the Windows Business Unit that says Microsoft may be looking at a version of Office for the iPad. The exact quote is “Yeah, it’s something that we’re looking at.”

Three thoughts on this grain of salt. Of course they are. They’d be fools not to “look at it.”  Microsoft is a software company and with many predicting the demise of Office if they can sell it on the iPad they’ll sell it on he iPad. The second is that on many levels this fits perfectly with what we know of Microsoft’s three screens and a cloud strategy although it might end up being a fourth screen. Lastly, given all the talk last week about how internal crap derailed the Tablet PC within Microsoft, it would be absolutely ironic if Microsoft did release a version that somehow was Tablet optimized.

For what’s it worth, given Apple’s play with iWork I doubt we’d see this happen anytime in the near future.

Microsoft “May” Bring Office to iPad is a post by Warner Crocker from Gotta Be Mobile.

OffiSync is a new tool that allows users to work with Google Docs from within Microsoft Office applications rather than a web browser. When you install OffiSync, a new tab will appear in your Office apps that allows you to save and share your documents to Google Docs. You can invite collaborators to view and edit your documents from within Word or Excel.

OffiSync’s integration with Microsoft’s applications reminds me of DocVerse, which Rob Bushway blogged about here.

Check out the below video demo and let us know what you think about OffiSync.

Visit OffiSync to register for the free open beta.

OffiSync Combines Google Docs and MS Office Apps is a post by Xavier Lanier from Gotta Be Mobile.

One of the most frustrating things about working in an office is the constant emailing back and forth of documents to various team members. Each person has their own way of saving files, making edits, etc, and the person in charge of the document has to manage multiple copies coming from in multiple people. It’s a headache that has Excedrin written all over it. Since most corporations still use Microsoft Office as the “standard”, switching over to Google Docs / Zoho isn’t really a viable option. How then to streamline this problem and offer online type of collaboration to Office documents?

DocVerse to the rescue! DocVerse brings online collaboration / sharing of Microsoft Office documents to your office and mobile workers, allowing user level access, and single file management. If you’d like to check this out for yourself or your office, we’ve got good news for you. DocVerse has set GottaBeMobile and its’ readers up with 101 beta invites and you can sign up here.   ou only need one invite per team since each Beta user can share and invite their colleagues to view documents using DocVerse. The beta version of DocVerse only works with PowerPoint 2007 for the time being, but CEO Shan Sinha says that support for other Office applications, Office 2003 and Office 2008 for Mac are coming soon. You can view presentations and comment on them from any web browser, including IE, FireFox and Safari.

Watch the video below for more info – click the little tv icon to enlarge.

DocVerse Brings Online Collaboration to Microsoft Office Files, Beta Invites Available is a post by Rob Bushway from Gotta Be Mobile.

Microsoft is offering Office Ultimate to students for the unreal price of $59.95. All you need is to have a .edu email address and be registered for at least 0.5 credit hours in case MS decides to come asking for proof of your enrollment for whatever reason. Office Ultimate retails for $679, so this is a very significant savings. The beauty of Office Ultimate is that it offers the complete Office suite of software allowing for integrating files between different programs. For example, a OneNote page can be turned into an Outlook appointment. Similarly, an Outlook email can be sent into OneNote for editing. I’ll be showing the relatively seamless coordination between Office programs soon here in an upcoming Inkshow.

Via Digital Trends

Microsoft Drops Office Ultimate Prices For Students is a post by admin from Gotta Be Mobile.

If you’ve seen that pesky balloon pop up that tells you that an Outlook 2007 data file did not close properly and it needs to be scanned for errors, you know how initially terrifying that little message an be. Sometimes the automatic scan fixes the issue and life moves on. You can even continue to work in Outlook while the automatic scanning is taking place, although things will move a bit slowly, and if you shut down Outlook while it is being scanned, of course it all begins anew the next time you open up Outlook.

If you see the warning balloon pop up frequently, then you might need to take some more corrective action to repair things. Outlook includes a file that will do the trick, if you can find it. It is called ScanPST. Usually it is located in C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office 12.

When you open ScanPST it asks you for the file you wish to scan, and of course the next trick is knowing where your .pst files are stored. Mine are stored in C:\Warner Crocker\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Outlook. I know some users move their archive files to other locations.

Once you locate the files you simply run the program and it will report if you have any errors or not an then ask if you want them fixed. Note that if you have multiple archive.pst files you should run this on them as well. In my first pass at the program I only ran it on my outlook.pst file, and the errors were still being reported when opening Outlook. A quick run thru with the various archive.pst files and I’m opening and closing Outlook 2007 without an issue at the moment.

Use ScanPST To Fix Corrupt Outlook Data Files is a post by admin from Gotta Be Mobile.