Popular wisdom holds that a tech device needs to run Microsoft
Office in order to be successful with business users.
There are no versions of Microsoft Office designed to run on tablets
like Apple's iPad or Android-powered models; despite this, business
users are buying lots of tablets - especially iPads. While lacking
Microsoft's seal of approval, there are many iPad and Android apps to
view Microsoft Office documents on tablets with several (including
QuickOffice, Documents to Go, and Apple's iWorks apps for iPad)
allowing editing of existing documents.
If you really want to, though, there are ways to run "real"
Microsoft Office on iPads and other tablets. Here are a few:
Remote Access
You can remotely access a "real" computer - Windows or Mac - with
any of a variety of remote access services, opening Office (or other
applications), opening saved documents, and making changes as needed,
all on your tablet screen. I like the free LogMeIn service, which does not
require complex set up or poking holes in firewalls - a practice that's
(with reason) frowned on by IT departments.
Nice feature: Remote access gives you access to any document or
program that you can open or run on your "real" computer. Less nice:
Controlling the larger screen of your "real" computer using fingertips
on a smaller tablet screen is awkward.
OnLive Desktop
Online service OnLive offers
broadband access to PC games streamed from OnLive's servers, playable
on non-PC devices. This winter, they expanded on this technology,
offering OnLive Desktop, which
provides access to a Windows desktop complete with Microsoft Office
2010 to iPad and Android tablet users.
Free accounts get a stripped-down version of Windows with the Office
applications, Internet Explorer, and not much else. No Control Panel or
ability to add additional applications. Need to type? OnLive sessions
make use of Windows' touch features - including onscreen keyboard -
rather than native iPad controls.
Free accounts also get 2 GB of online storage. In order to edit an
existing document, it first needs to be uploaded from a users' PC or
Mac - more storage and additional features (including support for Flash
animations and popular online storage service Dropbox) are available with paid accounts,
starting at $5/month.
The miracle is that it works as well as it does. The problems,
however, include (again) the awkwardness of controlling a full desktop
system with fingertips on a tablet. As well, the OnLive Desktop system
is completely independent from the tablet it's running on. Want to
check your email on your iPad? You'll have to log back into OnLive
Desktop. Want to copy and paste information from that open Word
document to an email message? Sorry, you can't.
CloudOn
CloudOn (iPad only) tries to do less than OnLive Desktop: While
OnLive offers a full Windows desktop, a free account and app from
CloudOn just lets you run Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Adobe Reader
fullscreen. In this case, though, doing less may mean doing better.
Not having a miniaturized Windows start menu makes opening the
applications easier, as does having the applications running full
screen. CloudOn rearranges the Office apps' Ribbon Bar icons to make
them more finger-friendly and uses the native iPad virtual
keyboard.
CloudOn supports cloud file-storage services Dropbox and Box.com, as well as Google's
new Google Drive (which integrates with Google Docs). Many users
already have files stored on one or another of these services.
Google does not yet offer Google Docs editing on the iPad; with
CloudOn, Google Docs files now can be edited on an iPad in the more
powerful Microsoft Office applications. CloudOn suffers, however, from
the same disconnect from the rest of the iPad's system as OnLive
Desktop. Still, I find it the best way to run the Microsoft Office
suite on my iPad.
All of these ways of using Microsoft Office on a tablet require
broadband Internet and will work slower with 3G mobile access than with
WiFi; I haven't tested them with the faster LTE available on new iPads
(or Android tablets), but that should be an improvement.
First published in Business in Vancouver's High Tech Office column
on May 7, 2012.
