Office² Plus is a free app that allows you to view and edit office files directly from your iPhone. Let’s be clear though, Office² Plus is not a full-fledged “suite.” You’ll only get support for two MS Office products: Word and Excel and you’ll need to upgrade to the paid version if you want to save any changes you make to the files.
The design and layout are simple, but in a good way. As you navigate through the various screens, the functionality is upfront and not hidden in over-styled menus.
The app starts up to Office files locally stored within Office² Plus, but other services are supported. With a quick trip the settings page, I was able to log-in and access my files stored with Google Docs and MobileMe iDisk.
I took a look at some Word documents from my MobileMe account. Each file downloaded and appeared rather quickly with a small progress bar displaying during the download. The same was true with my Excel files.
Editing capabilities are very basic with tools for changing fonts & styling, creating lists or tables, indenting, adding images and the like. There was nothing game changing in the feature set, but everything worked and did exactly what it claimed to do.
The developer, Byte², says the app only supports files for Office 97-2003 (doc and xls) but I figured I’d give some 2007 files a try. I was able to open a docx file, but the text and images were mashed together in a way that made it difficult – but not impossible – to read. This could be useful if you’re in a must read situation.
There’s another cool feature included in Office² Plus – a PDF viewer. I wasn’t expecting to see this feature in the free version. I opened several PDFs from my Google Docs account and they all looked great. I particularly liked the scroll bar they built-in to move through the pages.
The developer does offer a paid version of the app, simply called Office², for $5.99 which adds the ability to save the files (saving not available in the Office² Plus free version). Overall, I was impressed with this app. Simple, functional and integration with other document services. Final thought: Office² Plus is a good preview and the editing capabilities fulfill some basic needs you may have, but you’ll need to upgrade to the paid app to save changes you make.
Office² Plus is available now in the App Store for free, while is Office² is available for $5.99 .
[Thanks to Adan for commenting on saving. The update includes detailed information about purchase being required for saving edits to files.]
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