Anyone using Office Mobile?

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Technofreak

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#101646 5-May-2012 09:36

I've recently installed Office Mobile on my Nokia E7. Up until now I've been using Quick Office. QuickOffice does a pretty good job though a little cluncky when doing some thinhs on the speadsheets.

I was looking forward to trying Office Mobile. It seem much smoother to use than Quick Office and is nice to use, BUT, it has two major draw backs that pretty well cripple it for me. There's no "cut and paste" function and you cannot open a document within Office Mobile by searching for the file on your phone. In order to open a document you need to have "synched" it to Office Mobile but even when you do this some documents do not appear on the list. You can create a document and save it but then cannot open it from within Office Mobile . The only way is to open the file manager app on the phone and open the document that way.

There is a work around for finding and opening a document but I've not found a way to "cut and paste" which pretty well makes Office Mobile useless so far as I am concerned. One note seems to have much better functionaility, and it's not really what you'd normally use as a document editor.

Is there a way to cut and paste with Office Mobile?

One other bug bear for me is the fact that Office Mobile is not 100% backward compatible with .doc and .xls documents. It will only allow you to edit .docx and .xlsx documents, you can only view .doc and .xls documents. As I have Office 2003 on my main computer most of my documents cannot be edited in Office Mobile.

All in all so far Office Mobile is a very disappointing package. Here's hoping there are some improvements coming.

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John2010

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#620802 7-May-2012 09:31

Technofreak: ...One other bug bear for me is the fact that Office Mobile is not 100% backward compatible with .doc and .xls documents. It will only allow you to edit .docx and .xlsx documents, you can only view .doc and .xls documents. As I have Office 2003 on my main computer most of my documents cannot be edited in Office Mobile...

Mentioning this just in case you weren't aware - it is quite a while since I have used Office 2003 but am pretty confident that Microsoft's Office Compatibility Pack allows you to both read and save .docx and .xlsx files in Office 2003. Doesn't solve the issue for existing files unless you open them and resave them but is straight forward if one changes to just working with the later file formats which is what I did.

Re Office on the mobile - cannot comment as I am still waiting :-( .

Technofreak

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#621212 7-May-2012 19:51

Thanks, Yes I was aware of the compatibility pack and have it installed. It was more the fact that existing .doc and .xls documents couldn't be edited in Office Mobile.

Since my original post I did a bit more googling and didn't discover much except that Microsoft had decided that cut and paste wasn't necessary for WP7 much to quite a few peoples disgust and that some versions of Office Mobile didn't support cut and paste either though in some cases you could download an app that installed the cut and paste function for Mobile Office for some platforms.

I couldn't find much else to help my cause and decided that Office Mobile for Symbian didn't have the cut and paste function, until I discovered it by accident. I must say the lack a a proper user guide dosen't help. There is a highlight function to select text for Italicising, Bolding and colour etc. When this is activated a pop up panel appears with 3 or 4 icons, One is to select the page to set font settings like bolding etc, one is to insert a comment the other two looked like cut and paste functions to me but I couldn't get them to work until I happened to but and paste by accident. They are copy and past so it seems, but once you have cut it seems the copy function is no longer available till you paste. I'm still getting used to how it works.

I'm still struggling with the synch function in order to get a document to appear on the list, at least I have a work around for this. If anyone can give me a lead here it would be appreciated.

The lack backward compatibility is also a bit of a bugbear, though I guess that is Microsoft's way to upsell you to the later software.

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Technofreak

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#658337 19-Jul-2012 12:03

Hopefully there's a few more people out there using Mobile Office. When I first started using it I was unable to edit .xls and .doc files.

Recently I saved a .xls file I use as a template as a .xlsx and transferred it to my phone. This file opens OK but when I try to sdit if there is a message saying it cannot be edited. It is able to be edited OK on my PC. Does anyone have any ideas on how I might go about making it so that I can edit it in Mobile Office?

Thanks

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John2010

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#659481 21-Jul-2012 11:44

Technofreak: Hopefully there's a few more people out there using Mobile Office. When I first started using it I was unable to edit .xls and .doc files.

Recently I saved a .xls file I use as a template as a .xlsx and transferred it to my phone. This file opens OK but when I try to sdit if there is a message saying it cannot be edited. It is able to be edited OK on my PC. Does anyone have any ideas on how I might go about making it so that I can edit it in Mobile Office?

Thanks

I have been watching to see if you get a usefull reply to this. I cannot offer anything of much use except the following comments (on an N8):

It is not a problem that I have run into with either .xlsx or .xlsm files but that said I do not use Mobile Office much due to its clunkiness.

The message you get is the same message one gets if one loads an .xls file (which Mobile Office will read and display) and try to edit it. I wonder if there is some glitch in the conversion from .xls to xlsx that makes Mobile Office think it is still a .xls file? I have tested converting an .xls file to .xlsx here with Office 2007 and Mobile Office allows me to edit that.

Technofreak

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#659491 21-Jul-2012 12:05

Hi John,

I had the same thoughts re the conversion process as I was using Excel 2003 with the compatibility pack to save as xlsx.

Unfortunately the only computer I have that does native .xlsx files runs a starter version of Excel 2010 and I wondered if this was part of my problem as well.

I'm still experimenting. I'll see how I go and may put up a post in the Windows Phone section in the hope there's someone there using Office Mobile.

I agree Office Mobile is a bit clunky but it has some features I'm keen to try out. It certainly isn't user friendly in that so far it has been impossible to open a document from within the app, the only way being from File Manager. If it's Microsoft's way of showcasing their products to entice Symbian users over to WP then it's a major fail.

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Technofreak

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#659667 21-Jul-2012 19:39

Another MS Apps fail.

I tried using the message reader app tonight and discovered it wouldn't work and this is what I found.
http://discussions.nokia.com/t5/Cseries/Stay-away-from-Microsoft-Apps/td-p/1373463

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Technofreak

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#660012 22-Jul-2012 18:42

I've done a bit of experimenting.

What I've discovered is I can only edit the template provided none of the cells are locked. This isn't ideal as there are cells with formulae which will cause problems if they accidentally get selected and changed. Note I'm talking about locked cells not a protected workbook.

Also one other thing I've found is any frozen panes are not frozen when opening the spreadsheet in Office Mobile while they are frozen when opened on the laptop

. You can freeze them after you open the file but this action isn't saved when you exit out of the document. All very frustrating.

I'm still wondering if some of my issues are related to the fact I'm using Excel 2010 starter.

John I'd be interested to know if you could make up a basic .xlsx spreadsheet on your laptop/desktop with some locked cells and see if you can edit on Mobile Office. Also I'd be interested to know whether or not any frozen panes stay frozen when opened in Mobile Office.

Thanks

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John2010

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#660275 23-Jul-2012 11:07

Technofreak: I've done a bit of experimenting.

What I've discovered is I can only edit the template provided none of the cells are locked. This isn't ideal as there are cells with formulae which will cause problems if they accidentally get selected and changed. Note I'm talking about locked cells not a protected workbook.

Also one other thing I've found is any frozen panes are not frozen when opening the spreadsheet in Office Mobile while they are frozen when opened on the laptop . You can freeze them after you open the file but this action isn't saved when you exit out of the document. All very frustrating.

I'm still wondering if some of my issues are related to the fact I'm using Excel 2010 starter.

John I'd be interested to know if you could make up a basic .xlsx spreadsheet on your laptop/desktop with some locked cells and see if you can edit on Mobile Office. Also I'd be interested to know whether or not any frozen panes stay frozen when opened in Mobile Office.

Thanks

I checked with an existing .xlsm file (should be same behaviour as an .xlsx) saved with some locked cells and protection on and I find when transferred to the phone Mobile Offcie will not allow edits in the unlocked cells. It would not allow edits in the frozen ones too, but in this file's case those cells were also locked, however I expect the behaviour will be the same as you found for frozen cells.

With the same file in QuickOffice I find that I can edit supposedly locked cells.

Technofreak

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#660617 23-Jul-2012 20:38

John,

Thanks for the reply.

It wasn't till you mentioned that you could edit the locked cells in Quick Office that I discovered the same thing.

If only I could make Office Mobile retain the frozen panes.

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John2010

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#660848 24-Jul-2012 10:19

I wonder if there is some software difficulty in transferring the status of locked and unlocked cells within a spreadsheet, with a mixture of those within it, across to the phones.

So, maybe QuickOffice has chosen to get over that by just unlocking them all, and Microsoft has chosen to lock them all????

Technofreak

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#660862 24-Jul-2012 10:43

John2010: I wonder if there is some software difficulty in transferring the status of locked and unlocked cells within a spreadsheet, with a mixture of those within it, across to the phones.

So, maybe QuickOffice has chosen to get over that by just unlocking them all, and Microsoft has chosen to lock them all????

I hadn't thought about it that way, but perhaps there's something in what you say.

It'd be nice if there was a bit more User info for both products, especially Office Mobile.

So far the best Mobile product I've used is Documents to Go which I had on my Palm devices. Unfortunately they don't do a version for Symbian.

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