Amazon seems to be making a habit of offering office suites for Android for free. Every day the Amazon Appstore for Android offers one paid app free of charge. A few weeks ago that free app was OfficeSuite Pro and last week the company followed up with QuickOffice Pro. Today its DataViz Documents To Go that’s available for free from Amazon.

What these three apps all have in common is the ability to view, edit, or create Microsoft Office documents including Word, Excel, and PowerPoint files. They also let you view PDF files.

They also all happen to retail for $14.99, which means you may have saved $45 if you managed to tap the “get app” button three times over the last month or so.

When Amazon puts an app on sale you can add it to your account while it’s free, but you don’t necessarily have to download and install it today. I’m sure Amazon hopes this gives you incentive to visit the Appstore every day to see what’s new, but it also gives you plenty of incentive to grab Documents To Go today even if you’re not sure you need it.

What’s actually on sale today is the license key for the full version of Documents To Go. You still need to download the standalone Documents To Go app, but that version is always free, and the license key lets you unlock premium features.

Note that if your device came with a free version of Documents To Go preloaded though, this unlock key may not work for you.

LibreOffice is a free and open source office suite that offers many of the same features you’d get from Microsoft Office. In fact, you can use LibreOffice to view or edit Word, Excel, or PowerPoint documents on a Mac, Windows, or Linux computer. It also supports a wide range of other document formats.

Now the folks at The Document Foundation are planning to port LibreOffice to run on Android and iOS, which will allow smartphone and tablet users to use the powerful office suite.

Volunteer developer Tor Lillqvist has already compiled much of the code to run on Android and iOS, but the user interface is still in the early stages. We probably won’t actually see finished products available for download until late 2012 or early 2013.

Still, it looks like commercial office suites such as QuickOffice and Documents To Go will have some serious competition from the open source community in the near year or two.

via CNET

Google probably should have launched a Google Docs app for Android about two years ago. The ability to view, edit, create, and collaborate on documents would have been a major selling point, and it seems like a no-brainer for a company with one of the top mobile operating systems and one of the top cloud-based office suites. Better late than never, I guess, because today Google finally got around to launching a native Google Docs app for Android, and the company is making up for tardiness with a few awesome features including the ability to scan text into Google Docs using your phone’s camera.

Google Docs for Android lets existing Google Docs users access all their existing text, spreadsheet, and presentation documents. You can search your Google Documents or filter by items you “own” or starred items, and open files for viewing and editing on your mobile device. You can also upload documents from your phone and share items with anyone in your phone’s contact list.

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SoftMaker is preparing to launch a private beta of its new office suite for Google Android devices. You can sign up for the beta by following the instructions in the latest SoftMaker newsletter.

The company has been producing powerful office apps for mobile platforms for ages, building a strong following for its Windows Mobile office suite which includes apps that are compatible with Microsoft Office Word, Excel, and PowerPoint. The Android space is already rather crowded, with office apps from QuickOffice, ThinkFree, and DataViz. But SoftMaker is confident its software will trounce the competition in a number of areas.

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Online office suite Zoho puts Google Docs to shame, with web-based apps for creating, managing, editing, and sharing text, spreadsheet, and presentation documents as well as apps for managing your accounting, email, project management, and other needs. There’s also a Zoho app for the iPhone and iPod touch which lets you view documents from your account. Now Zoho has launched a new version of its app that supports the Apple iPad as well.

Zoho Docs 2.0 for iOS also adds support for the latest iPhone and iPod touch models with Retina displays, as well as the ability to set permissions when sharing files from the app.

The app lets you upload images to Zoho Docs, view documents, spreadsheets, presentations, and PDF files, and other documents in your account as well as shared documents.

Unfortunately Zoho Docs 2.0 is still missing a few major features including the ability to edit documents or create new documents from the app. You’ll need to go to the web-based version of Zoho to do those things.

Zoho Docs for iOS is available as a free download from the App Store.

via ReadWriteWeb

As expected, the folks behind the Quickoffice suite for mobile phones have released a version optimized for Android tablets. You can use QuickOffice Pro HD to view and edit Office documents including Microsoft Word, Excel, and PowerPoint documents. The app can also access documents from Google Docs, Dropbox, and other online services.

Quickoffice Pro HD is currently available from the Android Market for $14.99, but the company plans to raise the price to $24.99 after the launch promotion ends.

The tablet version of the software is designed for tablets with high resolution displays. It’s also optimized for Android 3.0, with context-sensitive menus in the upper right corner of the app, and support for Honeycomb touch gestures.

Quickoffice has released an updated version of its Android app with several key new features. Quickoffice Pro now has more robust editing features, faster file loading, scrolling and zooming, integrated contextual search, text-to-speech via Google PDF viewing and of course performance improvements.

The app has also extended its editing capabilities for Microsoft Office files. It now lets you insert images and format text in Word tables as well as create new PowerPoint 97-2008 presentations. In addition, Quickoffice Pro allows you to store files in the cloud via Box.net, Google Docs, Dropbox, Huddle, SugarSync and MobileMe accounts.

Quickoffice for Android has three Microsoft file editors: Quickword, Quicksheet and Quickpoint. Here are some of the new features available in each:

• Quickword – now lets you edit/format text in tables, insert/remove images from your Android phone’s camera and gallery, aligns paragraphs easily, find and replace, text-to-speech, web lookup, quick scroll while in page layout, edit text while in page layout, and a scrollable application toolbar with shortcuts was added as well.
• Quicksheet – now has shortcuts to match calculations, find and replace functions, cell alignment feature, follow and edit hyperlinks functionality, additional chart display, as well as scrollable app toolbar.
• Quickpoint – now lets you insert, remove and rearrange slides,  edit text inline while on a slide,  move/resize shapes, edit speaker notes, follow hyperlinks, select and format text and scrollable application toolbar was also added.

Quickoffice for Android is available from the Android Market for $7.99.  Quickoffice Android app is also working on a new office suite optimized for Android tablets.

via Market Wire

There are a handful of office suites for Google Android including QuickOffice, Documents To Go, OfficeSuite, and ThinkFree Office. But there’s always room for one more, especially if that one more is SoftMaker Office.

SoftMaker has been developing mobile office software for years and the company currently offers desktop word processing, spreadsheet and presentation apps as well as full-featured mobile apps for Windows Mobile. The mobile app does a better job of letting you open and edit Microsoft Office documents without losing the original formatting than pretty much any other Windows Mobile app on the market — including Microsoft’s own mobile office tools.

Now the company is working on a version of SoftMaker Office for Google Android. A public beta will be available soon.

The office suite has been redesigned with an Android specific user interface. That means finger-friendly controls, including a series of toolbars that give you a lot of control over documents you’re creating or editing.

That includes everything from text alignment fonts and font sizes. If the double stack of toolbars seems like it’s going to take up too much screen real estate though, there’s nothing to worry about since it’s collapsible.

We should know more about SoftMaker Office for Android soon.

via ZDNet