A Good Mini-Office for Handhelds

Documents to Go 8 allows editing Office documents on a Palm.

Yardena Arar

Documents to Go 8 lets you view PowerPoint files on the go.

I'm not ready to ditch my laptop in favor of my Treo 650 smart phone. But if I had to, DataViz's Microsoft Office-compatible Documents to Go would help me get my work done. The new $50 Documents to Go 8 for Palm OS Premium Edition supports Word, Excel, PowerPoint, popular graphics files, and for the first time Adobe's ubiquitous PDFs. In general I was impressed by the out-of-the-box usability of the shipping copy I evaluated.

With the Documents to Go desktop application, I could drag and drop files from my PC to either my Treo or its expansion SD Card (the actual transfer occurs during the next HotSync). Office documents received as e-mail attachments on my handheld automatically opened in the appropriate Docs to Go application (Word to Go, Sheet to Go, or Slideshow to Go) when I clicked on them. And all installed either on the handheld or on an expansion card; no desktop conversion was required. Docs to Go's less expensive (and less elegantly designed) archrival, Cutting Edge Software's $40 Quickoffice Premier, creates separate icons for each component app. In contrast, Docs to Go keeps things simple, providing just one Documents icon on the Palm home screen. Tap on it, and you get a list of your supported documents.

In my tests, Word to Go's rendering of Microsoft Word documents was faithful to the originals. Sheet to Go did a credible job with Excel basics: You can create formulas and perform simple formatting. Slideshow to Go lets you shuffle PowerPoint slides, enter bullet points and notes, and time your presentation.

But not everything went smoothly. I couldn't see any graphics on a PowerPoint file I received via e-mail until I moved a Docs to Go program file from the SD Card (where I'd installed the software) to the Treo. Also, PDF to Go's rendering of PDF files wasn't flawless: Hyphens sometimes broke up words in midline, and some text overlapped images. DataViz says that other Palm devices may also have problems with PDFs.

Still, Docs to Go let me reduce my paperwork while in transit, without a notebook. It's better to have a small Office than none at all.

DataViz Documents to Go 8 for Palm OS (Premium Edition)

Useful tool for editing key Office documents on a Palm. Price when reviewed: $50 Current price (if available)