iPhone taught to edit Office 2007 docs, sheets

Quickoffice welcomes Xs

By Cade Metz in San Francisco • Get more from this author

Posted in Mobile, 3rd September 2009 19:57 GMT

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You can now edit Office 2007 docs and spreadsheets on your iPhone.

Today, Quickoffice rolled out a new version of its iPhone office app suite that handles .docx and .xlsx files produced by Microsoft Office 2007 for Windows and Office 2008 for Mac. "We said it was coming, and now it's here," Gregg Fiddes, the company's vp of sales and strategic partnership told The Reg.

The .docx and .xlsx formats adhere to the Office Open XML standard that Microsoft cooked up all on its own and pushed through committee. They're the default Word and Excel formats for both MS Office 2007 and Office 2008 for Mac.

Priced at $14.99, version 1.4 of the Quickoffice Mobile Office Suite for iPhone can also view - but not edit - PowerPoint and PDF files. Fiddes won't say how many iPhoners are using the app, but he points out that it currently ranks first among business apps in the Apple App Store.

With the previous version of its suite, 1.3, the Texas-based outfit baked in several interface enhancement enabled by Apple's iPhone 3.0 update, including cut-copy-and-paste, undo-redo, and the ability to interface directly with email.

In the past, you could only transfer documents from email by shuttling them over Wi-Fi from your PC or mounting your iPhone as a PC drive. Now, you can directly open email attachments and, well, attach attachments, according to Fiddes.

The Quickoffice suite can also swap files with mobileMe iDisk accounts, the company says. Naturally, as with previous versions, you can edit good ol' .doc and .xls files as well as .txt. ®

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