CloudOn for iPad provides full features to MS Office documents

We’ve been working with clients on mobile collaboration solutions and the topic of editing Microsoft Office documents always comes come.  I’ve used various tools on my iPad and most I’ve found lacking the ability to use all the features in Word, Excel and PowerPoint.  For example, in DocsToGo, I can change fonts, create a bulleted list and do basic formatting.  However, I can’t create a table or turn on the review features.  The interface is also very different from Word in that there is no ribbon at the top.

I just came across an iPad application called CloudOn that provides the ability to create, edit and share Word, Excel, and PowerPoint documents on the iPad using the full interface of these Office applications, including the ribbon bar.  

You can see a screen shot of PowerPoint running on CloudOn.  It looks just like I would expect PowerPoint to look.  You have the same interface to Word and Excel files so going from your desktop to the iPad is now extremely simple and productive.

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Another features that CloudOn brings includes integration to DropBox and Box.com.  If you have an account on either platform, you can access your documents directly from CloudOn and changes are stored back into those storage systems.  In fact, it doesn’t look like CloudOn stores any files on its servers or on your iPad; everything is stored on these cloud providers.

CloudOn is integrated into iPad’s Open In… feature too.  If you receive a document in your email, you can click and hold that attachment and the Open In… window pops up.  CloudOn is an option that you can pick and that file is automatically uploaded to Dropbox and opened in CloudOn.

Finally, you can also use CloudOn for PDF documents.  These files can be opened in CloudOn and you have access to the full features of the Adobe Acrobat Reader, including the ability to fill out PDF forms.

You can see a video about CloudOn on YouTube here.

I did find several limitations to CloudOn that I hope to see improved in the future:

• If you use the Open In… feature with CloudOn, your file is uploaded to DropBox, but will not be saved there unless you makes changes to the file.  So if you open it in CloudOn, look at it and then close it to work on it later, it won’t be in your Dropbox folder.
• CloudOn only works when connected to the internet, so no offline access.  Most of the other tools allow you to download files to your iPad so you can work on them disconnected, such as when you are in an airplane.  CloudOn doesn’t work in these disconnected environments
• I didn’t see a way to connect my iPad’s clipboard with CloudOn’s clipboard.  I had a picture on my laptop that I wanted to insert into a PowerPoint and could not figure out how to do this.  I could easily copy and paste between the CloudOn applications, but not from external applications.

Overall, I like the editing features and the integration with Dropbox.  These features will enable me to use my iPad more than my laptop.  But the inability to edit documents while disconnected may be a major hurdle for me.