Apple’s marketing machine is extremely careful whenever it comes to Office functions for iXXX devices. The reasons for this are short and sweet: full (aka edit, save, etc) Office support currently is not available! However, the iPhone (and the iPod touch) can display office files to some extent…the question is how well they do it!
The next parts will look at Word, ExCel, PowerPoint and PDF files - but before we can look at them, it’s time to think about how to move them to the device. As iTunes can not transfer these files, we are left with two options: email and web.
Web
This is the most cumbersome method: upload the files to a server, open safari, open the URL and presto!
E-Mail
As many iPhone users will lack a web server of their own (but have a second POP3 email account), this straight-forward method works better. Send an email to your second account using your desktop and attach the file. BTW: you do need a second email account, as most desktop email programs delete all email off the POP3 server on receipt.
Then, power up the iPod/iPhone and check your mail. One can clearly see the attachment at the bottom of the message:
Clicking on it starts the download process:
Once the download is complete, the file type is displayed. Click the icon to open it…
I am fully aware that this process is not exactly smartphone-worthy. Palm OS users can send a file to their mobile device with a single click, PocketPC and S60 users can do so via a “removable drive”. Nevertheless, being able to look at files on the go can also be helpful sometimes…stay tuned for a look at the actual viewers!
P.S. IMAP mail boxen allow you to save emails on the server, and thereby save you a lot of time. Cheap IMAP boxen can be had at our web host brainsware!
P.S.2 Attachments coming from IMAP servers are not saved locally - they must be redownloaded every time. Could be a benefit of POP3…