How to open and edit Microsoft Word Documents on Blackberry Curve - Word and Excel
Hello,
I spent the day looking for ways to open and edit word/excel documents on my Curve 8330 for Verizon. I use word and excel on my mobile phone daily for work so i need this feature. I just got the blackberry a week ago and switched from the Treo 750w.
After my research and demoing all options i am disappointed to say that the only viaable option is Documents 2 Go premium edition. And its $70 :mad: Here are the options i demoed.
Gridmagic
This program is nice and they have a free version but it feels cheap, hard to navigate and edit things, and has zero feasible way to sync documents to computer from what i see. Basically u can email things back and forth to yourself. It is simply not ready for market or to compete with Documents 2 Go. Its hard to explain why it is difficult and time extensive to use, u just gotta use it for yourself i guess.
eOffice
This program is strange. Has the weirdest user interface logic i have EVER seen. Once u understand it... i guess it can kinda work. It took me like 5 times to try to get it to run right, and even then it seems kind of buggy. Furthermore, i cant find a place to easily crunch the numbers in excel. And i dont see an easy way to sync the docs into the computer. Its $30 and although it has some great ideas, it falls short of being user friendly and actually usable.
Documents 2 Go premium edition
My curve came with the basic version of this program... it only opens files to read, NOT edit. What an evil concept. My treo which had windows mobile had the ability to open and edit excel and word right inside of the operating system. I loved it. Now i have to pay $70 for the Premium version to do that :(
The only downfall i see with the Documents 2 Go is the $70 price. It should be priced at $40. At the end of the day it is just a mobile app with very limited features compared to desktop programs. :eek: Otherwise it works PERFECTLY. I keep all my documents on my micro sd card and when i need them i can either email them to myself or what i love to do is just put my Curve on the dock, it syncs to computer and i just open up the microSD folder on my computer and open them up and do whatever i want with them.
So from my understanding... this is the only option. PLEASE... someone correct me if i am wrong. Is there anything else out there???
I hope this post also helps other people figure out that this is the only option without spending hours of time and demo testing like i did.
cannot edit Excel files with Basic
With Docs to Go Basic, you still cannot edit Excel files. You CAN edit Word docs.
I just got an 8330 Curve this weekend and installed Docs to Go.
First, I installed it through the BlackBerry software, but that did not give me Excel, just Word and the slideshow. After reading these forums, I uninstalled Docs to Go and then went to the web site on the Curve and downloaded the software. After rebooting the phone, I now have Word, slideshow and Excel. But I cannot edit in Excel - the option is there, but says you have to buy the Premier.
Update to my earlier response
Looks like I was wrong on my earlier post ...:eek: ... the problem I ran into is that I had a rather complex spreadsheet with lots of formulas, etc. and the software marked it as read-only because of the unsupported features.
I copied / pasted part of that sheet into a new sheet on my PC, keeping the SUM and + formulas, sent it via email to myself and I was able to enable Edit mode and make changes.
So, for basic spreadsheets, it looks like Documents to Go BASIC should be enough ... and there seem to be lots of built-in formulas you can use too.
Mike