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One of the major needs of a mobile office warrior is the ability to create and edit office documents on the go. The iPhone natively only comes with the ability to view office documents so the search was on for the best app to provide this missing functionality.

The text edit function for Word documents.

The text edit function for Word documents.

QuickOffice Pro was the first major app of this type top be released for the iPhone.  It provides the ability to edit Word and Excel documents. Documents can be created or loaded via WiFi, mounting your iPhone as a hard drive, transfer from Mobile Me or via email. The email function isn’t from your Inbox on the iPhone, you have to forward the mail to a QuickOffice account so that you can access the file. It provides the basic editing function that you would expect from such an app.

6/10

Document To Go, by veteran developer DataViz, was released with only the ability to create and edit Word documents. They have just announced the submission of an update which included the ability to create and edit Excel spreadsheets. The ability to get documents onto the iPhone is limited to the use of a desktop application. The editing functions are similar to what is available on QuickOffice.

7/10

Overall based on a comparison of the Word functions Documents To Go has the better designed user interface. The major concern with this app is the limited option available in accessing documents, I would presume (and hope) that this will be rectified in later versions. Apart from the file access limitations given the lower price (pre release of Excel update) and the better design Documents To Go is the preferred app.