The PDA Guerilla: Documents-to-Go

For years I have wanted an office suite on my Palm that uses the same file formats as Microsoft Office. My PDA cannot act as a laptop replacement unless I can create documents and e-mail them to clients in a format they can open, and accept attached files in standard Office formats and open and manipulate them. For years the main Palm-based technology promising this has been Documents-to-Go from DataViz (www.dataviz.com), and I bought my license to the Professional version years ago. Over the years, I would download and install every new version with great hope. And a few weeks later I would de-install it in equal disappointment after suffering disappearing documents, frequent crashes, and other problems that made it impossible to use. The application suite was always unstable, perhaps a symptom of its ambitious reach.

No more. I have been using version 9.000 since it came out several months ago, and it is rock solid. I write most of my first drafts in it and then transfer them to the larger screen of my laptop for final edits before sending them to clients. However, in emergencies such as last November, when my laptop was out to repair for most of the month and I had to spend more than a week on the road with a family emergency, I have composed, edited and sent assignments to clients directly from Documents-to-Go as attached files sent out of Snappermail, my Palm e-mail software, successfully. And I routinely receive documents in the Office formats (and Adobe PDF) directly into my PDA and transfer them to Documents-to-Go with no problem. And the integration between Documents-to-Go and Snappermail (and I presume Versamail as well, although I no longer have that application on my PDA and cannot test it) is seamless.

The trade-off for this stability apparently is that with this version Documents-to-Go has abandoned its proprietary format, which was more compact than the Office formats and easily converted into non-Microsoft document formats on the desktop. DataViz recommends that users of non-Microsft office suites consider staying with version 8.x. I disagree. I found 8.x to be unstable on my PDA. Any office suite can convert Microsoft standard document formats today -- they have to to survive in a world where Office is the standard, like it or not.

Another major thing I like about this version of Documents-to-Go is its graceful handling of documents on memory cards. You simply are not aware that the document is not in main memory -- they load, save, and in every way act exactly the same with no hesitations. The only indication the application suite gives that the document is on the card is an icon next to the file name on the file list. This is a tremendoius advantage given the limits to main memory space on PDAs.

This verison of the suite also handles crashes gracefully. Several times I have left a document open and subsequently had a soft reset. In previous versions this created documents that crashed my Palm every time I tried to open them. Not with Version 9.0. Not only can I reopen the file normally, the application has been able to restore the entire document, including portions I had worked on and not yet saved. It is still best practice, however, to close the document when you are finished working with it to protect against damage in resets.

Moving files between the Palm and Office on your PC is also seamless. Docs-to-Go comes with a small Windows client. Unless you have set the document not to back up, every document on your Palm is copied to the desktop when you hot sync, and to access one in Windows you select it from the list this client displays, and it opens in the corresponding Office application. Moving a document the other way simply involves selecting it off your hard drive with the Docs-to-Go client and adding it to the list of files to copy to your Palm. Since Docs-to-Go uses the same file formats as Office, no conversion is involved, so no formatting information is lost.

This is not to say that the application is perfect. One small thing that drives me crazy is that I cannot save a newly created open document to a specific subdirectory without having to close it first. When I create a new document I have to name and save it, close it, highlight it on the list of files, and open "details" to put it in the correct directory. On the other hand, once I open its details screen I can easily change its file name and do other basic things with it.

Another thing that bothers me is the lack of support for keyboard commands for simple formatting such as bold face and italic. All formatting has to be done from pull-down menus or by tapping icons on a bar at the bottom of the screen with your stylus. This is a nuisance, particularly when taking notes, and it is partly for this reason that I still keep WordSmith on my PDA and use it for my note taking. Come on, DataViz, WordSmith had keyboard command support years ago!

Word-to-Go, which is the application I most use, also lacks a couple of Word's features that I miss. One is track changes, which I use continually when editing documents for clients. The second is the ability to create and save standard type styles for body type, titles, and subheads rather than having to continually recreate them. I can, however, insert tables and view (but not create) comments, footnotes and end notes.

I have one other peculiar problem with Word-to-Go. For some reason, when I am typing into it with my Igo (formerly Think Outside) bluetooth keyboard, as opposed to writing with my stylus, and I depress the shift key to create a capital, it often starts alternativing capitals and lower case letters until I tap the shift again, resulting in LiNeS LiKe ThIs. I suspect a conflict between the keyboard driver and Documents-to-Go. I seldom use the other Docs-to-Go applications for anything besides occasionally viewing a document someone sent to me, so I do not know if this effect is peculiar to Word-to-Go or turns up in all the applications in this office suite. Although I do use the keyboard in several other applications on my Palm -- SnapperMail, ShadowPlan, WordSmith -- I have not seen this in any other Palm application. It could, of course, be peculiar to my Palm's environment. It is annoying, particularly when I am taking notes and often not watching the screen as I type, and it is one of the reasons I still use WordSmith for my note taking.

On the other hand, the spell checker is excellent, fast and accurate. Because it is easy to miss typos on the PDA screen, a good spell checker is essential.

Overall, Docs-to-Go is well thought out. DataViz has gotten the basics right with verison 9.0. I have no problem recommending it to Palm OS device owners, including Treo users, who need to create, edit or just read Microsoft Office documents away from their desk. It plus SnapperMail and a wireless connection solution can turn your Palm OS smart phone or PDA into a basic laptop substitute that can be adequate for many people.