Extra 2-28-2014: Kingsoft Office for iOS

In October of last year, I shared Kingsoft Office Free 2013,  a no-cost, powerful  Windows alternative to MS Office. Earlier this month, Kingsoft Office released an iOS compatible with for Word, PowerPoint, and Excel.

Kingsoft Office is compatible with and allows you to read and edit Word and PowerPoint documents and has the capability to view Excel files.

 

Kingsoft Office can sync with popular cloud services such as GoogleDrive, Dropbox, and others; transfer documents to other Kingsoft users over Wi-Fi; sync documents opened to your account from either your device or desktop without using any cable connection. File management allows creating folders, copy, move, delete, rename, and save as.

 

 

Kingsoft Office is free from the iTunes App Store. It requires iOS 6.0 or later and is compatible with iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch.

 

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Featured: 6-17-2013 Kingsoft Office Free

Kingsoft Office Free 2013 for Windows provides a no-cost, powerful alternative to the MS Office monolith.

Smaller and faster than most other office suites, Kingsoft Office Free 2013, includes a built-in PDF converter and automatic spell check, as well as an innovative Paragraph Adjustment tool.

Kingsoft Office Free 2013 includes the usual modules for word processing, spreadsheets, and presentations:

• Writer provides word and text processing with drag-and-drop paragraph editing, a section tab, support for .doc and .docx.
• Easily create and edit Spreadsheets, a calculator, graphing, and multiple other tools for complex data analysis, export to both .xls and .xlsx extension files.
• Presentation lets you create dynamic slides for speeches and presentations, with Flash, sound and animation effects, and artistic backgrounds.

 Watch a video introduction to Kingsoft Office

In addition to the traditional interface which resembles older versions of MS Office, Kingsoft Office Free 2013 gives you a choice of a new interface similar to the newer versions of Office. You can easily switch between the two versions according to your preference.

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Featured: 5-29-2013 Mobile PDF Apps [Tools]

 

Investintech.com offers a number of tools for working with PDF documents including three free apps for iOS and Android mobile phones and tablets.

Able2Extract Mobile is a free, lightweight, easy-to-use app for creating and converting PDF documents. Users can create PDF documents from MS Office documents and convert PDFs to Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and more.

Able2Doc Mobile converts PDFs to Word documents. This uncomplicated app promises to deliver high quality conversions on the go from your smartphone or tablet.

Sonic PDF Creator Mobile easily converts MS Office documents attached to emails or stored on your device to PDFs, right on your Android or iOS device.

Investintech.com also offers a full range of desktop tools for managing PDF documents.

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Extra: Excel Surveys on Skydrive [Data]

Microsoft  Office Web Apps, available to those with a SkyDrive account, enables you to create surveys to collect data online. This feature is similar to Google Forms.

To easily collect everyone’s info using Excel surveys in SkyDrive, log into your SkyDrive account and click “Create -> Excel survey”.

Name your survey and the survey designer opens in the Excel Web App. The survey designer lets you add questions, set the type of question (text, multiple choice, date, etc), and move them around. You can also show a default answer or set a question so that a response is required before submitting the survey.

When you're finished building your survey, click “Share Survey”. You will get a link that can be shared by email or otherwise.  Clicking on the link sends users directly to survey, they don’t have to sign in.

Creating a survey in the Excel Web App automatically generates a spreadsheet to store all of the results. Under the Insert tab, “Recommended Charts” will recommend useful visualizations of your data.

Watch a video: Using the Excel Survey Web App on SkyDrive

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COD - 9/24/2012 - CloudOn [Documents]

CloudOn is a free tablet app that lets you work directly in Microsoft Office, edit & store your information online, and share files with your colleagues.

As well as being able to format text, change fonts, and correct  typos, CloudOn enables you to track changes while editing Word documents, use pivot tables and insert formulas in Excel,  present your PowerPoint slides complete with transitions, and more.

Key features of CloudOn:

• You work in the real Microsoft Office.
• CloudOn delivers your Dropbox, Box, and Google Drive files to one place.
• Open email attachments directly in the workspace or send files to anyone, even if they don’t have a CloudOn account.
• Use the file viewer to open and view PDF, PNG, EPS, or virtually any file type.
• CloudOn automatically saves any change you make.Watch a video introduction to CloudOn

CloudOn is available for iPad from the iTunes App Store and from Google Play for Android tablets.

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COD - 9/24/2012 - CloudOn [Tablet]

CloudOn is a free tablet app that lets you work directly in Microsoft Office, edit & store your information online, and share files with your colleagues.

As well as being able to format text, change fonts, and correct  typos, CloudOn enables you to track changes while editing Word documents, use pivot tables and insert formulas in Excel,  present your PowerPoint slides complete with transitions, and more.

Key features of CloudOn:

• You work in the real Microsoft Office.
• CloudOn delivers your Dropbox, Box, and Google Drive files to one place.
• Open email attachments directly in the workspace or send files to anyone, even if they don’t have a CloudOn account.
• Use the file viewer to open and view PDF, PNG, EPS, or virtually any file type.
• CloudOn automatically saves any change you make.Watch a video introduction to CloudOn

CloudOn is available for iPad from the iTunes App Store and from Google Play for Android tablets.

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COD - 1/23/2012 - OnLive Desktop [Cloud]

OnLive Desktop from Microsoft gives you simple access to MS Office on your iPad from anywhere you have an Internet connection.

Get access to a secure, reliable, high-performance Windows 7 cloud desktop with the Office applications you use the most: Word, Excel, and PowerPoint.

Full featured document viewing and editing with OnLive Desktop:

• Create or edit Microsoft Word docs on the go using touch, an on-screen keyboard, or handwriting recognition to view, edit, and annotate.
• Build PowerPoint presentations and show them directly on your iPad or connect to an external monitor.
• Manage fully functional Excel spreadsheets. Create graphs anywhere, then drag and drop to update your Office documents.
• Open multiple documents and copy-paste between them.

You need to first create an OnLive account on the OnLive Desktop website. (If you already have an OnLive Game Service account you can login with that.) Then download the free app from the iTunes App Store.

When you open the app and sign in, you’ll see a Windows 7 desktop on your iPad. There are icons to launch the MS Office applications and a handful of other programs. You can’t add anymore applications to or permanently modify the desktop.

Once you launch an application, it looks to be pretty much identical to that application running on a PC. The popup keyboard is NOT the native iPad keyboard, but a proprietary on-screen keyboard that I found adequate, though the keys are smaller. Considering that everything is running on distant servers, the OnLive Desktop seemed sufficiently responsive on my home wi-fi connection with minimal lag.

View a video introduction to OnLive Desktop

Versions for Android, PCs, and Macs are expected soon.

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Catch of the Day - ChartGo/CreateAGraph - 4 Dec 09

The extra sumptuous catch today is a pair of free online chart creation tools, ChartGo and CreateAGraph

ChartGo is a simple tool to make chart creation fast and easy. Design custom bar charts, line charts, pie charts or area charts by using the Chart Settings, then enter your data in the Chart Data area and hit the Create Chart button.

ChartGo Home Page

Easily create charts from your Excel data using ChartGo. First, pick your general chart settings. Then, copy and paste your Excel information into the Chart Data section.

Creating a Simple Bar Chart


ChartGo also provides example charts that you can modify to your own needs and use.

CreateAGraph is another chart creation tool. It comes from The National Center for Education Statistics. Using CreateAGraph you can effortlessly make bar charts, line charts, area charts, and pie charts, as well as X-Y graphs.

CreateAGraph Home Page

CreateAGraph gives you a great deal of control in setting the design and style of the chart. You need to enter each data item manually, though, rather than copy-pasting.

Creating a Simple Bar Chart


A nice feature of CreateAGraph is the contextual help panel to the left of the workspace. Even though it's in the Kids' Zone, CreateAGraph is adequately powerful for almost anyone to use.

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Timeline Templates for Word/Excel

These convenient templates for the creation of simple timelines using MS Word and MS Excel can be downloaded from the MS Office website.

Free Alternatives to MS Office

Often students begin work on a project in class where they have access to Microsoft Word, Excel, and PowerPoint, but when they get home they are not able to continue their work because they don't have these programs on their personal computers.

Here are some free solutions that will resolve that issue. You owe it to your students to make them aware of these alternatives.

Online Options

Google Docs. Google Docs offers word processing, spreadsheet, and presentation capabilities. It integrates with most other Google applications like Blogger and Gmail. I'm writing this Blogger post using Google Docs. MS Office documents (*.doc, *.xls, *.ppt) can be imported, as well as Rich Text (*.rtf), plain text (*.txt), and OpenDocument (*.odw, *.ods) and CSV formats. Documents edited and created in Google Docs can be saved and downloaded in MS Office formats as well as HTML and PDF. The appearance of the toolbars and the layout differ a bit from the usual office application appearance, but not so much that it's a problem to be productive quickly. In my opinion, Google Docs seems to be the fastest solution.

Zoho. A full range of office-type tools come from Zoho. In addition to the usual word processor, spreadsheet, and presentation choices, there are tools for note-taking, group collaboration, databases, planner, and more. You can import the MS Office formats plus Open Document format, OpenOffice (*.sxi, *.sxw, *.sxw), CSV, and TSV. Documents can be exported in most of those formats as well as XML, HTML, and PDF. Word processor documents can be exported as MS Office 2007 documents (*.docx). It does not appear that presentations can be exported. I had some problems importing a presentation in PowerPoint format, but the same presentation imported perfectly in OpenDocument format. The toolbars and layout are very similar to the style of MS Office 2003 making the learning curve relatively soft. Zoho Writer documents can be saved and accessed offline using, ironically, Google Gears. Google Docs has yet to implement this feature.

Desktop Options OpenOffice. OpenOffice is a powerful, full-featured, open-source office productivity suite that includes word processor, spreadsheet, presentation, database, drawing, and equation tools. OpenOffice supports nearly all commonly used document formats including the OpenDocument formats and the new MS Office 2007 formats. Presentations can be exported as Flash video (*.swf) that can be viewed in most web browsers. The customizable interface is very much in the classic MS Office style making it easy to adapt to and use productively. One shortcoming is that in my use, it opens a bit slower than MS Office. OpenOffice comes in Windows, Mac, and Linux flavors. NeoOffice is a version of OpenOffice designed specifically for the Mac.

AbiWord. If you want nothing more than a word processor, AbiWord may be for you. AbiWord is an open-source word processor similar to MS Word both in function and appearance though the icons are much bigger. Most of the common word processor functions are included. It is faster to open and uses less memory than either MS Word or OpenOffice Writer. The document format support is more limited than most of the other solutions.

Hybrid Option. ThinkFree Office. The best of both worlds is what ThinkFree Office tries to deliver with both an online and a desktop suite that sync together. There are word processor, spreadsheet, and presentation tools. It has the look and feel of the MS Office suite. It can be used only as an online application or only as a desktop application. The Java-based desktop version requires a small download and installation to your hard drive. Of all the choices presented here, this is the slowest based on my experience. ThinkFree supports the following file formats: MS Word, RTF, Adobe's SVG, plain text, PDF, Excel formats, as well as XML, HTML, CSV (Comma Separated Values), and PowerPoint formats.

This is not an exhaustive list of the free alternatives to Microsoft Office. I have used all of these to some extent. Depending on your specific needs, one or more of the above solutions will probably work for you. Try them out, they're FREE!

Learning Essentials 2.0 for Microsoft Office

With Learning Essentials 2.0 for Microsoft Office, educators and students can get started, stay organized, and successfully complete high-quality work using the templates and tutorials provided. Educators can also create effective instructional resources, complete administrative tasks, and implement new teaching strategies

Download

Free Office Suite

Microsoft Office is the preeminent suite of office applications with word-processing, spreadsheet, and presentation tools as well as email. But, it's fairly expensive. The Home & Student Edition of Office 2007 will set you back about $100.

There is a totally FREE alternative. OpenOffice is a multiplatform and an open-source project. Compatible with all other major office suites including the new MSO 2007 docx formats, the product is free to download and use.

If you have been using MS Office and you're not comfortable with the new interface, the OpenOffice interface will be familiar to you. After a few minutes, you should feel right at home.The OpenOffice suite includes tools for word-processing, spreadsheets, presentations, databases, drawing, and more.

There's even a version that installs to a USB flash drive and runs from there with no need to install it on your computer.

Compatability Issue

ALERT: There is an issue with MS Office 2007 documents. Although documents created in earlier Office versions are compatible with Office 2007, the reverse is not true. Office 2007 documents saved in the default Office 2007 format are NOT backward compatible with earlier versions of MS Office.

To avoid this problem do the following: Use File - Save As ... and select a file type compatible with earlier versions of MS Office.

Please make your students aware of this issue and its resolution.

Excelets: Excel's Excellent Adventure

If you have numerical data of any variety, Microsoft Excel is a great way to plot a graph – be it a Bar Graph, Pie Chart, or Scatter Plot! Excel's next capability is to develop a mathematical model from the data and run simulations.

Techlearning > > Excelets: Excel's Excellent Adventure > November 1, 2007