Share slides and docs via the cloud

There are more clouds than ever to share work through, thanks to the latest version of Quickoffice Connect Mobile Suite. In addition to Google, Dropbox, box.net, and Mobile Me’s iDisk and Web interface, the suite’s been integrated with two additional mobile cloud storage providers, Huddle and SugarSync. And what’s on the way in a new version is support for social publishing partners Slideshare, Scribd and .docstoc.

We’ve used Quickoffice for about six months here as a regular iPad tool. It’s got built-in accommodations for Microsoft’s Office tools, so you can save and trade and edit files for things like Word and Excel. Last year they added Powerpoint support, and at year’s end the Suite gained the ability to edit Powerpoint slides. When I think of the trips where slide edits might have made a difference, if only the right person in the company could get to them, this editing is one of the best arguments for pushing your office work, via these clouds, to the iPad.You will want to be careful of how big that slide set gets, because many wi-fi connections are a lot slower up-bound than downloading. I found that editing was pretty straightforward once I got the hang of double-tapping to select an element in a slide. Powerpoint edits include inserting graphics from your iPad or your shared storage location.

Quickoffice has been polishing the fundamentals of its app for a long time, in iPad years anyway. We plugged in a few external keyboards (Apple’s keyboard dock, the Kensington Bluetooth case and keypad) and were delighted to find Word’s option-arrow navigation available to us. That’s important because selecting a section of text to edit isn’t very intuitive in some iPad writing tools. In Quickoffice you just hold the shift key and use the arrows to pluck whatever text you need.

In Excel spreadsheets — which Quickoffice is careful to call Spreadsheet 2003 or 2007 Format — you have number formatting, bold and italics, row and column insertions, plus a raft of functions already at hand.

Most importantly for any tool that exchanges office documents between iPad and the desktops, the changes arrive intact when opened in the classic Microsoft documents. The work I did for use back at the office with Quickoffice didn’t need the full bore of Office desktop app features. Bare bones is a good description of what kind of Powerpoint slide you can create with Quickoffice. But for the mobile worker who’s armed with a featherlight iPad, Quickoffice hits heavy enough with the right features to make a mark on a to-do list.

Quickoffice Connect is $14.99 out of the App Store. There’s a free podcast with video, 18 minutes’ worth, to show you the app’s paces in iTunes, too.

From the Macintosh Business Unit, Apple desktop customers can get the first 30-day-free trials for Office 2011 starting this week.

Today Microsoft has made a free 30-day Office for Mac 2011 trial available at www.officeformac.com/trial.

This week also marks the Macworld Expo in San Francisco. This year the Office for Mac team has a show special tied to the event. If you attend the expo check out your badge for details and see the Office for Mac blog for more information and don’t forget to follow us on Facebook and Twitter for more Macworld goodness throughout the week.

From its Windows unit, CNET reports on a comparison between Windows 7 products and the iPad in the enterprise IT world, with some predictable results. I wince a bit when I see the Microsoft slide boasting that Windows 7 has support for “the largest breath of printing software” when it means “breadth.” Not a word breathed about Windows Tablets out there working in businesses.

Microsoft is big enough to be both kinds of creature in the Apple world: adversary and ally. Pick your posture while evaluating products.

Outlook's message gathering in Conversations

Conversations, calendaring: These are some of the new core features that Microsoft brings to the Mac community in late October with the Business Edition of Office for Mac 2011. These features show up in Outlook for the Mac, a version of the popular Windows mail client that’s making its debut on Apple products.

Outlook is included in two versions of the Office for Mac release: a Home and Business Edition priced at $199 and an Academic release at $99. Outlook has a mixed reputation among the Windows community, in part because it was wired into the PC environments so closely that hackers exploited its integration.

Microsoft doesn’t expect that to be an issue with Outlook for the Mac; the computer’s environment doesn’t offer the same sort of back doors for malware to muck up your business files. The Business Edition also includes familiar apps reworked for improved productivity: Word, Excel, PowerPoint and even Messenger. Buying a copy of Office 2008 until November 30 will earn you a free upgrade to the new release.

A promo video on Microsoft’s Office 2011 web page includes a comment from developer Amy Wang that they’ve “done UI (user interface) touch-ups that make these programs feel a lot more Mac-like.” Microsoft’s Macintosh Business Unit has been a real earner for the company that hovers right around Apple in Fortune 500 revenues. It’s easy to understand why these programs have a dedicated team at the company responsible for the widest choice for businesses, Windows.

The table below explains the pricing differences, but it’s Outlook that generates the $80 lift in the Business Edition.

Conversation takes all messages with the same topic and puts them together, a feature that you might notice if you click on a message in Apple’s Mail. But the Office method looks more intuitive and efficient, two advantages Microsoft is pushing with this release. There’s also integration with the Mac’s Spotlight searching, so you might be able to find a message faster than in Apple’s Mail. Spotlight, after all, has a dozen ways to dice up a search, while Mail’s only got a half-dozen.

Microsoft has details on how to qualify for a free 2008 to 2011 upgrade, as well as the new online upgrade functionality from the $119 entry-level Home and Student Edition, at the Officeformac.com web site.

The iPad does a bunch of things, but none of them exceptionally well. You can’t read it in full daylight, and its battery life is much shorter than Kindle’s. With no true built-in keyboard or ability to multitask, it’s not a substitute for a laptop — and unlike my iPhone, it won’t fit in a pocket, take pictures, or make calls. Unless you need it for one of its speciality uses, it doesn’t replace anything you already have; it’s just one more thing to carry.

Pages, from Apple's video demo

It appears McArdle is among the unwashed masses of journalists who didn’t enjoy a few minutes with the real product before writing her April piece on Kindle vs. iPad. I’ve owned the former for a year and expect the latter within the week. But it’s possible that McArdle will want to revise her gradecard about “doing nothing exceptionally well.” All she needs to motivate her corrections are the Apple videos online this week showing off Mail and Pages, the iPad’s e-mail and writing tools. Yes, this might be something else to carry — something more useful to a business than a copy of The Atlantic. Aside from a smartphone like the 3GS iPhone, I can’t see what else she would need to tote. And at just 24 ounces, this new Apple tool is likely to carry a heft to make the 6-ounces of April’s Atlantic seem like dead weight.

When my smart business tool arrives by this weekend, I’ll spend awhile loading it up with inexpensive tools like Pages and Numbers, the Apple apps sold for $9.95 each at the iTunes store. I won’t have to buy Mail (included), and since the app uses the same information as my Mail on my iMac, the transfer is likely to be smooth. (Look for our report next week.) There will be a $2.99 purchase of Infinote to organize projects and communication, and maybe even a copy of OmniGraffle, although I use the same program on my Mac and the Omni Group wants $50 for its iPad version. I already own QuickOffice, providing me with iPhone word processing and spreadsheet tools that swap files back and forth to the Mac, or up into a smart online storage spot like DropBox. QuickOffice is already in my iPad toolbox, even though the device is still making its way through UPS delivery. See, it’s an iPhone app, so it runs on the iPad at no extra charge.

And if McArdle is lucky, I my find some time to read The Atlantic’s Web site articles in Safari on the iPad. But that slapdash research doesn’t merit the dollar-an-ounce price of the printed mag. For 11 years I subscribed to the print edition. Its business savvy has fallen way behind in the 150-year-old pub, a sorry state of affairs for an enterprise that’s trying to stay afloat in the media sector. If they’re lucky, they might have something out next year that supplies sharper reporting on business tools along with the other things the mag offers. As of this issue, its take is far from exceptional.

Excel poses for its close-up at Macworld

Microsoft has released the 11.5.7 update to its Office suite, aimed at the users of Office 2004. You should download this update to protect your Mac from being hacked by compromised Word, Excel or PowerPoint files. Even the Mac has security flaws, but more common are the hacker entry points through things like Office or Adobe’s Flash. (If you aren’t up to date on the Microsoft security releases, 11.5.7 won’t load up. You can check your status in the Updater Logs folder inside your Microsoft Office 2004 folder. Microsoft also has prior updates available for download, to catch you up.)

Microsoft was one of the few big-name vendors at this year’s Macworld Expo, but it didn’t have new software to roll out this month in conjunction with its show appearance. The Redmond Giant was talking up the forthcoming release of Microsoft Outlook for the Mac. (Talking only, since no demos were presented at the Microsoft booth.) Outlook will be a replacement for Entourage, which still has advocates within the Mac expert community. One advantage of Entourage, noted in a Macworld panel, is its smooth interface with Microsoft Exchange servers, operated at countless companies who handle their own e-mail. Outlook will be inside the Office 2011 suite, and it’s not yet clear if it will be sold standalone. Entourage never was.

Those differences between Entourage and Outlook might have protected the Mac from some Microsoft-based exploits, however. Outlook has such a weak security reputation that it’s called Lookout by the PC community — at least those who’ve been infected by a mail message that wormed its way into the Windows environment on office PCs. Microsoft has closed these holes repeatedly on the PCs, but the tight link between Explorer and Windows remains a point of attack. No such link exists on the Macs.

It appears that Apple isn’t the only vendor who’s chosen an ill-advised name for a recent product though. (iPad will need some extra oomph to sell.) Microsoft will call its new generation of mail program Outlook, “which you’d think was one of the more bankrupt names” in the computer world, according to one panelist on the e-mail client showdown session at Macworld 2010. It’s important to Mac-PC offices that the two products exchange messages easily, to enable switchers as well as interoffice mail using the .PST message format.