Or maybe you have both a MacBook and an iPad, but you’re going on a trip where you would rather leave your MacBook at home. Maybe you don’t own a MacBook and the iPad is your only option. They include word processing (Pages), spreadsheet (Numbers) and presentation (Keynote) applications.Here’s the setup: You’re ready to use your iPad as your sole mobile device. Not to be left out, Apple includes a series of powerful Microsoft Office alternative tools with every new Mac. The combination of Gmail, Google Docs, Google Meet, Google Chat, Google Sheets, Google Slides, and Google Forms come together around online storage solution Google Drive as a top-notch productivity offering.Mac. The best Microsoft Office alternative for businesses is Google Workspace (formerly G suite).Pages has been around for a long time, slightly longer than Docs, and it has gone through several redesigns over the years, including a switch to a I’ve been in this situation before — but it’s time for me to re-evaluate. OpenOffice happens to be quite similar from the ever so famous MS Office.Apple’s alternative to Microsoft Word and Google Docs is designed to serve as the go-to word processor on macOS, iOS, and iPadOS. It can be downloaded easily from OpenOffice.org and consists of 6 packages that are both easy to extract, install and use. OpenOffice is probably the best downloadable word processor of 2019, definitely one of the best in my opinion.
Word Processing Alternative Series Of PowerfulIt’s done well in my “pre-flight tests.” The main downside is that, when I don’t need the keyboard, the case gets in the way and I often wind up removing the iPad from it. I’m taking along an external keyboard: a ZAGGfolio iPad case. I won’t be depending on the iPad’s virtual keyboard. First, it only works when you have an Internet connection and a relatively quiet environment (and one not too public you don’t want your talk to disturb others nearby). However, it is far from a substitute for typing. It’s amazingly accurate, and I do intend to use it. Even with an external keyboard, I can access it when desired (the ZAGG has a button to bring up the virtual keyboard). And the setup is impractical in numerous situations, such as when I want to type with the iPad on my lap.I have a third-generation iPad, which means I can use iOS 5’s dictation feature — via the microphone key on the virtual keyboard. I don’t want the hassle of three separate components to carry around and set up. But I had never decided which one(s) would be my main go-to choices. I had fiddled with each one at one time or another. Still, it’s great for casual initial entry of text.My next decision was the more difficult one: Which word/text processing app(s) would I mainly use? The problem was that I had acquired over two dozen text processing apps since getting my first iPad. Finally, when you get to the point of editing and revising already entered text, dictation is almost useless. But several iOS apps do that. Of course, it handles all the basic text formatting options (bold, italics, font sizes, paragraph alignments, etc). It’s about as close to a Mac-like page-layout program as currently exists for the iPad. Actually, it’s more than a word-processor. Apple’s Pages is a great iOS word processor. Here are the results:Pages. While this can work well on a Mac, where you have various options for retrieving a prior version of a document, it is not well suited to the iPad. And it’s all yours for the bargain price of $9.99.However, these advantages may be offset by Pages’ downsides, primarily involving how poorly it handles saving and sharing files.First, Pages automatically saves a document as you type. You can even create simple spreadsheet-like tables and charts (without having to purchase Apple’s separate Numbers app!). You can insert graphic shapes, images or photos — and resize them or move them about the page. It can format for outlines, lists and multiple columns. I use Dropbox as my main storage location for “active” documents. This is a serious, almost deal-breaking, limitation for me. Although you can undo multiple steps, this is still not an ideal solution.Second, Pages has no built-in support for Dropbox. And this will work even better when OS X Mountain Lion comes out, as you should be able to access files in iCloud directly via Page’s Open and Save dialogs.However, the main problem, as I have covered in painful detail elsewhere, is that Pages for iOS and Pages for Mac use different file formats. True, you can now save Pages documents to iCloud, bypassing the clunky iTunes method. There are some third-party work-arounds for using Dropbox with Pages (such as DropDAV), but they are not a substitute for good integrated built-in support.More generally, sharing Pages documents between iOS devices and a Mac remains a mess. The main alternatives to Pages, assuming you want an app with a similar level of capabilities, are the “Office” apps. In the end, I rarely use Pages.Office apps. As such, the downsides of Pages weigh more heavily. In my case, my typical word processing needs are more mundane. This eliminates true syncing between Macs and iPads.If Pages’ wide range of features is essential to you, it will be at or near the top of your text app list. You have to instead first import the document to the Mac format. Quickoffice, Office² and Documents to Go. This is not a requirement for me I am a format agnostic when it comes to typing on the iPad.I own three different Office apps. These apps save documents in Office formats by default. However, I’m only considering word processing here. They typically combine word processing, spreadsheet and presentation software into one app. For my taste, it offers the most attractive and easily-accessible interface. In more recent testing, I wound up liking Quickoffice the best. Back in 2010, I had a slight preference for Documents to Go. It may seem that my work is now done. Again, this is of little consequence to me, given my limited demands from a word processor.Plain-text apps. Saved documents are immediately available on my iPhone and my Macs (where they can be opened in apps such as Word or TextEdit).Unlike Pages, none of the apps can create tables or charts in a word processing document. You can open and save documents directly from/to Dropbox from within each app there’s no need to go to the Dropbox app at any point. However, if you want to add images to your text documents, Office² is the only one of the three that offers this option.All three apps work spectacularly well with Dropbox (although I again had a preference for Quickoffice’s approach). ![]() Most critically, no iOS app (as far as I know) offers the equivalent of TextEdit’s “Add Link” command for embedding URLs. Many iOS apps can’t even view such files. I can’t create a file in TextEdit and later edit it on my iPad. For example, to convert text to italics, you surround the text with * characters (i.e., *italics*). However, this doesn’t work well for me I wind up concentrating more on HTML syntax than my writing.This led me to Markdown, a “text-to-HTML conversion tool…that allows you to write using an easy-to-read, easy-to-write plain text format.” Via Markdown, you can accomplish most web formatting without needing to know or use any HTML. A work-around is to write my articles in HTML. Otherwise, I (or someone else) winds up wasting a lot of time creating the embedded links after the text is uploaded. I’d like to be able to upload my text to the server software and have it immediately ready to post. Kindergarten download free for androidIn either case, the end result should be text that appears properly formatted in a web browser. This latter feature is a required final step if your server software is not compatible with Markdown (most are not). Such apps typically allow you to preview the text as it will appear in a web browser — as well as convert the Markdown text to HTML. While all of these apps link to Dropbox, you can still create and save new files even when offline.If you don’t need Markdown, you can still use these apps as basic plain-text word processors. They are just as they claim to be: plain-text editors. Again, these apps have no ability to do any direct formatting, not even italics or bold text. I compared four of them: Elements, iA Writer, Nocs, and Write 2. In the end, I gave the nod to Elements. It was difficult to come up with a clear winner.
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