This documents manager leaves something to be desired

by Haider Jahan Internet Marketer

In my line of work (project management), I end up handling many different types of documents a day and a lot of times I’m called on to use my iPhone in order to review them. While the preview in the native Mail app is adequate in many cases, sometimes I need a bit more to complete my work. Fortunately, there are a lot of mobile apps that assist with this very problem. One of them is called myOffice from developer Masalasoft Limited.

myOffice combines a preview reader with a documents editor to provide users with an all-in-one document management system for their iOS device. It is an open source document & spreadsheets editor, PDF maker, voice recorder, document scanner and file manager.

Some of the main features allow users to:

Create and edit Rich Text documents on your iPhone or iPad
Create and edit spreadsheets
Scan documents and convert to PDF
Create hand-written notes and draw sketches
Create voice memos
Transfer files to or from your PC or Mac wirelessly or through USB
Work on your documents even when you are not connected to the internet
Send documents as email attachments
Sync your documents with Dropbox, Google Drive, Sky Drive or FTP
View Word & Excel files (Office 2007/2008/2010)
View PowerPoint, PDF, iWork, Text, .RTF, and more
Create or Download Documents from anywhere and carry it with you wherever you go
Even though myOffice fulfills a lot of wonderful options as a document manager, it still leaves something to be desired.

Utility
As a documents reader, I found that myOffice worked just fine. It opened items easily and it didn’t make me jump through any hoops when attempting to open a file. One thing I did notice that when opening Word Documents with images you have to be careful because it doesn’t appear that the app shows them very well. I had a document loaded that had some images included and the formatting did not show up correctly. It also appears that with Word Documents and Spreadsheets, you can’t edit them – only view. I was surprised by this lack of functionality because you cancreate and edit rich text documents from within the app, but you can’t do the same with MS documents. I would love to see that functionality added in the future.

There is a lot of support for cloud-based storage such as Dropbox, Google Drive and Box and the developer made sure to keep the option available to turn those services off. I do appreciate that because I utilize Dropbox, but not the other options offered.

User Interface
When I first opened the app, I was appalled at the clunky-looking interface. it reminded me of something from the MS-DOS era of computing. The menus are succinct and it’s easy enough to navigate, but I would expect an iOS app to have a bit cleaner style than this one.

Conclusions
While the app offers a well-made document manager, it still leaves something to be desired. I’d love to see this app redesigned to fit the style of many other iOS apps.