Openoffice on Android devices

Im am using Openoffice for a very long time, first on Linux and later on Windows systems

Introduction

Openoffice is a open source office suite, which was developed by Oracle and later on taken over from the  Apache Foundation. In the beginning the usage was kind of rugged, but today the suite is a real alternative to Microsofts Office suite.  The suite covers drawing (Draw), presentation (Impress), word processing (Writer), table calculation (Calc) and a database (Base). The suite is available for Windows,Linux , Mac OSX and Android.

The Apps

Openoffice for Android is quite a big download with a little bit over 240 MB. I realy can’t imagine handling an office app on a smartphone but on a [post id=1146]tablet[/post] it should be usable even more with a seperate keyboard. Executing writer or calc you right away feal at home, if your’re using OpenOffice on a laptop.

This is the best adoption in terms of look and feel i’ve ever seen. And functions and menue just work like the desktop version.

And the developer didn’t forget to implement at least a virtual mouse and number-keyblock which can be activated. They are probable smaller compared to a hardware mouse but usefull.

A writer document just looks the same on a desktop pc. 😉

The dialog to open a file offers enough options for local and cloud storage:

Doing a presentation with Impress works without any problems, there could be more problems to connect a beamer to a tablet.

A total fade-out in the Android version occurs attempting to open a database with the base app. I didn’t make it to open a little database on the my tablet consisting of 2 tables and less than a 100 datasets. After choosing the database nothing happens and the app freezes. Even waiting for a longer time will not solve the problem. The only way out is to kill the app with the taskmanager.

Conclusion

Besides the problem with the base modul OpenOffice for Android is an alternative at least on a [post id=1146]tablet[/post] with a larger display and an external keyboard. With this equipment you’re able to do even longer text documents. On a smartphone i would not use calc or writer.

Using Dropbox or toher cloud services for those documents you can use a desktop pc or a laptop to give the documents the final cut, but the text is already there 😉

What do you think about the OpenOffcie suite or office apps in general on a smartphone or a tablet (Microsoft offers their Word and Excel free of charge for smartphone). Usefull tools or just for playing arround? Drop me your opinions in the comments, i’m looking forward to it.

ciao tuxoche