Smart Office 2 is a Microsoft Office document manager for your iOS device. It supports all major Microsoft Office document formats since 1997, including the typical doc, docx, xls, xlsx, ppt, and pptx formats. Smart Office 2 doesn’t only allow you to view Office documents like many document manager apps accomplish, but you can also create and edit them. The app has a unique contextual interface for creating/editing documents that includes many notable Office editing features such as the ability to choose fonts, colors, formatting, and alignment. It also conveniently allows you to add images to your documents. Smart Office 2 is indeed “smart” for adding cloud storage compatibility with Dropbox and Google Docs, so the user can both input documents from your storage accounts and save to them as well. It is also worth noting that Smart Office 2 comes with compatibility to print to most wireless printers directly from the app. A full list of compatible printer companies is listed on its iTunes app page.
I came away mighty impressed with Smart Office 2, given that many apps try to create a medium for creating/editing Microsoft Office documents, but often come up short in some area of critical importance. The user interface is quite different than what I have seen before, but seems to work quite well when creating/editing documents. The app allows you to use the entire screen for writing and only bring up editing toolbars (by tapping at the top) when you need them. The developers also coded a unique way to zoom in on documents using two vertical arrows, which I found quite useful. The app contains pretty much every editing feature I would normally look for when creating an Office document, including the ever important ‘undo’ button, which always comes in handy. Smart Office 2 also doubles as viewer for PDFs, images, and vector diagrams, so it isn’t purely just a Microsoft document viewer either.
Price: $9.99 (Free from 9/8 – 9/10)
Requires: iPhone/iPod Touch/iPad; iOS 4.3 and up
Download size: 16.7 MB