Today at lunch I used the Polaris Office app on the TFP to work on drafting my year goals for work.
I decided that I was going to save my work to a SD card so in Polaris Office I created a new file from the location where my SD was mounted at. After drafting two paragraphs of outline work, I switched over to the stock browser that I had running as I was trying to get on to the web. When I switched back to Polaris Office my entire document was blank.
Thinking maybe I cleared it by mistake I tried the undo command (CTRL+Z), I don't think the app recognize undo, clicked recent docs to see if I might have created a new doc by mistake nothing except existing docs I created in MS Office.
So I chocked it off as a fluke, thinking it probably could be from not ever hitting Save while I was working on it, so I rewrote the outline over again, and this time made sure to save the document to the SD card and giving it a specific name as it prompts for when you click Save for a new document.
When my lunch was over I took my tablet back to my workstation ejected the SD card from the Prime and inserted into my workstation PC. The PC detected the SD and gave me the option to browse the SD card. I browsed to the folder where I save the document working in Polaris only to find that the file was not there. The file never saved. WTF.
Now I can overlook the lack of spell check, broken bullets, but this app should be able to do a simple word processing function of creating and saving documents to removable storage.
now I certainly cannot recommend the Prime or it's bundled Polaris Office for educational productivity as with these performance results you will be screwed to try to do any writing reports on this device.
Have anyone here have similar experiences? discuss.
Use OnLive Desktop it's the best app for writing word documents
office suite pro is also pretty nice, much more options than polaris and autosave feature. It was on sale recently maybe its still.
Also there is a german software company called softmaker that is building full featured office apps, its currently in open beta status. You can download it for free.
The apps need some polish, but i think in a few months we'll have really nice offline office apps. With wifi around you can always use splashtop or onlive of course.
Google Docs
I had the same exact experience within the first few weeks with my Prime, and even worse, it was with a collaborative essay, so my pals were mad at me too! I was bummed, because Polaris was nice, but clouds5 is right, if you can afford it, OfficeSuite was by far the best I tried, and I darn tried every one out there. It's worth trying the trial right now. But my default now is the Germany Softmaker that he also mentioned. It has a great load of features that I was missing (Capitals at start of sentences, fix DOuble CAps, etc.) BUT, many of these features are hidden in the settings menu, so you have to scope them out. But get this, it also has user-defined AUTO SAVE!!! So even when I don't have Wi-fi and cannot use GoogleDocs, the auto save always has my back. I highly suggest you give it a try.
Totally agree with the op. Trying to use polaris and office suite through out my day proves to be buggy and frustrating. I gave up with them and haven't messed w trying to find one that will actually work.
Same happened to me also, hit save and it turns out polaris never saved it.
Lost a good chunk of my meeting notes.
Uninstalled it right away, been using gdocs or onlive desktop depending on my mood at the time
Sent from my Transformer Prime TF201 using Tapatalk 2
Just tried saving a word document on a usb stick from polaris, it worked fine, also plugged the usb stick in a pc and the file was there.... so not sure why it didn't work for you, although you might have selected sdcard which is actually the internal memory, i selected usbdsk1 in polaris when saving file.
edit; just tried an sd card, it also worked fine, made sure i chose "SD" to save too not sdcard.
diablosv36 said:
Just tried saving a word document on a usb stick from polaris, it worked fine, also plugged the usb stick in a pc and the file was there.... so not sure why it didn't work for you, although you might have selected sdcard which is actually the internal memory, i selected usbdsk1 in polaris when saving file.
edit; just tried an sd card, it also worked fine, made sure i chose "SD" to save too not sdcard.
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Yeah, I just did some tests and had no problem either, although I did have to use the Save As option and browse to the correct folder to make it save the document to my flash drive (/Removable/USBdisk1), and I noticed it defaults to back to /mnt/sdcard (which is actually the Prime's internal storage, oddly enough). So maybe some of those "missing" files are actually sitting there in /mnt/sdcard?
You guys should Google search Polaris bug. I love it when people judge the entire platform based on a flawed FREE app.
goodintentions said:
You guys should Google search Polaris bug. I love it when people judge the entire platform based on a flawed FREE app.
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True. I don't blame Dell because Word 2010 sucks so much. Now, I blame Dell for many, many other things, but that's not one of them.
To get back on topic, I've actually taken to using Evernote for all of my draft writing. The latest version has an excellent autosave function--a note is saved (first to a draft until intentionally saved) every time you switch focus away from the app. It's outstanding, and so far bulletproof. Then when I'm back in Windows, I copy the text into Word and format as needed (which I would do anyways; no Android office app can handle any complexity at all).
In fact, I think that's how ALL Android apps should work, at least those that create and edit documents of any kind. Lose focus, perform a save, because it's entirely possible--maybe even likely--that the app will close in the background. I'll have to check out out Office Suite Pro handles it--for when I actually need to work on a Word document, it would be my choice if it handles saves any better.
I hate to bump this thread simply because of the thread title, but I don't want to start a new thread to throw in my displeasure with Polaris Office.
Gary or Asus, et al. if you are reading this thread, pay attention.
This program is disastrous.
You should consider dropping Polaris Office from all Asus stock ROM's immediately.
I have read about the big in the past, but it has never happened to me personally so I always assumed it was an ID 10 T error.
Yesterday, just after I finished my 7 page annual self appraisal I saved my work. I opened ES file explorer to ensure it was there and saved properly before I closed out of Polaris office.
Yes, it was right there saved on the sdcard/documents folder.
I switched over Gmail to email it to myself so I could reprint it at work and gmail would not find the file.
I switched back over to Polaris Office and the UI was at file browser as if I had just started the program.
I browse back to sdcard/documents. The file is not there.
I switch over to ES File Explorer. The file is not there. Fortunately I had a saved copy on my flash drive that was about 2/3 done, so it was not an unmitigated disaster.
This is not Asus's fault by a long shot, but if Asus does not listen to feedback and continues to keep this program alive with now updates from infraware, then Asus's reputation will decline because of this.
I wonder why the Polaris update function on the prime doesn't work. On the S II its even if it returns there isn't any updates.
all office apps on android suck. i recently tried creating an excel using polaris, office suite and google drive, they are so tedious to work with. Good for reading but definitely not for drafting docs. windows and office are still the de facto
Sent from my Transformer Prime TF201 using Tapatalk 2
onlive question
tylermaciaszek said:
Use OnLive Desktop it's the best app for writing word documents
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Click to collapse
Apparently on liveis not available in my country. Do you know if i need a windows computer to synch with this app? Also is it a monthly fee service or a one time purchase? I currently use ubuntu for my laptop os. Thanks in advance
tried kingsoft office on the prime last night and love it more than polaris. It performs pretty well.
crystalstylez said:
tried kingsoft office on the prime last night and love it more than polaris. It performs pretty well.
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I actually dislike Kingsoft Office, because of the fact that it lags so much on my prime compared to Polaris Office.
Also you can not write notes in the "notes section" of power point slides, where Polaris office can.
I'm always save using "Save as" now that "Save" isn't reliable in Polaris Office.
Although...
I use polaris office for a power point editor, and it seems that sometimes the file gets corrupt after I save it. So next time I open the power point file, polaris office freezes and then closes. Try to re-open the file, then a few seconds later, repeat, closes it self.
I don't really think tablets are the the right device for writing documents (except maybe the Transformer + keyboard), but when I do have to take notes I prefer Evernote. It syncs reliably, and I can access it from the web later to cut-paste into a Word doc if that's what I need to do.
tinnymarlin said:
I don't really think tablets are the the right device for writing documents (except maybe the Transformer + keyboard)
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i agree, i did use my prime at the beginning of the year for Uni essays and such, but i found the software is nowhere near up to scratch at this stage. it is missing too many simple things to be usable, especially when doing collaborative work (and a lot of my course is group based work). its too much of a pain fighting with file formats, lost formatting data, lack of auto-save features and much more. my prime now is just used to take notes, LibreOffice on my desktop does the real work.
Related
Does anyone else encounter similar problems with Quick Office's new update which allow us to type documents?
After the update, I have been using the word document function to a good extent but the app seems to be really buggy! The application will crash out of nowhere quite frequently and sometimes when I try to save my file, it'll say that it is saving and hangs there, and it didn't save.
As much as this is a highly anticipated update, its ridiculously halfbaked and just plain annoying to use. Would like to know if I'm just an isolated case or is this a common problem,
thanks =).
I've found it to be buggy as well, and I've only written one document with it. When I saved it it removed all the formatting including line breaks. All of a sudden my nicely laid out page with headings turned into one oversized paragraph in plain text
Fortunately I had copied the whole thing to the clipboard because I wanted to test something. So I deleted all the text, pasted, hit save and it crashed.
I then closed that document and opened a new one. Pasted the text, hit save, and it removed all the formatting again!
I tried a few more times, but every time it either crashed or removed the formatting *sigh*
I uninstalled and reinstalled Quick Office after that, but haven't tested it again. If it glitches again I'm just going to consider it useless.
Hows the ubuntu word processor? Is it any better? Have anyone tried it? Think i'm going to run Chroot ubuntu just to try it out..
I've been looking for the best app to take notes during class. It feels crazy that there's no Auto-Save in quick office.
One bug I've found to make it crash, when using the HP Bluetooth slim keyboard (if relevant) is, if I highlight a word, and type over it, it crashes. I lost like half my notes doing this. Now I just hit save every minute or two... and wish there was a keyboard (control s?) shortcut to do that.
I've also been trying Typewriter Beta... I really just want a Notepad esque text editor.. don't care about formatting really.
Fwiw, tapnote is the current winner. Least buggy of the ones I've tried.
. . NS4G . . CM7 . .
I found it to be generally useless as well. I just decided to use google docs (through the browser) for all of my notes. May try the office 2010 web suite as well.
Edit: Gdocs is working fantastically BTW, the only reason that I am considering using office is curiosity. Additionally, I have an app on my phone called camscanner so that if there are any handwritten notes, I can scan them with my phone (works surprisingly well), and share to Gdocs, and tie them to the typed notes I have taken.
I had the same issue. I tried to use it last week to take notes at a conference and it would lock up quite frequently saving to local storage. It happened often enough that I switched over to the built-in notepad app. I think I'm going to stick with that or perhaps even the email client for now with the hope/anticipation that when Android is on this puppy, I'll have significantly more options.
Basically I intend to buy this as a primary note taking device for lecture for this coming semester and beyond and I have some questions.
Firstly what is the best tablet office apps that work well with the hardware keyboard? I had a play with Polaris in a shop on the original Transformer but I'm just wondering if there is better out there.
It'd be nice if there was like an automatic save every 30 seconds/minute or similar feature.
Also it'd be VERY useful if there was an app that allowed me to open two files at once. So I could, say, have an editable .doc open on one side of the screen and a .ppt on the other...
Secondly how is the physical keyboard? Like I said I played with the Transformer recently and the keyboard seemed pretty nice. A little bit small but something I could get used to/fast on.
Might add more if I think of them.
Thanks, G.
Don't have keyboard so can't speak to that but for office apps I like Google docs and smart office
smart office is a lot better and is very good sure you will like it
tylermaciaszek said:
Don't have keyboard so can't speak to that but for office apps I like Google docs and smart office
smart office is a lot better and is very good sure you will like it
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I nabbed the Smart Office APK in the Getjar $0 sale and it seems decent on my phone, does it have a tablet interface?
See I would love to use Google Docs but I heard it requires internet to work and due to the way my university's WiFi security is I'll only be able to use internet with apps that support proxy routing (as Android doesn't have this built in to the OS).
Yes the tablet interface is very nice I like it a lot
tylermaciaszek said:
Yes the tablet interface is very nice I like it a lot
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks for the screenshots!
Is it possible to have the edit option on screen always/in easy use?
I'll be keen to change formatting to underline/bold/italics etc quite often.
Also, how quickly can one jump in and out of list options?
EDIT: also how quickly can one "tab" in an indent and then get back out of it?
I would say for what you want this may not be for you
edit bar does not stay open but jumping into options is just a press of button
For you, you may want documents to go or office suite 5 I read good reviews of those
tylermaciaszek said:
I would say for what you want this may not be for you
edit bar does not stay open but jumping into options is just a press of button
For you, you may want documents to go or office suite 5 I read good reviews of those
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks.
Anyone else have input? Specific to my needs if possible
I had an original transformer, just got my prime yesterday.
I used my tf last two semesters for all my classes.
I usually use the pre-loaded supernote app to take notes. It takes kb input and you can draw as well (useful for science classes).
my teachers give us power point lecture slides and for that the polaris office is pretty good, I haven't tried the other office apps, but polaris should do most of what you throw at it.
Some of my teachers give pdf lecture notes, I use repligo reader to annotate on pdf.
Sent from my Galaxy S2
Just gonna bump this in the hope that someone can direct me to something that might help me more.
This PDF annotation software will help as I need to deal with a lot of case law etc.
I'm guessing that there is nothing out there currently that supports having two documents open at once side by side as I said above?
Main requirement would be snappy formatting (Bold/Underline/Italic), can this be done in Polaris with CTRL+B/U/I?.
Also the list thing, I know it's not automatic when tabbing like in Word but an easy/quick to use button is fine.
G8D said:
Just gonna bump this in the hope that someone can direct me to something that might help me more.
This PDF annotation software will help as I need to deal with a lot of case law etc.
I'm guessing that there is nothing out there currently that supports having two documents open at once side by side as I said above?
Main requirement would be snappy formatting (Bold/Underline/Italic), can this be done in Polaris with CTRL+B/U/I?.
Also the list thing, I know it's not automatic when tabbing like in Word but an easy/quick to use button is fine.
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Click to collapse
no, there is currently no way of running two apps at the same time, it's a limitation of all mobile based OS's, everything essentially runs in full screen mode.
the CTRL commands should work fine, i'm pretty sure i used them for various things on my tf101.
Are any of these aforementioned office suit apps compatible with odt (OpenOffice format)?
adiliyo said:
no, there is currently no way of running two apps at the same time, it's a limitation of all mobile based OS's, everything essentially runs in full screen mode.
the CTRL commands should work fine, i'm pretty sure i used them for various things on my tf101.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
It's not about running two apps at once. It's about one app having two files open at once.
Say a word document on the left and then a powerpoint on the right.
I doubted it'd be available. Maybe it'll come.
I've been using Office Suite Pro 5 on my Prime for a while, and I really like it. It runs smooth, it reads pretty much all types of Office files, and it has Dropbox/Google Docs/Box support as well. It is on sale on the Market for $3, down from $10-15 normally.
Play link:
https://play.google.com/store/apps/...ditor.office_registered&feature=search_result
I can't buy it, because Google don't want my credit card i don't know why
Was just going to post this. Have been messing around with the trail version and it seems like a very good app. All keyboard shortcuts seems to work, and works with .docx and .xlsx.
Anyone know for excel if there is a way to drag the cells you want for a function? Like type in "=sum( " then be able to drag the cells you want?
Since you guys have been using this, can it autosave? After losing countless documents at this point, I cannot use my TP until there is a program that can.
Next, if I press enter on the keyboard in excel, will it actually enter the data in the cell like on a desktop, or will it return a line inside the cell like Polaris?
Lastly, how does the folder structure work and is it easy to organize files how I want them?
rynowhi said:
Since you guys have been using this, can it autosave? After losing countless documents at this point, I cannot use my TP until there is a program that can.
Next, if I press enter on the keyboard in excel, will it actually enter the data in the cell like on a desktop, or will it return a line inside the cell like Polaris?
Lastly, how does the folder structure work and is it easy to organize files how I want them?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
The autosave function is there, but a little different than others. It doesn't actually save it automatically, but if the app crashes or your phone dies etc. it keeps "recovery data". Then when you open that file the next time it will say something like: "there is recovery data for this document, would you like to recover it?"
as for the excel thing I don't use excel so can't tell you about that.
And the folder structure is great in my opinion. I have a folder called "documents" that is assigned to a tab in office suite called My documents. In that folder I have folders for my subjects in school(I'm a student) which keeps it nicely organized and I'm no more than 2 taps from any of my documents.
This is probably the best all around office program out there, but I would recommend having a few others for a few other things. Only things I don't like is that there is no export to pdf( I use Smart Office for that) and this is a really individual thing but I wish that ctrl "+/-" did sub/super script instead of zoming in/out which is easily done with two fingers anyways. Also tables don't really work...(I use polaris office to add those)
rynowhi said:
Next, if I press enter on the keyboard in excel, will it actually enter the data in the cell like on a desktop, or will it return a line inside the cell like Polaris?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Enter in excel will enter data to that cell and bring you to the cell below it.
Sent from my GT-I9100 using xda premium
If you have the keyboard dock, you can always do a quick CTRL-S regularly to save your document. There is also a convenient Save button on the screen that you can tap regularly as well. This may not be as good as autosave, but at least they make it easy to save your documents.
Missed It
Dang I wish I would have seen this sooner. The price is back up to 14.95. You snooze you loose I guess
fasthair
I love the latest update for the word processor. Page View always set QuickOffice Pro HD apart from the rest for me. It was definitely a steal at $3. The advantage this has is the formatting tools always being present on the page. Makes everything so much easier.
Sent from my SGH-I897 using xda premium
Hello everyone. I am new to the forum. I tried posting this under the Asus transformer section, but due to me having less that enough posts it said I must post in general.
So I tried looking on the forum for exactly what I wanted and could not find it. I want an app that will let me edit any office or PDF file and let me to do it with a stylus writing freehand. I don't want to merely edit and just write in text, or highlight I want to be able to use my stylus and actually circle a word in power point, or be able to write notes freehand with the stylus on the side of the PPT. I do notice that Adobe let's me kind of do it with it's reader, but it just feels really laggy for me. If there is an APP available for me to try I don't mind if I even have to purchase it due to it being used for school.
Please give me your input! and thank you for letting me be apart of your community!
Polaris Office which is included free with your Transformer Prime let's you create and edit Word, Excel and Power Point files. I don't know about scribble-annotating them since I don't believe that the Microsoft Office Suite knows how to display that kind of notation. Also for any meaningful editing you will need the onscreen keyboard or keyboard dock.
As for editing PDF files, I don't know of any apps off the top of my head that will do what you ask. You might try searching the Play Store.
almightywhacko said:
Polaris Office which is included free with your Transformer Prime let's you create and edit Word, Excel and Power Point files. I don't know about scribble-annotating them since I don't believe that the Microsoft Office Suite knows how to display that kind of notation. Also for any meaningful editing you will need the onscreen keyboard or keyboard dock.
As for editing PDF files, I don't know of any apps off the top of my head that will do what you ask. You might try searching the Play Store.
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Yeah I tried Polaris office...and I really want to do free hand scribble editing. PDF editing I am actually ok with Adobe as it lets me do what I want, but I really need something else for my office programs, because I am going to use this for school in lecture. I do have the keyboard as well, but I want to be as light as possible with just the tablet and stylus in hand.
I use ezPDF Reader Pro for PDF annotations for notes from my professors at school. I think it was $2.99 in the play store. It works great.
I havent found a good office app. Polaris Office, though it came on the prime free, is buggy and is limited on formatting. It works great for basic docs. You can only save in .doc format and docs i have created sometimes look way different when opened on a computer. But it does work.
I am still looking for the best app for an Office suite on android. Although SoftMaker Office mobile is coming along great. It is in beta still.
Find it at the following:
www.softmaker.net/down/TestMaker.apk for word
www.softmaker.net/down/PlanMaker.apk for excel
www.softmaker.net/down/Presentations.apk for powerpoint
Have you tried using the dedicated writing programs for use with the stylus already (just to see if you can even tolerate writing with the Prime)? Even with the apps to improve the TFP's response to stylus input they're still not something that's even remotely efficient to take notes with. If you just want to draw arrows or circle things or make quick (but relatively large) drawings, it's okay.
I generally annotated my pdfs using Repligo reader. I could do light annotations with the stylus and enter comments in stickies. You could easily convert powerpoints into pdfs and comment on them that way.
As far as I know there isn't any Office app that supports inking yet, which isn't that odd since most suites can't even do basic tasks like display charts properly in Excel and Powerpoint.
IMHO, Android is still pretty abysmal when it comes to doing this sort of thing.
The official adobe reader app lets you scribble annotate straight out of the box. I use it regularly
Office Pro 6
I don't know if it will solve your issues, but Office Pro 6 is on sale at the Amazon App store for $.99. It's normally $15.
http://www.amazon.com/Mobile-Systems-Inc-OfficeSuite-Professional/dp/B0051UP5NQ/ref=mas_6pack_productivity_Suite_link?pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_s=center-5&pf_rd_r=054VF38RVZ32RE41XXGQ&pf_rd_t=101&pf_rd_p=1371696742&pf_rd_i=2350149011
I think it's better than Polaris, especially on spreadsheets.
BTW first off let me thank all of you for your responses! I did know about adobe having its native edit and I had stated above I was fine with that . Although on the other hand, the power point is the BIGGEST one I have an issue with. Although punitenshu I like your idea the most which is just to convert it over to PDF...I just didn't want to do that every time I received a new lecture.....Thank you everyone you have been such a big help!
Repligo Reader hands down. If you really fussy about accuracy, use it in conjunction with touchscreen tuner.
Hi all, don't know if this is a question or just a statement, leaning towards the latter:
Has anyone noticed that this device may come with a reader built in? I saw that you could launch with Adobe Reader, but when clicking around in Dropbox, suddenly I was able to use the QuickOffice Pro HD app to view things. I understand why this device would need this app, but when looking in Google Play, it doesn't seem to show up as purchased (and it's kind of confirmed in device with the fact that you cannot launch the app independently).
Another thought: I've only tested with PDFs launched from dropbox, that may be the reason. Maybe this is another reason to use dropbox? Unsure, but very curious feature, may affect how people would treat device (especially since I cannot zoom in and out of standard Adobe Reader, which is driving me nuts).
Back to studying for midterm in 8 hours, any thoughts? :fingers-crossed:
I also noticed this when using Google drive. I opened a .doc file and it used quick office to display the file (in read only mode). As you, I don't have quick office installed.
hefferman said:
I also noticed this when using Google drive. I opened a .doc file and it used quick office to display the file (in read only mode). As you, I don't have quick office installed.
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Not that this helps much but I just opened a file n dropbox and they gave me the choice of what program to use and quick office was on the list and it worked great. I didn't download it either.
Google bought QuickOffice and probably working to implement it fully into the Android maybe. That is interesting it doesn't show up anywhere else. I love using Quick office HD in my Infinity and is my go to productivity software.
QuckOffice was acquired by Google a while back....
http://www.quickoffice.com/google_acquires_quickoffice/
So it may be a part of the OS install, it doesn't show in the app drawer but it shows under apps/all in the system menu.
This is great news. Work is buying me an N10 so I will need something that can edit Office documents. I was considering buying Quickoffice.
I noticed this when I tried to backup QuickOffice Pro in Titanium Backup.