iPAD EXPLORATIONS

Mobilizing Microsoft Word, Excel and PowerPoint on iPad

By Anita Slack, Information Services Librarian

Almost like an answer to our technological prayers, the iPad CloudOn app appeared. This free app, available through the App Store, allows users to take their Word, Excel and PowerPoint documents wherever they go. When used in combination with the free Dropbox app, CloudOn offers users a convenient mobile solution. With CloudOn, users can create new presentations, spreadsheets and text documents as well as edit existing documents. Dropbox, similar to Google Docs, is an application that saves documents and allows them to be accessed anywhere with only an internet connection. Users can upload any of their Microsoft documents from any computer into Dropbox to be accessed and edited with CloudOn. Once finished creating and editing documents using CloudOn, users simply save them in Dropbox. Gone are the days of accessing work only from your office computer and carrying around removable media in order to work from home—or anywhere else. Having used these apps together for the past few months, I have not experienced any technical difficulties with them—just seamless mobile work solutions.