An excellent Office suite is available for both iOS/iPadOS and Android in the form of Collabora Office. Completely free and based on LibreOffice. These tips may help you discover useful features that you didn’t know existed.
If you’re looking for a really useful and comprehensive version of Office, especially for your tablet, then Collabora Office is very interesting. This app contains a word processor, spreadsheet and presentation program. Everything is based on LibreOffice, with a tablet-optimized user interface.
However, we advise you to attach a mouse and keyboard to your device for serious use, especially if you are going to type longer pieces of text.
For tablet and smartphone
Last year we already wrote about Collabora Office, which has now outgrown the teething problems and is very useful. In this example we focus on the iPad version, but under Android it all works almost the same. And yes: you can also use the whole thing on a smartphone, but its small screen makes serious work a bit impractical of course.
It is useful, for example, that you make a presentation on your tablet and take it with you on your smartphone. It saves carrying around another device and running the presentation from the phone is no problem. Provided you don’t forget the HDMI or VGA dongle to connect your device to a beamer or large-screen TV.
Texts, spreadsheets and presentations
The central arrivals hall of Collabora Office on the iPad is actually the files app from iPadOS. With the only difference that there is now a shortcut in the form of New document is present. Tap or click this and choose the type of file you want to create: Text document† worksheet or Presentation† If you want to start the word processor, choose Text document.
To switch to edit mode, tap the pin at the bottom right of the screen. Suddenly you see a ribbon with an extensive arsenal of buttons and tools: a very extensive word processor. It certainly has more to offer than, for example, the fairly limited Word/Office app from Microsoft!
Often not all buttons of that ribbon are visible. You can slide the whole thing back and forth so that more content appears. This can be clearly seen, for example, on the ‘tab’ Start, you can swipe that a bit to the right. You can tell there’s more to see from the faint gray partition on the far right (or left, if you’ve moved all the way to the right).
Lots of fine-tune options
With many options, either a panel appears on the right or a complete floating window. This means that the relevant option can be adjusted as desired. For example, tap Insert and then the button Diagram† A standard sample chart is inserted, but you’re not (of course) tied to that.
In the panel on the right, click on Edit diagram† Choose from one of the available chart types, which you can then also add a nice 3D effect to. Plenty of options! To adjust the sample values, double-tap the inserted chart (if you’ve already exited edit mode), then long-press the legend block (Row 1…4 in the standard example). In the context menu that opens, tap Data table†
With the row of buttons in the now opened window you can add or remove rows and columns, plus edit the existing names and values. To exit edit mode, tap after edit Close† Then tap somewhere in the running text of your document and you’ll continue working.
Incidentally, we use the word ‘tick’ with some emphasis here. Yes: Collabora Office also works with the mouse. But as you often see with iPad apps, the developers unfortunately take this much less into account. In the case of this app, the standard operating method of the iPad – your finger – often works a bit more practical.
Hopefully that will change in the future, because full mouse functionality is obviously very useful in an Office package.
Conformity of the parts
The other parts of the Office package look quite similar in terms of ribbon to those of the word processor. Of course there are differences regarding matters that are very specifically intended for that particular part. For example, if we look at the spreadsheet, you will see under the tab Insert just like in the word processor the option to add shapes. That comes in handy on a regular basis.
Vector drawings are especially useful in the presentation module. And if we are talking about that presentation package, we see that in it all possible components for assembling a modern and dynamic presentation are available. For example, parts on a slide can be animated and more.
File formats
By default, Collabora Office saves all documents in the nice universal Open Document file format. Actually, every self-respecting modern Office suite can handle that. Importing into Microsoft Office should not cause any problems either. Optionally you can – under File – choose from other file formats. Such as, for example, the native Microsoft Office file formats.
You should also bear in mind that small differences sometimes occur. This also applies if you import an MS Office document. That’s because Microsoft never made its own formats open. So everything about non-Microsoft Office counterparts is based on reverse engineering. It’s going very well these days, but it’s still not perfect.
If you want to be 100% sure that the recipient of your document sees everything exactly as you intended, then there is the universal PDF. This is the preferred route, especially when distributing text documents, because it is completely system-independent.
Save
Collabora Office now hardly suffers from childhood illnesses. Here and there you sometimes see something strange, but we are working hard on maintenance and improvements of the package. Definitely worth trying out.
Finally, a tip: don’t forget to save your stuff regularly while working on your document. But that actually applies to any software package…
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