Though the desktop companion helps make the app more useful, its Wi-Fi requirement puts a crimp in usability. Syncing worked well, but the setup was a little laborious, and the Wi-Fi requirement to initiate a sync shuts out home and corporate users who get their Internet from an Ethernet cable. You can also drag items into a desktop folder for a quick sync. In addition to the iPhone app, Documents To Go gives you the option of downloading a free companion desktop application that syncs files and folders between your iPhone and Windows or Mac computer. Viewing e-mail attachments from the Docs To Go in-box after setup can be a bit laggy, but is otherwise complete. Setup is a hassle, especially for those unfamiliar with their Exchange server information. Opening e-mail attachments sent through Microsoft Exchange or through Gmail (but not both) is a boon for many users, who must nevertheless set up a syncing account to view the supported attachments from the app interface itself, instead of from the iPhone in-box. ![]() The newest tool, for editing and creating PowerPoint presentations, is the most limited in what it can do. Although much of the app's navigation is intuitive, expect some trial and error. Most core tools to create, edit, save, and send Microsoft Word, Excel documents, and PowerPoint presentations are tucked into expanding tool menus. While I keep all four handy on my iPad I find myself going back to Google Drive more and more as it looks like it is headed in the right direction.Documents To Go quickly proves its competence by delivering crisp, clear reproductions of your Word, PowerPoint, PDF, Excel, and iWork documents, including Microsoft Office 2007 files. The good news is that since three out of the four of them are free, there is no excuse not to download and try them out. All have good use cases and make life on the road with Google Drive just a little easier than using mobile Chrome or Safari which are pretty limited. In the end none of these applications are the magic bullet or dominates in features and functionality over the others. If it had an edit mode for Google Docs it might trounce the others. It too has a passcode feature to keep others prying and can access your mobile photos for uploading as well. It is the best when it comes to accessing and displaying the documents as it is fairly fast with a nice navigation and full screen mode. ![]() The most highly rated mobile application in iTunes, GDrive is more of a viewer than the others but excels at allowing for connection to many different document services such as Skydrive and Dropbox. It also can be set up with a passcode to get into the application which provides an extra layer of security. ![]() It does allow for editing of Google Docs in the application and supports tables so beats out Google Drive in that area. Once you click on a document to view it, it downloads to your device where GoDocs gives you a lot of options to share, edit or open in another application. The Google Docs functionality is pretty limited as it Quickoffice wants to open them in other applications which means it isn't a very stand-alone.Īnother entry in the third party race, GoDocs, is a paid application that uses synchronizing to be able to access all of the Google documents such as Sheets, Docs, Slides, etc. The benefit for Quickoffice is that it can view/create non-Google (gasp) Office documents like Powerpoint and Excel which is great when you get one of them in email on your mobile device. It allows you to connect up to your Google Drive account and access documents, although always opening them in other applications after downloading them. ![]() This once pay application was bought by Google and is now offered free to Google Apps users. It also doesn't support tables in Docs or provide an extra passcode for security which are major misses. Google Drive does have some quirks though, like crashing a lot and putting you in a edit or view mode which can be a little strange to navigate. Google's own Drive application, Google Drive, has come a long way since it was born over a year ago, now with some nice functionality like offline access which allows you to view things while not connected to the internet. To that end, for any of these apps you should have the Authenticator application close at hand. While being challenged for a second factor occasionally while using Google Drive might seem like a hassle, protecting your data is worth it. While you can start your journey down the road of mobile Google Drive usage without two factor authentication, that would be unwise. Hitting the road with your Google Drive is getting easier and easier and here are a bunch of applications to help access, edit and share for the iPad and iPhone.
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