AO Office

Good on iphone 14 pro max , AO office version 5.4.3

I’ve always enjoyed OpenOffice on the desktop, so I was glad to see it ported to IOS. Unfortunately I realized the hard way that, unlike the desktop version, the IOS version of OpenOffice has NO autorecovery/autosave system at all; I had to find that out by writing for a bit (thankfully not for very long) and then accidentally closing the app, only to realize when reopened the app later that my bit of writing was eaten when the app was closed. This is REALLY inexcusable, as autosaves/autorecoveries are standard for practically every other creative app that I can think of, and there’s no way I’m going to spend another minute using this app as soon as I find a satisfactory replacement.

I downloaded and signed up for the free trial. Well the free trail is nothing more than examples of what it can do. Using the free trail you cannot do ANYTHING. I have no idea if it works or not because I’m not paying $50 to see if it works.

I have been looking for an iPhone and Mac app combination that would allow me to edit and add spreadsheet entries using dictation on my iPhone and then process the data on my Mac. I rejected Excel because of the cost (this is for personal use, not a business). I rejected Numbers because of its huge file size overhead (an 18K XML file becomes a 168K Numbers file) and because of its obtuse user interface on the iPhone. I rejected Collabra Office because I couldn’t directly use the same iCloud file folder in both locations, I had to remember to manually sync (when attempting to sync with Google Drive, Google kept trying to convert my XML files to Sheets). AO Office is at least functional enough, but barely. Although it claims to be fully functional, AO Office spreadsheet is missing Libre Office functions that I rely on to parse my dictation input, such as REGEXP. When dictating text, it quite reliably duplicates the initial character, requiring a lot of tedious manual editing or just living with the glitches. The process of moving from cell to cell to dictate text requires closing the keyboard, re-opening the keyboard, turning on dictation, dictating, ending the dictation, telling the App to save the dictation, etc., six or eight clicks of overhead for each cell, all of which are required or the data is lost or combined into a single cell. editing data in a cell is problematical; frequently it only accepts a single key stroke in the middle of text and then move the cursor to the end of the cell data, so inserting a word in the middle of a string requires repeatedly positioning the cursor for each and every letter. Fortunately, I have found work arounds. For each line, I dictate all of the data into a single cell and then distribute that data into the various columns using REGEXP formulas.That radically minimizes the per cell overhead as well as the duplicated initial letter glitch. I can’t see or edit the formulas in AOO (I just see a NAME error), but I can see and edit the input cell. This at least allows me too work on my project, which is more than I could get out of Numbers or Collabra.

Strong coverage of critical office features Plenty of flexibility in saving and loading docs Especially useful for privacy-conscious people

I have opted out 3 times of the HUGE list of data collection checks and every time a check it back on. Checkout their list below the Vendor preferences Huge list that even though you select not to collect, go back to it and its selected to yes afterwards. I will delete this App and look for another one, and from what I looked the paid version doesn’t mention about not collecting your data. Don’t get this APP

I wanted to review this product, because I couldn’t find this answer under app information, but this was the most important aspect for me. The app supports Open Office extensions. I write in a language that does not have native spelling support on iOS, and I was able to install my custom dictionary to the app. If you are looking for extension support and the ability to install custom dictionaries in a word processor this is the app for you. The price is a bit steep, but I was worth it to me

Program said it would text my for varification. Did not receive text after 2 tries.

iOS 17.3.1 update completely screwed up the app. now no keyboard whatsoever does anything.

Cannot use the print function from my iPad. Have to purchase license. Worked fine from /windows 10.