There’s no shortage of apps for viewing and editing office documents on an Android phone, tablet, or TV box. But
AndrOpen Office might be one of the most powerful… if not necessarily the most useful. It’s basically a port of
Apache OpenOffice, a full-featured open source desktop office suite for Linux, Windows, and Mac computers.
AndrOpen Office is based on Apache OpenOffice 3.4, which isn’t exactly the most recent version, but it includes powerful word processor, spreadsheet, and presentation apps, as well as a database app, math utility, and drawing app with support for files in Microsoft Office, Adobe Photoshop, OpenDocument, and many other formats.
There’s a bit of a catch thought: AndrOpen Office has been retooled to run on Android and work with touchscreen input and automatic screen rotation. But that’s about it. For the most part, what you get is an app designed for notebook and desktop computers ported to run on small phones and tablets.
In other words, try running AndrOpen Office on your phone and you’ll probably have a hard time doing anything at all — because your fingers are probably too thick to accurately hit the file, edit, or other buttons. I took it for a spin on a 7 inch tablet, and was I was just barely able to create a simple spreadsheet — I also accidentally punched a bunch of buttons I hadn’t meant to along the way.
Fortunately, not all Android devices have small screens, and not all rely on finger input for everything. If you have a 10 inch tablet, you may have better results. If you’re using a tablet with a stylus, you may have better results. And if you’re using an Android TV box plugged into a monitor or TV, AndrOpen Office can make your little box feel even more like a full-fledged desktop computer.
The office app takes a bit longer to load than your average Android app, but that’s a small price to pay for an office suite that you can use to view, edit, and create documents on the go, complete with support for macros, pivot tables, the ability to export files to alternate formats, and much more.
AndOpen Office is available as a free
download from the Google Play Store.
via /r/Android
