The first thing I looked around for when I obtained my Android tablet was a good, free office suite, preferably something that could be used offline as well as online. In my thinking it needed to be compatible with Microsoft Word, Microsoft Powerpoint and Microsoft Excel. This post brings four productivity apps options – three that I that I have downloaded to try out and a fourth that I aspire to download in the near future.

Offline use (as well as online use)

Kingsoft Office

Kingsoft Office can be used offline anywhere which is why I like it so much – and it also works well with Microsoft file extensions for Word, Excel and PowerPoint. Apparently Kingsoft Office 5 s coming soon with a whole lot more features.  Kingsoft Office Free can be used completely for free. It includes the three components of Writer, Spreadsheets and Presentation, which are great free alternatives to Microsoft Word, Excel and PowerPoint on an Android tablet. With Kingsoft Office, you no longer need to worry about compatibility issues.

Description

Kingsoft Office made USA Today’s 2013 “Best Apps for Mobile Phones and Tablets” list. It claims to be the only mobile Office with full-features FREE. It offers support for running on an Android 2.1 and above system. It has a user-friendly & nice UI interface! Users from over 200 countries and regions around the world are using it. Whether in a small cell phone screen or on a large screen on the Tablet, Kingsoft Office performs well.

• Rich editing features! All is FREE!
• Small size, stable operation, and special interface!
• Support 23 kinds of files, including DOC/DOCX/TXT/XLS/XLSX/PPT/PPTX/PDF
• Built-in file manager that can automatically organize your office document
• Tight integration with the mail application
• Support cloud storages such as Google Drive, Dropbox, Box.net and other services with WebDAV protocol
• A variety of gestures operations, which make your work more interesting
• Support different Read Mode which be closer to the users’ need.

Online versions

Google Drive

This was my first choice for an online version as I work constantly in Google Drive and it is a fantastic place for cloud file storage and sharing with others.

Description

• With Google Drive, you can store all your files in one place, so you can access them from anywhere and share them with others
• Use the Google Drive Android app to access your photos, documents, videos and other files stored on your Google Drive
• Upload files to Google Drive directly from your Android device
• Share any file with your contacts
• Access files others have shared with you on Google Drive
• Make any file available offline so you can view them even when you don’t have an Internet connection
• Manage files on the go
• Create and edit Google documents with support for tables, comments and rich text formatting
• Create and edit Google spreadsheets with support for text formatting, multiple sheets and sorting
• Edits to your Google documents and spreadsheets appear to collaborators in seconds
• View Google presentations with full animations and speaker notes
• View your PDFs, Office documents and more
• Scan documents, receipts and letters for safe keeping in Drive; then search by contents once uploaded
• Print files stored in Google Drive on the go using Google Cloud Print
• Open files stored in Google Drive through Drive enabled apps in the browser
• Optimized experience to take advantage of larger screens for tablet users, Honeycomb (Android 3.0+)

Quick Office

This was my second choice as it works hand in glove with Google Drive.

Description.

This free app from Google lets you create and edit Microsoft® Office documents, spreadsheets and presentations on your Android phone and tablet. Sign in with your Google Account to save work in Google Drive, which gives you up to 15GB of free storage and lets you access your files from any mobile device or computer.

With Quickoffice and a Google Account you can:

• Create and edit Word, Excel and PowerPoint files
• Access files in Google Drive and on your device
• Open and view PDF files
• Share files through previously shared Google Drive folders
• Attach files to emails

Office Mobile

Please note: Office Mobile requires a qualifying Office 365 subscription. (See requirements below). That is why I am aspiring to use this in the future as currently I don’t have an Office 365 subecription

Microsoft Office Mobile is the official Office companion optimized for your Android phone. You can access, view and edit your Microsoft Word, Microsoft Excel and Microsoft PowerPoint documents from virtually anywhere. Documents look like the originals, thanks to support for charts, animations, SmartArt graphics and shapes. When you make quick edits or add comments to a document, the formatting and content remain intact.