[wslh]

After reading about the Quickoffice acquisition I was waiting for this moment. Google Drive has more features in the web than as a native application on iOS and Android.

Edit: it's me or Quickoffice is complete crap? I tried opening a document in Google Docs and it opens as PDF! then I created a new document and it doesn't have headings, just like the Google Drive application.

[ZoF]

What kind of document did you open? A PDF???

It's working fine for me, .doc/.docx extensions open in QuickWord as expected.

[wslh]

A Google Drive document.

[dragonwriter]

If you read the app description, its for working with Microsoft Word, Excel, and PowerPoint files. Anything else is outside its domain. Its not a replacement for Google Docs for working with Google Docs native formats.

[SEMW]

> If you read the app description, its for working with Microsoft Word, Excel, and PowerPoint files.

Imagine explaining this to your insert-technologically-inept-relative-of-choice.

"No no no, if it's a Word file you need to click on the hollow yellow-blue-and-green circle to edit it, if it's a native google document you need to click on the hollow yellow-blue-and-green hexagon to edit it."

"You don't know what type of document it is? No problem, you can tell by... Open it up in one of the two apps and tell me what the file extension is. The file extension. The three of four letters at the end. Wait a sec, forget that, native google docs documents don't have file extensions."

["Well, does the icon look like--no, never mind, the icon is the same for both, four white lines in a blue square." - I was wrong about this, word files do have a different icon]

"Umm, well, open it in one of them, and if you can't edit it, open it in the other one."

"Hold on, I'll drive over..."

[dragonwriter]

> Imagine explaining this to your insert-technologically-inept-relative-of-choice.

"If you need to edit things in Drive, use the Drive app."

There are some use cases where the QO app makes sense, but its solving a fairly narrow problem that doesn't apply to most users.

> Well, does the icon look like--no, never mind, the icon is the same for both, four white lines in a blue square

What are you talking about? The icon for Word files in both the QO UI and the Drive app UI is a big blue W on a white square, and is nothing like the 3-long-1-short white lines on a blue square icon for Google Documents.

> Umm, well, open it in one of them, and if you can't edit it, open it in the other one.

The Drive edits Doc/Docx files; if for some reason you don't like using the Drive App to do that, you can switch to QO from the document opened in Drive by using the "Open in..." menu from Drive to open a document in QO.

[SEMW]

> The Drive edits Doc/Docx files

I've just tried it, and no, it can't. On the webapp, editing is done by converting to google docs format; that option doesn't seem to be available on mobile. It can't even view them natively, if QO isn't installed it appears to show them in a web viewer. Only quickoffice can edit .doc/.docx's. But you're right you can open a .doc in QO from drive (assuming it's installed, it'll register an intent), which does alleviate the problem.

But it's still silly, and confusing for non-technical users, to have two similarly-designed office apps, published by the same company, which can each edit a mutually-exclusive set of document formats. And that using intents to edit works one way but not the other. I'll be surprised if they're not merged at some point.

On the other hand you're right about the icon. My mistake, I'll correct my post.

[notatoad]

if i click on a docx in the google drive app, it uses the intents system to open in quickoffice. its only if i try to open a google drive document in quickoffice that it has a problem. So if you have a technologically inept relative, the solution is simple - just tell them to use google drive for everything, and never use quickoffice.

which i'm sure is exactly what google wants. they want you creating documents in their format, not in microsoft's format. quickoffice exists to tick off the "MS Office compatibility" checkbox on spec sheets, not because google loves that file format so much. and office documents don't get the realtime collaborative editing or chat interface or any of the other stuff that drive documents get, so to reduce confusion about why some features are unavailable, it makes sense to keep it as a separate app.

[wslh]

I bet you and dragonwriter that Google will integrate both in the future.

[wslh]

Beyond the downvote to my comment, I think the same complain will be amplified by a lot of people beyond if it's in the app description or not. Currently, with hundreds of applications installed on the PC and mobile devices nobody reads every app description, they just assume certain features. You can't RTFM for every application installed.

[dragonwriter]

> You can't RTFM for every application installed.

Reading the basic description of what an app is is not equivalent to reading a manual.

[wslh]

Please, give me a break. I installed Quickoffice acquired by Google to read documents. I don't assume that I need to read any description.

[ZoF]

It's quick_Office_.

[piyush_soni]

I tried the same - opening a google doc, it "tried" to open that as a pdf, but displayed a blank instead. I waited, and quit the app.

Even if they don't support a format, they could at least display a proper message. "Format not supported". That's purely an overlook.

[rpgmaker]

I never understood the hype around quickoffice, it has never been my office app of choice. Now OfficeSuite is a pretty neat piece of mobile office software...