This is one of Google’s lower-profile apps. Google QuickOffice offers value to those of you out there who do a lot of work on mobile devices. It differs from Google’s other major office productivity app, Google Drive, in some small but key ways. QuickOffice’s main appeal is that it works with Microsoft Office file formats, even if they’re not stored on Google Drive. This is an especially convenient tool if you’re working on the fly. Say you receive an email with a Microsoft Office file you want to edit, you can open it in QuickOffice right from the attachment. Using Google Drive, you can only read Office documents. You can easily create and edit Word, Excel, and PowerPoint files.  It also lets you access local files and those stored in your Google Drive account. Its file manager is so intuitive you wonder how something so simple wasn’t invented earlier, by someone like you!

QuickOffice is a keen, flexible tool. Not only is it a stronger editor than Google Docs, it’s easily adept at manipulating Word, Excel, and PowerPoint files. It’s not going to replace your computer for composing long documents (not this version… yet!), but as a road tool it’s second to none. There are folks out there who will be disappointed with QuickOffice – most likely if they used the product before Google acquired it because, since making their acquisition, decisions were made so that the app has lost some features, namely integration with services such as Dropbox, Free and for iOS. The bottom line, however, for those of you feeling a sense of loss, is that, although QuickOffice offers many more editing features than Google Drive, it’s still currently no match for the more robust and visual Kingsoft Office Pro, but that alternative will cost you a hefty US$274. I hope you’ve got a generous budget, considering Google QuickOffice is free!

Acquired by Google in 2012, QuickOffice picks up where Google Drive falls short and lets you create and edit Microsoft Office files from your Android device. It doesn’t require any converting to proprietary formats, and it can easily save your updated files to your Google Drive account in the cloud.

QuickOffice opens up to a clever, easy-to-use file manager, which makes it simple to sift through your stored files, as well as those stored on your Google Drive account. For tablet users, this screen is especially nice, as it is split into three panels, offering an efficient widescreen browsing experience. Straight off the file manager screen, it’s easy to create folders and organize your content as your changes instantaneously sync to Google Drive. You can even browse to any locally stored file on your device, copy, cut, paste or share with your account in the cloud. Editing is also simple, just tap one of your files onscreen, or else hit the ‘+’ button at the top to create a brand-new document.

The Word editor comes with a relatively powerful set of editing tools that are way superior to the Google Drive app. It lets you change font sizes and styles, paragraph settings, spacing, and more. Additionally, it allows you to insert images or custom tables into your documents. Better yet, the editor is the formula module, which makes it easy to enter commonly used statistical, arithmetic, and trigonometric functions into your spreadsheet.

Even with these strengths, however, this simple, yet powerful app still needs to expand. It is not yet capable of handling a full up-to-date array of current elements like text wrapping and charts. Google’s best and brightest ought to try out and take note of Kingsoft’s scrolling, icon-based toolbars. Next time, I’m sure – no pressure! – Google will get that one right, too!