Office Web Apps & Google Docs on iPad

[McDave]

In brief: I have used Office Web Apps on iPad and was able to edit a document in Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote. Also briefly tried Google Docs with some success.

Pretty sure I'm not the first person to try Office Web Apps on an iPad and was disappointed I could not edit documents. Looking round for a solution people have only been able to use spreadsheets for both platforms. They both said the site recognises them as being Mobile Safari and try to push users to the mobile site. This gave me an idea, what if the site thinks I'm using Desktop Safari? Changing how the iPad was identified allowed me to access the full version of the online office applications, there are a few kinks though.

How I did it.

1. Opened App "Atomic Web" ($0.99) you can use any browser that allows itself to be identified as a desktop browser

2. Under Settings changed how the browser is identified to "Safari Desktop"

3. Logged into Sky Drive and chose to create/edit document

Managed to use all apps in Skydrive but some feature don't work e.g. Insert image, format style of font already in document. Typing too fast in Word produces errors whereby words are incomplete/jumbled.

Google docs Document App will not let me write but the Spreadsheet and Presentation work fine. Only tried for 5min.

User experience for both is poor and would much rather use a native app.