One of the earlier handicaps of the Android OS was the lack of documents viewer, as well as a documents editing suite on the early models. While there were a handful of third party solutions available, these were quite off the mark and didn’t quite fill the gap.
Then came along the HTC Magic with a documents viewer from the Quickoffice, but no editing suite.
Thankfully, DataViz has stepped up to the plate with Documents To Go for Android, a full suite of documents viewer and editor. Now, users can view and edit Microsoft® Word, Excel®, PowerPoint® and Adobe® PDF files without skimping on features on their Android-powered Smartphone. Documents To Go supports latest Microsoft Office & Adobe formats (doc, docx, xls, xlsx, ppt, pptx & pdf).
At this time, the competing QuickOffice application still does not support document EDIT or viewing of Office 2007 documents for Word (.docx) and Excel (.xlsx),so if you need editing, Documents To Go is the direction to look.
The good news is that the Documents To Go viewer is available as a free download from the Android Market. However, if you also need to edit on your Android device, you will need to upgrade the suite for a fee.
Documents Editing for Android Devices in 2023
2023 Update: Things have changed drastically since 2010 when I first wrote this article. DataViz still has its Docs To Go Office Suite (renamed from Documents To Go) available, and now much more improved. But, there are now many alternatives for documents editing on Android smartphones and tablets.
These alternatives include Google Docs, Google Sheets, and Google Slides, all from Google; Microsoft’s Excel:Spreadsheets, Microsoft Word: Edit Documents, and Microsoft PowerPoint, as well as a number of alternatives from 3rd party developers.