Google Docs on iPad – mobile or proper website

Google Docs  Home

There are quite a few people that do like the abilities that you have to work with in the Google docs. Some people like Google Docs because of the sharing features that you have available or collaboration features, where you can have a number of people working on the same document. But what about if you want to use Google Docs on your iPad. For a start off, if you are using your iPad when you go to Google Docs using your Safari browser you will get to a mobile version of the site. It is a good thing that the mobile site does look different, just to make sure that you know that you are on a different version of the Google docs site.

Problems with using Google Docs iPad

But it is easy enough to login to your Google Docs account and open up any of your documents in there to edit them. I have just opened in Google Docs iPad in the Safari browser, a text document and I have been able to type in some text. There is more that you can do with it if you look at the toolbar, which doesn’t have an awful lot of things on it and choose to use the desktop version. As soon as I changed to the desktop version of Google docs on iPad I did get an error message to say: – Google Docs has encountered an error please reload this page to continue. I hit Okay and it reloaded and gave the same message again. The next time I clicked on the cancel button and instead I have the document in front of me and I can do some work with it. There is a little bit of a problem in that the keyboard, when its slides up, covers up the text that I want to work on, so that I can see what I’m doing.

I am also finding that when I am typing something the cursor is a little too far to the right of where the actual text is going when you type. From this small test of using Google Docs iPad so far, I can safely say that I am not that happy with it. At least not with trying to do some work on a Google document within the Safari browser. I was able to rename a document really easily and also change the share settings. In Google Docs I also had a photograph and was able to bring up a page with the photograph on it.

Google Docs on iPad

GoDocs for Google Docs

If you are a really heavy user of Google Docs and you are getting frustrated by trying to work with Google Docs in the Safari browser, then you might instead have a look at GoDocs for Google Docs. This is by a developer called Light Room. The price of the app is $4.99 and in it, you can do things such as upload docs, share docs, sort and search files and use folders. The app has been featured by Apple recently, so it must be fairly good. I don’t intend to buy it myself as I am not a big user of Google docs. In the reviews for GoDocs for Google Docs, users have said that for people that are using Google Docs everyday this is a must have application. Users have also said that it is good to be able to view spreadsheets, text documents, PDFs as well as video and audio files. In fact you are able to sync your music and videos to Google cloud so that you are able to enjoy those multimedia files, while you are away from your desk. In fact you can also download your other documents, so that while you are away and off-line you can still read your Google Docs.

You can share documents and also mail documents. To share them you just have to add them to your share list, that is nice and easy. And then you can also search for documents and even mail them out using the iPad mail app. Another feature of the Go Docs application which could be very useful, it certainly would be useful for me, is the ability to use multiple accounts. Many of us do have e-mail accounts to use with our various separate personas online and like to keep certain documents separate from others in this way.

MagicalPad

See your MagicalPad docs in Google Docs

Another application I’ve been trying out recently is called MagicalPad and that is a handy little application that allows you to create notes, outlines and checklists. It isn’t specifically for Google Docs on iPad, but it does allow you to export your documents from it, out to Google Docs. Most of these sorts of applications tend to have Dropbox as the way to get documents shared out. So it was quite unusual to see Google Docs being used within MagicalPad. It also allows you to send things out to your Evernote account. I will certainly have to do a full review of MagicalPad quite soon.