To get office work done on an iPad, you need an app (or set of apps) that lets you access your preferred storage system, create new documents, and edit existing ones. The three-in-one productivity app Polaris Office 5 ($12.99) for iPad gives you the tools you need to do moderately complex document editing, without eating up a lot of space. Polaris lets you connect to several major storage services, including Dropbox, Google Drive, and OneDrive, but it also lets you save the files locally. The $12.99 price lets you download Polaris Office 5 onto all your iOS devices (iPad, iPhone, and iPod touch), but don't confuse it with the free Polaris Office app (no "5" in the name). Allow me to explain.
The paid iPad app (Polaris Office 5) costs a one-time fee. (On some Android devices, it comes preinstalled at no extra cost.) You buy it once, and you can install it on all your iOS devices. You can upload and download files from a connected cloud storage services, or save new files you create locally on your iPad in the app. The free app (Polaris Office), on the other hand, lets you download files from the cloud, but not upload them. You're also limited to using it on only two devices. When you get the free app, you'll have to sign up for a free account, and you'll have the option to upgrade to a Premium subscription for $3.99 per month or $39.99 per year and comes with a few other perks. It's a bit confusing.
In any event, the $12.99 app was a great value two years ago before other big players got into the mobile office market. Now, with apps such as Google Drive, Docs, Sheets, and Slides being free, Polaris Office 5 isn't as sweet a deal.
Price
Polaris Office costs $12.99, which was a steal two years ago before some of the bigger players in the space released their apps. Now, with several free apps, 13 bucks sounds like a lot. Who knows if you'll pay full price, though, as Polaris Office has been on sale for months for just $1.99. Google's apps (Drive, Docs, Sheets, and Slides) are all free, including Quickoffice, which it acquired a while back and which formerly sold for close to $20. Microsoft's apps are free to download, but they require an Office 365( at Amazon) account if you want to create or edit files, which is likely to run you $99 a year. Apple's Pages, Numbers, and Keynote cost $9.99 each, unless you purchased an iPad recently (any time since October 2013), in which case they're free. It's all pretty confusing.
Similar Products
Microsoft Word (for iPad)
Microsoft Excel (for iPad)
Getting to Work
Polaris Office 5 lets you create and edit the following file formats: .doc, .docx, .xls, .xlsx, .ppt, .pptx, and .txt. You can view, but not edit, PDFs and .hwp (used in Korea) files. As mentioned, Polaris Office 5 lets you save documents locally in the app or to a cloud-based storage service, which is extremely convenient.
The interface is fairly intuitive and minimal. Three sample documents, or guides, show up in the app when you first install it. These documents cover the finer points of using the Polaris Office 5 iPad app for creating and editing word processing files, slideshows, and spreadsheets. Be sure to read and explore them.
A few unconventional controls, however, take some getting used to. For example, the convention for selecting text on an iPad generally is to press and hold the screen until the text is highlighted and spanner bars appear, which you can drag to adjust how much text you want to select. Polaris Office 5 instead has you double tap and then move the spanner bars. Moreover, I found the spanner bars to be extremely finicky, flickering and not always highlighting all the text I wanted.
Three-In-One or Standalone?
You can edit your office files in Polaris Office 5, with limitations. You won't find a "track changes" feature, for example, much less the ability to enable macros. I opened a Word document that had tracked changes on it, and in Polaris Office 5, it appeared as if all the changes had been accepted.
Polaris Office 5 does have tools that let you find and replace text and check spelling, though. When working with spreadsheets, you have a long list of functions to choose from, though no pivot table tools. In nearly any format, you can add shapes and images, change the paragraph styling and fonts, and insert tables and charts. The tools cover the basics, but certainly don't entice you to give up your laptop or desktop computer.
Another minor damper on the productivity party was that, when I searched for a document stored in my connected Google Drive account, Polaris Office 5 couldn't find it. I later realized that you have to search each of your connected storage spaces separately, so the first search bar I encountered was only for documents created and saved in Polaris Office.
Three-In-One or Standalone?
Among mobile office apps, some roll all the functionality of spreadsheets, word processing, and slideshow programs into one app, while others break them out into multiple apps. Examples of three-in-one apps include:
- Polaris Office 5 ($12.99)
- OfficeSuite Professional ($14.99), and
- Quickoffice Pro (free; owned by Google).
Examples of products that break the set into individual apps include:
- Apple's Pages, Numbers, and Keynote,
- Microsoft's Word for iPad, Excel for iPad, and PowerPoint for iPad, plus the iPad version of Microsoft OneDrive, and
- Google's iPad apps for Google Drive, Docs, Sheets, and Slides.
Would you rather have a three-in-one app or several different apps? The decision might depend on how much you might use each component, and how much space you can sacrifice on your iPad. For example, if you only need word processing and your device is tight on space, you might want to install just one specialized app that might be smaller than a three-in-one. Google Docs for iPad takes up just 19.9MB of space, while Polaris Office 5 uses 79.2MB.
On the other hand, some single-purpose programs pack in features, ballooning the size of the app. Word for iPad, for example, takes up 259MB of space, and Apple's Pages eats up even more: 276MB. If you don't need all those features, lightweight three-in-one office apps such as Polaris Office 5 start to seem more attractive. It offers convenience, with all the major functionality of three programs in one app, but it doesn't require a ton of space.
Polaris Office for Simplicity
The Polaris Office 5 app for iPad is a solid app for creating and editing office files when you're on the go, but only if you don't need to rely on a super-powerful suite of tools. It lets you get basic work done conveniently because it connects to Box, Dropbox, OneDrive, and other cloud storage services where you might already save your documents so they can sync to all your devices.
But mobile office apps are beginning to flood the App Store, and there's plenty of competition. Google's new suite of iPad apps for Drive, Docs, Sheets, and Slides is among the most appealing, seeing as they're all free, offer a lot of functionality, and don't take up an enormous amount of space. Microsoft's Word for iPad and Excel for iPad are both Editors' Choices in the mobile office category, although you have to have an Office 365 account for those. If you don't, the Google suite is probably your next best bet. Polaris Office 5 is still a good app that balances features and download size pretty well, but it's now overshadowed by Microsoft's and Google's offerings.
Three-in-one office app Polaris Office 5 helps you get work done and be productive on an iPad, without eating up all your iPad's space. For a reasonable one-time fee, it's great for moderately complex office work, but not brimming with features.
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