How to edit Google docs on your Android phone

Quickoffice is a powerful editing suite for Office documents on Android smartphones. It enables you to create and edit Word files and Excel-compatible spreadsheets on your phone with ease, using many of the common formatting features you would also expect to use on the desktop. In addition, you can access and edit your Google Docs files in a way that is completely seamless. Once you’ve entered your details you’ll find your documents ready and waiting, or you can make new ones as well.


Installation
The first step is to download and install the Quickoffice suite on your Android phone. It is available in the Market – it is a paid app, and there is no trial or limited free version available, but it does represent great value for the features that it offers. If your phone already has a copy of the Quickoffice file viewer installed, you will be left with two icons side by side in your apps window.

Account details
When you launch the program for the first time, you will need to provide the necessary details for your Google account. This is easy enough: just enter your user name and password – most likely the same one associated with your Android phone, although, handily enough, you can use a different one if you wish. Quickoffice supports multiple Google accounts, as well as other popular online services such as Dropbox and the Apple-centric MobileMe. Simply click the Menu button and choose ‘Add remote account’ to set up a new one – tap and hold on it in the list to delete any that you no longer need.

Sorting files
Now you’re ready to get started. First, take a look at your Google account by tapping on it in the main screen. You’ll need to have internet access for this – one of the potential downsides of these services if you’re planning on relying on them heavily. Your list of existing documents will now be displayed. They’re ordered by the oldest first, and it’s not possible to switch it to newest first. However, by clicking the Menu button and selecting ‘Sort’, you can sort them by name or type instead.

Getting started
All formats of Google documents are supported, although for ease of use you probably won’t want to go beyond a text document if you are planning on editing it. Tap on one from the list and it will open. After a short delay while it loads, you can position the cursor and begin typing – you need to press Menu and choose ‘Keyboard’ for the keyboard to be displayed.

Typing orientation
You can type in either portrait or landscape orientation. If you rotate the screen to landscape mode and use a virtual keyboard, you will only be able to see one paragraph – all on the same line – at a time. It’s not ideal, and you might find it easier to rotate back to portrait mode from time to time to check how your document is progressing.

Formatting
You can perform basic formatting on documents by choosing ‘Format’ from the menu. This opens a window where you can choose basic adjustments such as changing the font, and font colour and weight. To make changes to text that already exists, you need to select the text first by positioning the cursor at the start of the selection, tapping and holding on the screen to choose ‘Select text’, then using the D-pad to precisely position the cursor at the end of the selection. If your phone hasn’t got a D-pad or similar, then try to zoom into the text to make the selection a little easier to perform.

Saving your work
As you begin editing your document you need to remember to save as you go along. Press the Menu button and hit ‘Save’. Alternatively, you can save the document locally by pressing Menu and tapping ‘More’ followed by ‘Save as’ and then selecting a location – most likely ‘SD Card’ – in which to save the document.

New documents
You can also create new documents whenever you need to. To do this, go to the main screen and select a location. You can create remote files on Google Docs or the other cloud services, or you can create local files on your memory card. Tap the one you want to save to.

Choosing a location
The next step is to press the Menu button and choose ‘Create document’. However, if you’ve chosen your memory card as the location to save to, you will probably find it a lot easier to create a separate folder especially for your documents, rather than saving them in with all the other random files and folders on your memory card.

Creating folders

Click Menu and select ‘Create folder’. Type a sensible name – ‘Office docs’, for example – and tap ‘Create’. Now locate this folder, tap on it to open it, then create a new document, which will be saved in there. It is also possible to create new folders in your Google Docs account, and this can be a good way to keep that otherwise cluttered UI in some sort of order