Can you do excel on ipad

How to Read Excel Files on an iPad

1. Send an email containing the Excel file to an account that you can access on your iPad.
2. Touch your iPad’s Home button to return to the list of applications, and then touch the “Mail” app to open your inbox.
3. Navigate to the email with the Excel file, and touch it to open it.

Why can’t I open Excel files on my iPad?

This might be caused by SharePoint and OneDrive on your iPad are not properly synced. Please check first if your iPad is connected to the internet, then sign out your account in SharePoint or OneDrive and sign in again. See if you can now open the Excel files.

How do I open Excel browser on iPad?

That doesn’t work, still opens the Excel app on my iPad.
You can follow the steps below.

1. Open a browser (Chrome, Safari, Firefox etc)
2. Go to this link https://www.office.com/
3. Log in to your office account.
4. Go to one drive and locate your file.
5. Click on your file and it will let you open your file on the browser.

How do I open an XLSX file on my iPad?

Open Numbers, and if a spreadsheet is already open, tap Spreadsheets in the top-left corner to see all your spreadsheets. Tap a thumbnail to open a spreadsheet. If you don’t see the spreadsheet you want to open, try searching for it, or tap the link in the top-left corner to browse Recents or a different location.

How do I open Excel in iOS?

To open a file like an Excel spreadsheet on your iPhone or iPad, tap the file in the spreadsheet manager. If you don’t see the spreadsheet manager, tap the Back button (on an iPhone or iPod touch) or Spreadsheets (on an iPad), then tap the file that you want to open.

Can’t edit Excel on iPad?

Can’t edit or save my Office file on new iPad Pro

1. Close all Office application for iPad.
2. Go to its Settings..
3. In Settings, tap to select one of your Office for iPad apps.
4. Under RESET, tap Reset.
5. Slide to enable Delete Login Credentials.
6. Start one of your Office apps.

Can I edit Excel on iPad?

With only a few extra clicks you can edit Word and Excel files in the Safari browser on your iPad.When you open the Google Docs version of a Word file on your iPad, you’ll see an Edit button in the top-right corner. The Google Docs copy of an Excel spreadsheet will open on the iPad ready for editing.

Can you do a spreadsheet on an iPad?

Apple’s iPad has its own Numbers spreadsheet app and supports Microsoft’s Excel app, both of which are convenient when a user wants to work on spreadsheets on an iPad.

How do I download Excel files to my iPad?

In Word, Excel, or PowerPoint for iPad, open the file you want and tap File > Duplicate. Tap iPad, then enter a file name and tap Save. Your file is now saved locally on your iPad.

Does Excel work on iPad?

Word for iPad®, Excel for iPad, and PowerPoint for iPad have the robust capabilities and familiar look and feel of Office, while offering a fantastic touch experience built from the ground up for iPad. With the free versions of the apps, you can read your Word documents, use your Excel data and present with PowerPoint.

How do you edit Excel on iPad for free?

Download MS Excel for iOS from the App Store. All MS office apps are free for iOS. On an non-Pro iOS device, you will need to create a free Microsoft ID and sign in to actually edit and save documents. If you have an iPad Pro, you will need a paid MS Office 365 subscription to use the apps.

Can I use Excel on iPad for free?

Microsoft Office apps (Word, Excel and Powerpoint) are free to download on the iOS app store. You can create, edit, open and print Office documents with your iPad or iPhone, but whether or not you have to pay depends on the size of your iPad’s screen.You will need to create a free Microsoft account.

How do I edit Excel on iPad without Office 365?

To start, go to OneDrive.com in Safari or Chrome on your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch and log in to your Microsoft Account. Tap create from the top toolbar, and you’ll get a dropdown list to create Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and OneNote files.

Is there an open office app for iPad?

Apache OpenOffice is a leading open-source office software suite for Mac OS X, Windows and Linux.Yoshikawa had already ported OpenOffice to Android, with AndrOpen Office now up to version 2.7.

How much does excel app cost for iPad?

Microsoft Office Is Now Free for iPhones, iPads and Android
Office users will now be able to create and edit documents in Word, Excel and PowerPoint on iPhone, iPad and Android devices at no cost. Making full use of the apps previously required a subscription to Office 365, which starts at $70 per year.

Why can’t I open an Excel file from my email?

The most common cause is that Excel has been configured to ignore other applications. This is an option that is disabled by default but can be enabled to isolate the Excel working environment. When the option is enabled, you can only open Excel attachments from within Excel itself.

Microsoft’s Office suite of applications has been a staple in most people’s personal and professional lives for decades, and their introduction on the iPad several years ago felt like a turning point in the iPad’s quest to becoming a “serious computer.” Several years later, these apps have grown up and are better than they’ve ever been before. We recently dove into how Word adapted itself to the iPad and found it to have some compromises over the desktop version, but was ultimately a very capable app that would work for most people. Excel has also made some compromises to work on iOS, but these compromises hurt the overall experience to the point that we expect most people will find this version of the app inadequate.

Welcome to Excel on the iPad

Microsoft Excel is a free download from the App Store, but you’re going to need an Office 365 subscription to actually do anything besides read Excel files. At as little as $6.99/month or $70/year and including all the other Office apps, as well as 1TB of OneDrive cloud storage, this is one of the best deals in productivity software out there. That said, this is another subscription and you’ll have to decide if access to these apps is worth a recurring cost.

If you decide it’s worth your money, then you’ll get full access to Excel’s features on your iPad, and your use cases are going to heavily determine how much you’re going to like this experience. If you are a light spreadsheet user and just want to edit XLSX files here and there, then you’re probably going to enjoy the app. However, if you do more complex work in Excel or use it to edit multiple file types, then this version of the app is very lackluster.

The Good Stuff

Excel has some good things going for it. I personally enjoy the default history view of files you have edited in the past. This syncs across all your devices, so editing a file on your Mac will throw it to the top of your list of recent files on the iPad. This makes moving between devices quite seamless, but the only way you get this cross-device feature to work is if you are storing your files in OneDrive. If you’re using this app, then you’re paying for 1TB of storage, so this is at least possible, but it definitely removes some of the flexibility you have in handling your files. I’d highly recommend using OneDrive if at all possible to have the most seamless experience.

If you want to start fresh, Excel offers a few dozen templates ranging from budget calculators to invoices to schedules, in addition to the traditional blank spreadsheet. These are nice starting points, and you can download different templates online and open them seamlessly in Excel. Your first run at editing these files will likely be pretty smooth as well, as you can tap around and do most basic functions intuitively. Especially if you’re using an external keyboard on your iPad, the app initially feels quite similar to the desktop app. You’ll have a few cells filled out and charts created in no time.

I’m also happy to report that the iPad app loads complex documents quickly and you can navigate between large data sets across as many tabs as you can throw at it with ease. I was testing on a 2018 iPad Pro, so older iPads might not be quite as smooth, but I have a spreadsheet with 200,000 rows of data that pushes my 2015 MacBook Pro to its limits, but that same document didn’t seem to push the iPad at all.

The Compromises Begin

Once you get past these initial steps, it likely won’t be long before you run into things that are either slower than they are on the desktop or simply not possible. The first thing that jumps out is that there are zero keyboard shortcuts in the app. You literally can’t do anything but type with the keyboard, which on its own makes this a tough sell for many people. This means tons of tapping and digging into menus that you simply don’t have to do in other versions of Excel.

The basically non-existent keyboard controls make lots of actions either harder than they are on the desktop, or at least different enough that people (including me!) will assume some features don’t exist because they can’t be done in the ways they expect. For example, if you want to delete a few rows in a spreadsheet on Excel for macOS, you would select the row header of the first row, scroll to the last row, Shift+click it, and then select Delete rows from the contextual menu. On the iPad, you have to select one row with the row header, but then you need to drag that selection to wherever you want it to end. Then select Delete from the menu. It took me way longer to figure this out than I’d like to admit, and it’s also less convenient for deleting more than a couple rows from a document. If you’re removing 500 rows at a time, this is not the best way to do it.

Excel also benefits from the precision of a mouse on the desktop. The iPad doesn’t really support a mouse (yet), so you need to do everything with your fingers. Again, for simple spreadsheets this might be fine, but for more advanced workflows, your fingers may be woefully inaccurate.

“But what about the Apple Pencil?” you might ask. Well, Excel has support for the Apple Pencil, but it’s not what you’d expect. The only thing you can do with the Apple Pencil is draw freehand on top of your spreadsheets. Maybe there are more people out there who need this more than we think, but adding a remedial drawing interface over what should be a powerful productivity tool feels like the wrong move.

I’ll stop there, but the main takeaway is that the interface feels stuck between two worlds in its current form. It is not as powerful as the desktop version and it’s not as easy to use as the best iOS apps out there. It’s stuck in a sort of limbo where it is making compromises on both ends but is not as powerful or efficient as the desktop app and not as optimized for touch as great iOS apps.

Getting Things In and Out of Excel

For many people, Excel is a place where data gets processed before being passed off to its final destination. One example would be downloading a large data set in a CSV, importing it into Excel, and running some analytics on that data. Maybe you want to make some changes and save that as a new CSV, even.

Excel can open most of the file types you would expect, although you should know that it uses an online file conversion tool to convert things like CSVs to Excel documents. This may be fine by you, but could be an issue if it is a very large file that takes a long time to upload and then re-download from this conversion service. Or if you’re handling sensitive data that isn’t supposed to be uploaded anywhere, this is going to be a problem.

When it comes to saving a file when you’re done with it, you have 3 options:

1. Excel document (.xlsx)
2. OpenDocument Spreadsheet (.ods)
3. PDF

The killer here is the lack of CSV support. Even if you open a CSV you got elsewhere, the app won’t let you save it as a CSV, you must convert it to one of the above formats. I’m not sure who’s using Excel but wants OpenDocument files, but maybe they’re out there.

The bottom line is that you should only really expect to get .xlsx documents out of Excel for the iPad. It’s inconvenient to get anything else, and the options available are probably not what you want anyway.

As a final note on getting content out of Excel, copy/pasting is a bit odd, to say the least. Let’s take a basic example of copying some plain text out of a few cells. You can switch to another tab or a whole other document in Excel and paste it without a problem. However, it’s a real toss up what will happen everywhere else. Pasting into Drafts and a note in OmniFocus pasted the data in tab-separated text, which is good. However, most apps accept the data as an image. Pasting into Apple Notes and other note-taking apps gives you an image of a spreadsheet. This is not a phenomenon you’ll see when pasting data from something like Apple Numbers or Google Sheets, so it’s very odd to see from Excel.

Files Integration

On a better note, Excel works pretty well with the Files app for iOS. If you have a file saved to iCloud or Dropbox, you can open it in Excel on the iPad, do whatever you want with it, and then save the changes directly to where the file came from. You even get all of Excel’s autosave functions and “recent documents” features when editing files outside of OneDrive, which is nice (the recent documents list only works locally though, and will not sync across other devices).

Collaborative Spreadsheets

Excel for the iPad supports collaboration both in the form of comments and real time collaborative editing. Any document that is saved to OneDrive can be shared with someone (or many people) else so they can view the file. Depending on what you’re doing, you can choose to give each person access to comment only, or to make edits.

Comments show up in the document like all other versions of Excel, and the app will send you a push notification when comments come in. These comments of course sync across all devices accessing your spreadsheet.

If you give someone else the ability to edit, they’ll be able to open the document and start making changes or leaving comments in real time. If they are in the document at the same time as you, you’ll be able to see them making changes as they go. It’s pretty slick and works reliably in my experience.

Alternatives

There are really two alternatives to Excel that matter on the iPad: Numbers and Google Sheets. Numbers comes from Apple and is a better overall piece of software in my opinion. While Excel feels caught between a desktop and mobile experience, Numbers feels much more like a “no compromises” experience when compared to the desktop-based version. It has a friendlier interface, feels like it was designed for iOS, takes advantage of most modern iOS features, and generally just gets out of your way and lets you work. It’s not nearly as good at real-time collaboration, though.

Google Sheets is not a good iPad app, as it bucks iOS standards at almost every turn and manages to feel both too complicated and too limiting all at once. Its real-time collaboration is excellent, but that’s the only major win in my book.

Both of these apps suffer from the one killer feature that Excel has though, and that’s…being Excel. As much as you might like Numbers or Sheets, we live in an Excel world and usually it’s just not an option to use anything else. Excel has some warts, but it’s still easier to use than converting XLSX documents to Numbers, making changes, and saving a copy out as XLSX time and time again.

The Overall Experience

Excel on the iPad is a competent spreadsheet application, and if your needs are simple or you just plan on making edits to spreadsheets you created on macOS or Windows, then you’ll likely really enjoy this app. However, if you are looking to replace your desktop computer with an iPad and you do a lot of work, especially complex work, in Excel, then it’s a much tougher sell.

Hopefully, Microsoft will continue to iterate on this app and bring it up to the standards they hold the desktop version to, but as of right now it has a long ways to go. Collaboration works great and performance is impressive, but complex operations and customization that many people rely on just isn’t there yet.

Asked by: Dr. Karley Reynolds

Score: 4.4/5
(44 votes)

Apple’s iPad has its own Numbers spreadsheet app and supports Microsoft’s Excel app, both of which are convenient when a user wants to work on spreadsheets on an iPad.

What is the best spreadsheet app for iPad?

The Microsoft Excel app, the spreadsheet app for iPad, lets you create, view, edit, and share your files quickly and easily. Manage spreadsheets, tables and workbooks attached to email messages from your phone with this powerful productivity app.

Does Apple have a spreadsheet program?

‘: How to use Apple’s Excel-like app designed for iOS devices. The Numbers app is a spreadsheet program created by Apple that allows you to do Microsoft Excel-level tasks from your iPhone, iPad, or iPod Touch.

What is the cost of Excel for iPad?

Can Word and Excel be used on iPad?

Word for iPad®, Excel for iPad, and PowerPoint for iPad have the robust capabilities and familiar look and feel of Office, while offering a fantastic touch experience built from the ground up for iPad. With the free versions of the apps, you can read your Word documents, use your Excel data and present with PowerPoint.

15 related questions found

Microsoft Office is now available as a single unified app for iPad users. The release means that users of the Apple tablet will now be able to access Word, Excel, and PowerPoint combined in one app.

In this manner, Can iPad replace a laptop?

Can an iPad replace a laptop? It’s a silly question because it has an obvious answer: yes, it can. It has a screen, runs apps, and can connect to the Internet.

Furthermore How can I get Microsoft Office for free on my iPad?

A: You can visit www.appstore.com/microsoftoffice to download the Office apps for free and read, review and present documents, spreadsheets and presentations. To get the full editing and creation experience, you need an Office 365 subscription.

Can I use Microsoft teams on iPad? Available for iPhones, iPads, and Android devices, the Teams app lets you set up or join a video or audio call, chat with people, and share files. If you don’t already have the Teams app for your phone or tablet, download it from Apple’s App Store for an iPhone or iPad, or from Google Play for an Android device.

Beside above Can you connect a USB stick to an iPad?

A: Attaching a USB drive to an iPad is only possible with the use of a USB-C to USB adapter. This is an accessory that you must purchase separately for the iPad. … To use, simply plug the appropriate ends into the iPad and USB drive respectively and then access the drive’s contents through the iPad to get to your files.

Can you print from an iPad?

Since late 2010, Apple’s own AirPrint utility, incorporated into iOS versions since 4.2, has been a quick and easy way to print from a Wi-Fi-connected iPad to a compatible printer on the same network. All iPad models support AirPrint. … Once you choose a printer, you’re ready to go.

Word for iPad®, Excel for iPad, and PowerPoint for iPad have the robust capabilities and familiar look and feel of Office, while offering a fantastic touch experience built from the ground up for iPad. With the free versions of the apps, you can read your Word documents, use your Excel data and present with PowerPoint.

Which is better laptop or iPad?

The iPad is also more mobile than a laptop, which is one of its main selling points. This mobility isn’t just about carrying it with you when you travel. … You can get some of the same versatility with a Windows-based tablet, but when compared to a laptop or desktop PC, the iPad certainly has an advantage.

How much is Microsoft Office on iPad?

Microsoft Office for iPad is free to download, but to use Office 365’s sharing or collaboration features, users still must have a subscription. From within the new Office for iPad, Microsoft offers various in-app subscription options from $6.99 per month.

How can I install Microsoft Office for free?

How to download Microsoft Office:

1. In Windows 10 click the “Start” button and choose “Settings”.
2. Then, choose “System”.
3. Next, choose “Apps (just another word for programs) & features”. Scroll down to find Microsoft Office or Get Office. …
4. Once, you’ve uninstalled, restart your computer.

Can iPad pro use Microsoft Word?

The OneNote and Outlook apps are free to use on the iPad Pro. Install Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote, Outlook and OneDrive today on your iPad Pro, iPad Air, iPad mini or iPhone.

Why doesn’t Microsoft Teams work on my iPad?

Please make sure that you have the latest iOS updates installed. Now, try reinstalling MS Teams app on iPad by these steps: Firtsly, go to Settings > Data and storage > Clear app data > Storage > Clear Cache. Uninstall app > Restart your device > Install Teams latest version from the app store and try again.

Why can’t I download Microsoft Teams on my iPad?

Microsoft Team Is Not Compatible with This iPad. To install Microsoft Teams on your iPad, you need to run iOS 11.0 or later. … For example, 4th generation iPads can only run iOS 9. Since your device fails to meet the OS requirements, you won’t be able to install the Teams app.

How do I install Microsoft Teams on my iPad?

To install the Teams mobile app on your iPhone or iPad:

1. Open the Apple App Store on your iOS device.
2. Tap the Search icon in the store and type Microsoft Teams. …
3. Tap the download link to install the app on your device.
4. Once the app has finished downloading and installing, tap the Open button.

Is there a USB Adaptor for iPad?

The 2018 and 2019 iPad Pro models with 11-inch and 12.9-inch screens have a USB-C port. These are the first iPads that do. … Apple offers a $19 USB-C to USB adapter. Plug your old USB devices into this adapter and then plug the adapter into the iPad’s USB-C port, and you’re good to go.

Can you download Microsoft Office on an iPad?

The Microsoft Office apps are free to download from the App Store (Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Outlook) to any iPhone or iPad user running iOS 12 or later. … You can create, edit, view and print documents, presentations and spreadsheets in the Office apps for free, but to do so you will need to sign in.

Can you print from an iPad without AirPrint?

The simplest way to print from an iPhone is by adding a printer with AirPrint, so you can print directly with a wireless connection. You can also print wirelessly without AirPrint by downloading your printer’s app on an iPhone or iPad, or by connecting your devices with a USB cable and adapter.

Can I type a letter on my iPad and print it?

You can write a letter on and print it from your iPad or iPad Mini if you have two important components: a word-processing program or text editor installed on your iPad and an iOS driver for your model of printer installed on the device.

Can I edit word documents on iPad?

You can edit your Word document on an iPad by using the native editors built into any of numerous other iPad apps that connect directly to Google Docs or other services. All five of the following all-in-one office suites for the iPad include word processing, spreadsheet, and presentation tools.

Can iPad 8th Gen replace laptop?

After a week using it, the significant engine improvements in the new model serve as a reminder of something that has only recently happened: the basic iPad is now a capable laptop replacement for a lot of people. … As iPad Pro users have known for years, this isn’t ‘just as good’ as using a laptop, it’s actually faster.

Can I use iPad instead of laptop for college?

Yes, an iPad can replace a laptop for a college student when additional products such as a laptop keyboard case and an apple pencil are used in conjunction with it.

What can a computer do that an iPad can t?

Things Your PC Can Do That Your iPad Can’t

• Upgrade to Add Years to PC Life.
• Use a Mouse.
• Store Your Entire Photo, Music, and Video Library.
• Share Documents.
• Play DVDs and Blu-Ray Discs.
• Connect Multiple Monitors and Multitask.
• Run Proprietary or Desktop Software.
• Develop Apps.

Can I type a letter on my iPad?

You can write a letter on and print it from your iPad or iPad Mini if you have two important components: a word-processing program or text editor installed on your iPad and an iOS driver for your model of printer installed on the device.

If you frequently use Excel to create and edit spreadsheets on your Mac, you may want to access the same files while you’re on the go with just your iPad. Although Microsoft hasn’t released an iOS version of Excel, you can still work with Excel files on your iPad if you’re willing to accept a few compromises.

View Excel files on your iPad

If you only need to view Microsoft Excel documents, you’re in luck; Apple’s iOS can display them natively. All you need to do is get the spreadsheets onto your iPad—for example, email them to yourself as attachments, or use an app designed for transferring and viewing documents, such as Avatron Software’s $10
Air Sharing, Good.iWare’s $5
GoodReader for iPad ( ), or Readdle’s $5
ReaddleDocs for iPad ( ).

Editing your spreadsheets is not quite as simple. Although several apps and methods exist, none of them has all of Excel’s features. As a result, you’ll face one or more limitations—for example, loss of formatting or a poor touch-screen interface.

Edit Excel spreadsheets with Apple’s Numbers

One natural option for editing Excel spreadsheets is Apple’s
Numbers ($10,  ). It can import and export documents in Microsoft Excel format, and offers a powerful and easy-to-use environment for creating and editing files.

As long as you’re running OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion, using the latest version of Numbers for Mac and iOS, and have an
Apple iCloud account, transferring documents between a given app on your Mac(s) and iOS device(s) is simple thanks to iCloud’s Documents in the Cloud feature.

Unfortunately, when you import a file in Microsoft Excel format (.xls or .xlsx) or export a Numbers file in an Excel format, you permanently lose essential formatting, tracked changes, comments, and other file attributes. So, if you’re content to keep your Excel spreadsheets in Numbers format once they’re imported—or give up any unsupported formatting—Numbers is arguably your best choice. But if maintaining fidelity with original formatting is your top priority when working with Excel documents on an iPad, you’ll want to look for another solution.

Edit Excel spreadsheets with Google Docs

Another approach is to rely on
Google Docs, Google’s free Web-based office suite. Many businesses have standardized on Google Docs because it’s a convenient platform that requires no software beyond a Web browser, provides automatic backups and versioning, and makes sharing files with co-workers easy. All of this would seem to be a natural fit for the iPad, too.

Unfortunately, it isn’t a perfect fit. Although you can upload nearly any format file to Google Docs, if you want to edit spreadsheets online, you must let Google Docs convert them to its own format; as with Numbers, that may entail a considerable loss of formatting—and in cases where formulas differ between Excel and Google Spreadsheets, calculations may change.

Moreover, editing spreadsheets once they’re converted is problematic. With the mobile version of Google Spreadsheets (the default view on an iPad), you can do only the basics—edit cell values, add rows, and change sort orders. But if you switch to the desktop-style Spreadsheet View, you’ll find many of the controls inoperable, and even something as ordinary as selecting a range of cells might prove impossible. The latest version of Nikita Lutsenko’s $4
GoDocs, which offers editing and offline storage of Google Docs, lets you switch more easily between Google’s mobile and desktop views, but because it uses a built-in browser for editing spreadsheets online, its editing capabilities have the same limitations as in Safari.

Try editing with an Office suite

Other good options exist, however, even for Excel spreadsheets uploaded to your Google Docs account. You can still have an excellent editing experience on an iPad by using the native editors built into any of numerous other iPad apps that connect directly to Google Docs.

All five of the following all-in-one office suites for the iPad include word processing, spreadsheet, and presentation tools. They all can edit documents from Microsoft Excel and offer direct ties to a variety of cloud-based services, including Google Docs and
Dropbox, making it easy to get documents in and out. The spreadsheet components of all the apps let you adjust font, size, style, text color, background color, alignment, and number formatting. They include a wide range of built-in functions and let you resize columns and rows (although not always in the most obvious way). But there also are significant differences between them.

Documents To Go Premium DataViz’s $17
Documents To Go Premium ( ) is an all-in-one office suite for the iPad, with word processing, spreadsheet, and presentation tools. It has a functional but unexceptional spreadsheet capability, and it doesn’t take good advantage of the iPad’s touch interface. The app does allow you to search and sort your data, but can’t display charts, has no support for cell borders, and can’t merge cells. (However, any of those attributes present when the file was imported are preserved when you save the file.) Although it lets you import a spreadsheet that contains unsupported functions, it makes the file read-only.

Office² HD Byte Squared’s $8
Office² HD ( ) has a broad set of spreadsheet features as well as a nicely designed interface. It supports sorting your data, and unlike Documents to Go Premium, also lets you merge cells, change borders, and search. But there’s one potentially serious drawback: Although most imported document features are preserved when you save an imported worksheet, charts are not. Note that the developer also sells the $6
Sheet² HD, an app with the same spreadsheet features but without word processing or presentations.

Polaris Office Infraware’s $13
Polaris Office makes good use of the iPad’s touch interface, has a respectable chart-creation tool, and also supports adding images and adjusting cell borders. It offers find and replace, merging, sorting, filtering, and a helpful Freeze Frame feature, which locks header columns and rows so you can scroll within a spreadsheet without losing your place.

Quickoffice Pro HD Quickoffice’s $20
Quickoffice Pro HD ( ) offers easier selection and editing than most other apps covered here and includes a find-and-replace feature. Charts from imported spreadsheets, although not displayed in the app, are preserved when you save. Other than that, though, Quickoffice has a fairly basic feature set—for example, no cell borders, merging, or sorting.

Smart Office 2 Picsel’s $10
Smart Office 2 has a somewhat awkward user interface even for simple actions such as inserting functions, and its performance can be sluggish. Like Quickoffice Pro HD, it lacks support for cell borders, merging, and sorting. It has a find feature but no replace. On the other hand, even though it can’t add new charts, it does display charts from imported spreadsheets—and even updates them correctly as the data changes.

Opt for a spreadsheet-only editing

Beyond these all-in-one office apps, I should mention one other iPad apps that edits spreadsheets specifically (but not Word or PowerPoint documents). Mariner Software’s $6
Mariner Calc for iPad has a solid array of spreadsheet features and can read and write Excel files (.xls only, not .xlsx). However, it doesn’t connect to cloud-based services for transferring files or preserve all formatting when saving imported spreadsheets.

Pick your tool

If you need to edit Excel spreads documents on an iPad, first consider whether they’ll need to travel back and forth between your iPad and Microsoft Excel. If not, Apple’s Numbers will likely give you the best experience. When you do need to preserve full Office compatibility, Office HD is your best choice, as long as you don’t need to import documents containing charts. If creating (or preserving) charts is essential, I’d give the nod to Polaris Office. There’s still one more option to consider, though,
running the Windows version of Office on your iPad remotely.

Senior contributor Joe Kissell is the senior editor of TidBits and the author of the ebook
Take Control of Working with Your iPad, Second Edition (TidBITS Publishing, 2011).