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Be sure to check out the update to QuickOffice 5.6 after reading this review

Quickoffice from Cutting Edge Software Inc. is actually three Palm applications.

  Quicksheet, this spreadsheet integrates to Microsoft Excel 97 or 2000, almost seamlessly. It adds a menu to Excel (see the following graphic) This makes opening and sending file to and from the Palm unit very easy. Once you have your spreadsheet ready to export to the Palm just Click on the Quicksheet menu, and Save or Save As and you will have the spreadsheet ready to view or edit in Quicksheet on your Palm next time you HotSync.

If you created the spreadsheet from the Palm, just press Open from this menu and you will open it in Excel. Sound easy? It is!

The real power of the program comes from this simple easy to use interface to and from Excel. However the program is powerful enough just on it's own. It has more functions than I know what to do with (over 60). Navigation is a breeze and it supports workbooks not just sheets. This means you can have more that one sheet in a file. While we are here we should add in a bit about Quickchart. This charting software is an add in for Quicksheet, this really makes this software stand out from the competition, it is a real time charting software that charts your spreadsheet data. I did find a couple of things that wished Quickchart could do that it can't in it current version. Cutting Edge Software was quick to admit that right now with Version 1 it has some limitations. They assured me that that my concerns would be address with the next revision. Even with the one or two areas for improvement that I could find, this charting add on is fantastic! There is nothing more powerful that seeing your data with visual presentation, with this (might I add FREE for registered users of Quicksheet) add on you can see this stunning display on your palm.

Quicksheet supports many features including:  Row and column freezing,  locking, column resizing, searching, replace, beaming. And the feature that I like the best is "free upgrades for life".

  Quickword is what Quicksheet is to Excel only to Microsoft Word. It also adds a menu to Word for saving, opening and transferring your documents quickly and easily. Quick word is more than a DOC reader it also is a editor. With features like auto scrolling, editing, word count and statistics, import and export to the built in memo pad, bookmarks, beaming, and printing with PalmPrint, this is the most featured easiest to use DOC reader I have seen. Quickword is built on the foundation of SmartDoc. SmartDoc was great for it's time and now Quickword adds to this legacy.

Now with that said, the new user may not know what a DOC file is so I will explain. A DOC file is just what is sounds like a document file. Usually a text file of some sort. This can be a novel, a short story, a manual, a note or anything else you may want to create that is longer or more permanent that a memo. Usually a DOC file is compresses as well so that is takes up less space. I say usually because with Quickword you have the option of uncompressing a document, this makes editing quicker. Afterwards you can compress it again to save the space.

For anyone that wants to have MS Word and MS Excel on their Palm® handheld, Quickoffice is quite possibly the most feature packed and easiest to use solution. Positively recommended!