SoftMaker Office 2006

January 12, 2007

When Windows Mobile 5.0 was released last year one of the key changes from an application perspective came with the re-work done to Word Mobile and Excel Mobile.  In these new versions of what is known as Pocket Word and Pocket Excel in Pocket PC 2003SE and earlier, improvements circled mostly around functionality and formatting which, thankfully, greatly improved.  Still, for a "power user" of these application on the desktop, the mobile versions quickly proved to be lacking and, at worst, frustrating.

Several years ago the German software development company SoftMaker attempted to address these struggles with their applications TextMaker and PlanMaker.  TextMaker, released initially in 2002, was a quantum step forward in mobile word processing, allowing virtually any desktop function to be replicated on your mobile device.  They followed that up in 2004 with PlanMaker, their spreadsheet application which proved to be equally as powerful.  Both applications could read and save in Microsoft Word/Excel formats and the Professional versions provided you a desktop version of the applications as well.  Synchronization was a snap through ActiveSync and things such as formatting, file passwords and complicated formulas stayed intact - something that is still not available in the Windows Mobile 5 versions of the Word Mobile and Excel Mobile.

While Service Packs were offered from their launch until recently for TextMaker 2002 and PlanMaker 2004, no major upgrades had been made to either application until the launch of SoftMaker Office 2006.  The wait was very much worth it!  In Office 2006 - which included TextMaker 2006 and PlanMaker 2006 - both applications have received a major facelift along with dramatic improvements "under the hood".  All of the features you have come to expect from both of these award winning applications are there along with host of new features and functions.  Simply put, Office 2006 offers Windows Mobile owners the ultimate word processor and spreadsheet applications that are powerful, easy-to-use and compatible with the desktop.  No other applications offer the power of these applications!

While TextMaker and PlanMaker are coupled together as one application (Office 2006), I will be looking at each application individual in this review to give you a more comprehensive overview of them.  Additionally, this review is based on the Office 2006 for PocketPC and Windows PC.  I chose this version to review as it gives a more complete look at what these two applications can do, especially when it comes to file synchronization and sharing.  While it is possible to purchase just the PocketPC versions of these applications (in fact, you can purchase just TextMaker or PlanMaker without the other - but economically it is better to buy both in the Office package) it may be worthwhile for you to purchase the desktop versions of Office 2006.  Keep in mind that you can save your files in Word and Excel formats and use the Microsoft applications on your desktop and use the SoftMaker applications on your Windows Mobile device.

Office 2006 installs to your Windows Mobile device via ActiveSync and requires approximately 16MB of storage space on your device.  It can be installed in your device's main memory or on a storage card and requires that you have a device running PocketPC 2002 or later.  By default Office 2006 has dictionaries included for US English, UK English and German but more dictionaries in other languages are available as a free add-on.  For more information on these dictionaries visit http://www.softmaker.com/english/ofpdemo_en.htm.  These dictionaries will require an additional 3-6MB of storage space on your device.  If you purchase the Windows PC versions of the applications you will need approximately 50MB of hard disk space on your PC.

When you start TextMaker you will see that its look and feel is similar to Word Mobile or Word on your PC.  At the bottom of the display is taskbar which allows you to turn on or off various features.  For example, by pressing the font button, the font menu is displayed allowing you to change the typeface, size and formatting of your font.  Likewise the information button gives you column, line, chapter and page number information and the file button gives you the ability to open or save files as well as edit them from single taps.  In all you can have these three additional toolbars displayed all the time or can toggle them on-and-off using their respective buttons on the taskbar.  Obviously the more you display at once the less typing area you will be able to see.

Figure 1:  The TextMaker 2006 Interface

Figure 2:  The TextMaker 2006 Interface With The Additional Toolbars Displayed

When it comes to text editing, TextMaker 2006 accepts inputs from Bluetooth keyboards, the device's soft keyboard, Transcriber the Block Character recognizer.  Additionally, it is fully compatible with PhatWare's Calligrapher handwriting recognition software (You can read my review of PhatWare's CalliGrapher 8.4 by clicking this link).  The ability to use CalliGrapher in TextMaker is a real bonus in my view.  It makes document writing and editing much faster than a keyboard.

Figure 3:  TextMaker 2006 is Fully Compatible With PhatWare's CalliGrapher

Once you start using TextMaker 2006 in earnest you will quickly learn how powerfully and desktop-like this application can be.  Like desktop word processors, TextMaker allows you to edit virtually any aspect of your document:  Fonts, paragraphs, bulleted lists, headers and footers, page breaks, chapter breaks... you get the idea.  The real beauty of the application is all of this formatting is saved - 100% - when you synchronize this with your desktop PC.  This ability gives TextMaker a huge lead over competing products.  In addition to formatting being saved, documents can have embedded tables and images as well. 

Figure 4:  Text Formatting is Visible and Essentially Limitless in TextMaker 2006

Figure 5:  Embedded Images is a Snap - And Are Synchronized!

The list of new features in TextMaker 2006 is impressive.  First and perhaps most important, the document filters for Microsoft Word and RTF (Rich Text Format) files has been significantly improved.  Because TextMaker will allow you to open these types of files, in the previous version of the application formatting would sometimes not be correct or files would be truncated.  This no longer appears to be an issue.  In my testing for this review, I was able to open up without any issues files in Microsoft Word 2000, XP and 2003 formats (In fact, Figure 5 above is a Word 2003 document).  Additionally, OpenOffice.org and OpenDocument documents can be imported into TextMaker 2006 and this version of the application is now Unicode enabled.

File formats are a big issue as Office 2007 is about to be available.  It has been well documented that Word Mobile will not be able to open files in Word 2007 format and a patch for Windows Mobile 5 device will be available by mid-2007.  At this time TextMaker 2006 will not be able to open Word 2007 files either.  However the SoftMaker team has indicated that they will be working on a filter shortly and will make it available via a Service Pack for the application.

Some of the new editing features of TextMaker 2006 include the ability to contour wrap text around irregularly-shaped objects, the ability to automatically generate cross references and a bibliography, add line numbers and and hierarchical bullets and paragraph numbering.  As with previous versions of TextMaker, you can password protect your files and when you synchronize the file with your desktop PC, the password protection is not lost.

New to this version of TextMaker is "Track Changes" and annotations or comments.  Track Changes is a powerful feature commonly used in business environments where multiple groups or individuals are reviewing a document.  Essentially this allows for any changes made to a document to be noted and either accepted or rejected by you once you get the document back from the reviewer.  As with other formatting features, Track Changes is synchronized with your desktop PC if you have the desktop version of TextMaker.  Comments allow you to make annotations on a document pointing out something to the reviewer or the author.  Like Track Changes, these are synchronized with the document to your desktop and are another advanced editing feature that, until now, was only available on your PC.

Figure 6:  Track Changes in TextMaker 2006

Figure 7:  Comments in TextMaker 2006

Figure 8:  Track Changes and Comments are Synchronized to The Desktop Version of TextMaker 2006

Table support in TextMaker 2006 has also dramatically improved.  Now you have the ability to nest tables, merge, split and rotate cells, and repeat header rows on every new page in a document.  While tables have been supported in previous versions of TextMaker, 2006 makes the use of them easier and more functional.

Figure 9:  Tables are Fully Supported in TextMaker 2006

Like Tables, drawing and image insertion has been supported by previous versions of TextMaker.  Now in the 2006 version, all drawing is fully compatible with Microsoft Word's Autoshapes.  Additionally, you can adjust the brightness, contrast and gamma of an image while in TextMaker, eliminating the need to edit it before inserting it.  While it is not as sophisticated as a full-fledge image editor, this feature does save you time and effort by keeping you in one application instead of having to switch back and forth.

The complete list of features - both existing and new - is impressive in TextMaker and I recommend you download the free Users Guide to get a complete list.  You can download it at http://www.softmaker.com/english/ofpdemo_en.htm.  As you can however, TextMaker is truly a powerful word processor with an array of features that rival most desktop applications.  TextMaker is intuitive to use and most will find it very "Word-like" in nature.

Continue To Page 2...