Leaked documents reveal Office document support in the upcoming Pre.
Thanks to Engadget and a leak from Sprint we have confirmed details on the upcoming device and how it will be sold.
The launch guide has details of pricing, monthly plans for US customers but, as usual, Office Watch is interested in how the device links with Microsoft Office and documents.
That’s important not just for potential Pre buyers but anyone sending documents via email. You need to keep in mind what a receiver’s device is capable of – can they open a document? Can they edit and return a document?
Documents and Attachments
The Palm Pre will support what is describes as ‘Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Adobe PDF’ documents. There is no detail on whether that means both old style (.doc .xls .ppt) documents and the newer Office 2007/OpenXML formats (.docx .xlsx .pptx) let alone whether password protected documents can be opened. OpenDocument ( .odt) files aren’t mentioned at all.
The document viewing support is provided by the Dataviz product ‘Docs to Go’ which is installed in the Pre’s ROM. This looks like good news because Dataviz has a good track record of supporting document viewing and editing on small devices. Their Docs to Go for Palm devices is up to version 11 and supports both old and new Microsoft Office document formats. It’s reasonable to assume that the Pre version will have that support.
Document Editing – please wait …
The Pre can’t directly edit documents however they are promising a version of Dataviz Docs-to-Go will add that ability. Timing and price of that extra have not been announced.
Universal Search
The Pre boasts a ‘universal’ search that can find information across contacts, applications and web. It’s unclear if the device can search inside emails or email attachments.
Exchange Server compatibility
MS Exchange Push on the Pre is said to have “synchronization of e-mail, calendar, tasks and contacts as well as over the air look-ups to the Global Address Book“.
The Pre supports direct connections to the following Exchange Server configurations for synchronization:
Exchange Server 2003 with Service Pack 2
Exchange Server 2007 with Service Pack 1
This includes Small Business Server 2003 and 2008 which have Exchange Server as part of the bundle.
ActiveSync versions 2.0, 2.5, 12 and 12.1 are supported.
Of course POP and IMAP is also supported for individual users.
