Mobile word processing applications are essential for digital nomads, students, journalists, and everyone else who creates or edits text documents on the go. ToBeProductive has tested the biggest rival of Microsoft Word, Google Docs, to help users decide whether it’s worth a try or not.

The Good

It’s highly convenient for those who need a cross-platform solution as it’s a part of the free app ecosphere by Google. Such office essentials as Docs, Sheets, Slides, and Drive are available on any platform via a web browser.

You only have to create a Google account to get free access to the full list of apps and benefit from their combinations. Google Docs` essential partner is Drive. You’re free to avoid it and store docs offline, but it’s necessary to sync data across platforms. Google implemented the AJAX method to use Drive for background backuping. As a result, you won’t lose anything if your device dies completely. It’s a perfect safety measure.

Google Docs provides you with a simple yet powerful set of tools for creating tables, inserting and scaling images, and browsing content online within the app. Editing text with colors, styles, and fonts is available as well.

It’s effortless to collaborate on documents. You have to share a link or add a user from your contact list to start. 200 users can view the document at the same time, when 10 of them are allowed to edit simultaneously. Writers and editors at ToBeProductive use it for preparing articles for posting. Authors get comments and change suggestions from editors, complete them, and submit articles.

If you need to export your work, the app allows you to convert documents to such formats as DOCX, PDF, ODT, TXT, RTF, HTML, and even EPUB. It means that you can match the requirements of a comprehensive list of destinations. You can read more about features in our Google Docs review.

The Bad and Some More Good

The biggest editing drawback is the absence of the tool that shows non-printable characters. The original web version doesn’t have it either, but the problem is solvable with the Show add-on. Unfortunately, there’s nothing like that for Android. iOS users can’t get any add-ons at all.

You can lack many other Word features too. Google Docs is focused on speed and simplicity rather than on in-depth editing. If your company uses MS Word and you think of moving to Google Docs, you should compare feature lists and make sure that all your business essentials are available. Otherwise, you will only lose time and money on reteaching employees.

When you need to collaborate on a document together with other users simultaneously, it can become a big buggy problem. When you type at the same moment, the document can glitch sometimes. It leads to distraction and makes you look for ways of writing individually to merge groundworks later. This drawback is similarly annoying in mobile and desktop versions. Though, as was mentioned above, sharing access to documents with multiple users is beneficial too.

Conclusion

Google Docs comes for free and doesn’t require you to purchase an expensive desktop app for cross-platform use. ToBeProductive recommends Google Docs as the most straightforward and reliable app, though not the most heaped one.

Author’s Bio

Hi! I’m Jully Bell from ToBeProductive. I’m enthusiastic about searching and applying various techniques for raising productivity of my own and my company. Mobile apps are perfect for this purpose, so I test them daily.