Exclusive: Quickoffice 6.0 for S60 goes live!

Sorry the comment thread wasn't up earlier, we had site problems.....

Steve

slitchfield wrote:Upgrading from previous versions has to be done using the over-the-air Quickmanager system at present and the pricing is:

* Upgrade for 4.5 customers: $15
* Upgrade for 5.0 customers: $10

Nice to see the upgrade prices kept quite low...

I can't seem to find any upgrade links on their website.

Besides what happened to the offer of free upgrade if you bought the version 5 around Chritmas time?

You bet I'm going to place a support ticket and ask them about this.

Let us know the answer about the free upgrade. I'm in the same situation
By the way, does anyone else find that Quickoffice 5 always defaults to numeric input? I have a sheet that requires a lot of text input and its a real pain having to hold down the # key before I enter each cell.

Does Adobe Reader have a settings pane now? It's missing one badly, specially for us S60v5 owners. Sorry for the blog spam, but the current adobe reader just doesn't cut it http://www.fwrnando.com/blog/2009/app-review-adobe-reader-25-for-s60v5/

what is the theme you are using for the displayed screen shots? i likey.

thanks.

xerxes wrote:Let us know the answer about the free upgrade. I'm in the same situation
By the way, does anyone else find that Quickoffice 5 always defaults to numeric input? I have a sheet that requires a lot of text input and its a real pain having to hold down the # key before I enter each cell.

I submitted a ticket to them and shortly after they replied, but guess what?

1. They reply to a wrong ticket number, a ticket I submitted to them long ago with case status stating "closed".
2. When I already have said that I can't see the update through Quickmanager, they provide me with the step-by-step guide on using Quickmanager to update.
(At this time I came up, but not when I tried earlier today)

The answer they gave me was the following:

Hello, Cheung.

You may purchase Quickoffice v6 for a discount through Quickmanager on your device. Open Quickoffice and then select Quickmanager and Updates and Upgrades.

Which basically means that the upgrade is not for free. That is totally agains what they promised during their own campaign.
😡

And for 80 Norwegian kroner = 11.96672 U.S. dollars it's not $10 as Mr. Steve pointed out.
(Though of course the currency varies a bit all the time)

I've had a modified version of the 6.0 for quite a while now and as far as I can tell there is just the GUI which has been improved / disproved (depending if you like flashy icons). I haven't tested fully what's under the hood though.

What about Open Document format?
Are .odt, .ods, .odp supported by Quickoffice?
If not, any other solution to enable handling of open document files?

Some points that Quickoffice or AAS fail to mention

1: If you have previously installed version Quickoffice 5, then Quickoffice 6 will not overwrite fully. It basically leaves a complete inaccessible of copy of Quickoffice 5 on the phone, complete with all help files.

If it is not accessible then its not a huge problem I hear you say, but because QO6 can only be installed to the device memory, it actually wastes close to 5mb of device memory.

With most devices like the E71, N82, N95 only having about 100mb to start with (and some considerably less, as low as 10mb for the 5500) to lose 5mb is a big deal.

Sloppy programming from Quickoffice, As all versions of QO are un-installable, the only way to truly get round it is to *#7370# format your phone and then re-install Quickoffice 6 on its own.

2: The fonts on QO6 in the file manager are massive, along with epocware's handy safe pro, QO seems to thing it's better to waste screen space with massive fonts, at least make them scalable and give us a choice of font size.

I wish I had just not bothered with update, oh well best get formatting..........

Ratkat:

>>Sloppy programming from Quickoffice

This is not true. This is a limitation of the Symbian/S60 software installer. If an application is in ROM (like Quickoffice is in most cases) on your phone, to update it in RAM you have to use a certain type of SIS file. That is a 'patch' (PU) SIS file - and the system will not let you uninstall it. This is all down to limitations from the operating system, not a mistake/desire to waste space from Quickoffice, I can assure you!

I am going to find out how these support tickets are being answered and how the 'free upgrade if you buy v5 now' process will work. I will try to post back.

Phil (Quickoffice)

Unregistered wrote:Ratkat:

>>Sloppy programming from Quickoffice

This is not true. This is a limitation of the Symbian/S60 software installer. If an application is in ROM (like Quickoffice is in most cases) on your phone, to update it in RAM you have to use a certain type of SIS file. That is a 'patch' (PU) SIS file - and the system will not let you uninstall it. This is all down to limitations from the operating system, not a mistake/desire to waste space from Quickoffice, I can assure you!

I am going to find out how these support tickets are being answered and how the 'free upgrade if you buy v5 now' process will work. I will try to post back.

Phil (Quickoffice)

Yes I can understand that if you update from the built in version in my E71's case QO4 to later version you can't un-install the version out of ROM, this has always been the case, and I accept it.

What I can't accept is that as in my case, I previously installed the QO 5 patch to go from QO4 tp QO5, then yesterday I installed the QO6 patch, surely this patch should uninstall or overwrite the previous QO5 patch, which it doesn't, it just wastes c: drive space.

In QO6 many of the QO file names both in SYS and RESOURCE have changed, so you essentially have both QO5 & QO6 both installed in addition to the QO4 in ROM.

By formatting and then installing QO6 straight over QO4 saves approx 4.8mb compared with QO4 - QO5 - QO6, this is simply down to the QO5 files being left in C: drive instead of being overwritten.

To say this is a limitation of S60 is wrong, Nokia Maps uses the patch system, and as you say you can't overwrite the ROM when you install a later version, however if you then update again it overwrites the previous patch, thus not wasting space.

Unregistered wrote:What about Open Document format?
Are .odt, .ods, .odp supported by Quickoffice?

It have never worked in QuickOffice for those file formats you have to use Sept Solution Mobile Office for that

Unregistered wrote:
I am going to find out how these support tickets are being answered and how the 'free upgrade if you buy v5 now' process will work. I will try to post back.

Phil (Quickoffice)

I've already tried that and they answered me that I had to pay for the upgrade.

Ratkat wrote:What I can't accept is that as in my case, I previously installed the QO 5 patch to go from QO4 tp QO5, then yesterday I installed the QO6 patch, surely this patch should uninstall or overwrite the previous QO5 patch, which it doesn't, it just wastes c: drive space.

In QO6 many of the QO file names both in SYS and RESOURCE have changed, so you essentially have both QO5 & QO6 both installed in addition to the QO4 in ROM.

By formatting and then installing QO6 straight over QO4 saves approx 4.8mb compared with QO4 - QO5 - QO6, this is simply down to the QO5 files being left in C: drive instead of being overwritten.

To say this is a limitation of S60 is wrong, Nokia Maps uses the patch system, and as you say you can't overwrite the ROM when you install a later version, however if you then update again it overwrites the previous patch, thus not wasting space.

That you have access to the SYS and RESOURCE folders just shows me that you have a hacked phone.
(You can view the content inside the RESOURCE folder with a non-hackable phone, but not the contents of the SYS folder)

Having my N95 available for hacking I've tried installing the Boingo application. However when I got trouble with it I tried again. Instead of overwriting things, files were replaced with a 01 at the back of the filename, leading to duplicates.

What I basically are trying to say is that hacked phones are more prone to have problems.

I installed QO 6.0.263 on my N82 which previously had 5.0.2.3 and the update went fine and everything is working.
(I had to pay for the update though, 80 NOK)

Going to test the support for password protected Office 2007 files.
If they fail to open you can bet I want my money back.

wampyre wrote:It have never worked in QuickOffice for those file formats you have to use <a href="http://www.sept-solutions.de/English/office.php">Sept Solution Mobile Office</a> for that

I've already tried that and they answered me that I had to pay for the upgrade.

That you have access to the SYS and RESOURCE folders just shows me that you have a hacked phone.

Having my N95 available for hacking I've tried installing the Boingo application. However when I got trouble with it I tried again. Instead of overwriting things, files were replaced with a 01 at the back of the filename, leading to duplicates.

What I basically are trying to say is that hacked phones are more prone to have problems.

I installed QO on my N82 which previously had 5.0.2.3 and the update went fine and everything is working.
(I had to pay for the update though, 80 NOK)

Going to test the support for password protected Office 2007 files.
If they fail to open you can bet I want my money back.

My E71 is not hacked, you have access to Resource without hacking, I installed QO6 (with the same results) on my old hacked N82 to see why I had the problem with my E71, hence the reason I can tell the file names have changed, the files names haven't had a '01' added, they are different names altogther prefixed by AM_ces

Our promotion for the free upgrade to 6.0 was for customers who purchased Quickoffice Premier 5.0 from the Quickoffice website or through Quickmanager between December 1, 2008 and the release of Quickoffice Premier 6.0. These customers can upgrade their Quickoffice Premier 5.0 for free in Quickmanager (over the air catalog). The free download will only appear in Quickmanager specifically for these customers that bought during the promotion; otherwise there is an upgrade charge to purchase our latest release.

David (Quickoffice Marketing Dept.)

Ok. I checked in Quickmanager and I do see the free upgrade to v6.

I'll give it a try and see if it fixes my input default problem. If it does I'll report back here.

I've applied the update and the input problem is still there.

I don't understand why they force it back to numeric input every time I change cell. Why not just leave the method set to whatever I choose? That way if I need to enter a lot of words I can do so, if I need to enter numbers it's up to me to change inputs.

This is one of several disappointing things about Quickoffice in comparison to Office Suite in my opinion and it makes me understand why they stopped giving a trial of the editor. If I had been able to compare Quickoffice to Office Suite (which does have a free trial by the way) I would not have been swayed by Quickoffice's cheaper price.

I won't be buying Quickoffice when I upgrade to the N97 later this year.

Ratkat - actually, the problem of duplicating some binaries for v6 really is down to further limitations in the operating system. When you install the Quickoffice update to the ROM product, it "eclipses" the binaries in ROM as Symbian call it. However, if the application uses the Symbian ECOM plugin system (which we do), then you can run in to binary compatibility problems. In a nutshell, the plugins that are stored in ROM can sometimes be loaded incorrectly, which will now "link" against the "eclipsed" DLLs from the RAM upgrade installation, causing a crash since those are new DLLs and not now necessarily binary compatible.

In order to get around such eclipsing problems, we have had to change all our DLLs to ensure most things no longer actually "eclipse" what is in ROM (and thus those plugins in ROM still "work" if loaded). This is a very unfortunate side effect of how Symbian has implemented the "eclipsing" rules for in-built applications and indeed means that for v6 upgrades over previous in-RAM upgrades, more disk space is lost. However, now that our "RAM" binaries are no longer eclipsing/conflicting with the "ROM" binaries, this will not be a problem for future releases (so for anyone who upgrades straight from v3.x or v4.x in ROM to v6.x now, if there is a v6.5 (for example) down the line, there should not be an issue with lost or duplicate DLLs - this problem will only unfortunately affect anyone who has already upgraded their ROM version in the past, and who then upgrades to v6 or later too).

Unfortunately, as my colleague Phil mentioned, the Symbian installer does not allow you to uninstall PU SIS files, so the only option is to indeed clean out your old v5 before installing the v6 if you wish. Again, unfortunately, there is nothing we can do about this.

xerxes - please can you describe more what problem you're seeing? Steps to reproduce? Phone you're using and firmware? I do not see this on my phone.

Regards,

Jelte (Quickoffice Engineering)

Hi Steve

One question you omited (unless it was added in an earlier version and I missed it):
Can you paste (e.g. a formula) into a range of cells yet? Or is it still one cell at a time?

Julie

Jelte,

Here's a simple example of what I mean.

First ensure that the phone is in predictive text mode by typing a note or something. Make sure that the predictive text symbol is shown at the top right hand side of the screen. Then:

1. Open Quick Office
2. Select New Document
3. Select Spreadsheet
4. In any cell press the nav key to enter the cell
5. Type the word "act" ie press 2-2-8. Whilst typing you will see the input mode symbol in the top right corner has changed to 123. The cell now contains "228", not the expected "act".
6. Now go to a different cell and hold down the # key to force predictive text mode input. Typing 228 now leaves "act" in the cell as expected.
7. Now go to a third cell and type 228 again. The cell should contain "act" as the input mode was last left as predictive. But if doesn't, it contains the number 228. Quick Sheet always forces the input mode to numeric when the user starts to type in an empty cell. Strangely if you return to edit cell that already has contents, even if that content is a number, Quick Sheet forces the input mode to Text.

What the programme should do is use the input mode set by the user. The only exception to this might be when editing a cell that has had a specific cell format applied, e.g. if the cell has been formatted to show currency amounts or integers it would be reasonable to default the input mode for that cell to numeric.

Basic rule. When editting a cell with no specific cell format use the input mode defined by the user.

I am using a Nokia N95-1 on firmware 20 by the way

xerxes

xerxes - thanks for this info. I can see what you mean now. Let me talk with Engineering and report this properly as a usability improvement request to be looked at for the future. Thanks again for taking the time to post the extra details.

Regards,

Phil (Quickoffice)

Unregistered wrote:xerxes - thanks for this info. I can see what you mean now. Let me talk with Engineering and report this properly as a usability improvement request to be looked at for the future. Thanks again for taking the time to post the extra details.

Regards,

Phil (Quickoffice)

No problem Phil, it's good to see a manufacturer interested in getting feedback.

If you want another one to take a look at, when opening a sheet Quicksheet doesn't return focus to the same cell as was selected when the sheet was last saved.

Quicksheet 5 used to open with the cursor on line 2 all the time. In version 6 it seems to open "near" but not "at" the last focus point.

This might seem very picky but if you have a sheet with over 150 rows you don't want to have scroll down to the bottom row every time you open the sheet.

An option to scroll by page would also be very nice to have but isn't as important the other two.

Xerxes

I find that their customer support is not the greatest as well as their advertisement about the 30-money back guarantee is just a ridiculous joke.

Here's why

Cheung Yuen Wong
Posted On: Feb 06, 2009 12:41 PM
First of all thank you for a great product.

That said I'm still a bit dissapointed in the latest version of your software.
Indeed it does mostly of what it states it does.

However when it comes to the viewing of .zip files it does not do that.
One of the issues I'm having is that I have a .zip file which has a folder in it.
In this folder again there are two folders and a multiple of files.
(What I basically are saying here is that you have one folder in which there are subfolders along with some files).

When trying to view the files it won't simply show up, just two of the files and none of the folders shows up.

I've included two screenshots regarding this case.
First one is from the filemanager within QuickOffice
Second one is from the filemager X-plore

As you can see from the second picture X-plore displays all of the files,
while QuickOffice don't.

Another thing that bothers me is that I don't like the GUI of the new version of your software. (Personally I think that the version 5 had a better GUI)
Icons that expand itself and so on.
It would be nice if the transition hadn't taken so long though.
As it is now it simply becomes a bother when trying to browse through the folders on my phone, taking away the focus of what I'm trying to e.g. look for.

I therefore want to claim the use of your 30-days Guarantee, as your product currently are not doing what it should in regards to viewing of .zip files.

Thank you in advance.

P.S. I'll defintely will buy your software when I get the N97
(and then probably will get used to fancy icons expanding)
but as for now version 5.0x works great for my use on my N82

Larry
Posted On: Feb 06, 2009 04:03 PM
Hello,

Thank you for your message.

Did you you create the .zip file, or was it created for you? If you did create the .zip file, what did you create the .zip file in? Would you mind sending me the .zip file so that I can test with it please.

Thank you,

Larry
Cheung Yuen Wong
Posted On: Feb 07, 2009 10:13 AM
Yes, I created the .zip file myself and I did it on my laptop running Windows XP.

As for the .zip file I tried sending it to you via the upload file option but I guess it's too large
to be uploaded.

The size of the .zip file is approximately 80 mb.

Larry
Posted On: Feb 18, 2009 04:08 PM
Hi,

Thank you for your patience while I attempted to recreate the issue you have reported.

Luckily you were able to get screenshots of your file, unfortunately I have been unable to recreate the issue. I have reported it to our Engineers for further review.

We will report back to you once they have finished their investigation.

Regards,
Larry

Cheung Yuen Wong
Posted On: Feb 20, 2009 06:47 AM
Thank you for testing as I said earlier the file in which I tried to open was about 80Mb in size.
I have therefore now uploaded it to a filesharing host for you to download
http://www.megaupload.com/?d=BIB1LNA4

The folder structure in my memory card starts with E:\ and therefore the whole content with the folders is E:\A - Essential\ and so on.

That said there seems to be an update of the QuickOffice application, how do I retrieve that?
My current version is 6.0.263 while I find that there are versions that are 6.0.270.

I've found no way to conveniently upgrade the application purchased with you and I find it also strange that I would have to pay again to get an update of this version.

I thought that the reason to support the software was to get the following:
1. Customer support
2. Upgrade within the same version is easily downloaded

1. You have shown that to some extent, by trying to help me, that has still not helped me with the issue of not displaying the .zip file in which I submitted this ticket for.
2. There are no mentioning about the upgrades version of the software that is from 6.0.263 to version 6.0.270

Which such reasons for purchasing a software which fails to the expectation of the customer, I'd really rather used pirated version of your software than purchase it.

With other words I'm not satisfied with either your customer service nor the advertised 30-day Money Back guarantee.

As you can see from the conversation with the one at the support indeed he does try to help me, but unfortunately as a customer I'm really left down by the following 2 things.

1. When they advertise something such as 30 day money back gurantee, that guarantee has to kept. You can't simply just close a case because you couldn't get to see the problem.
2. Where's the option to update the software? Here I mean the option to upgrade to a new version within the same number e.g from 6.0.263 to version 6.0.270.
(Here my purchased applications from Lonely Cat Games was definitely worth my money, as well as the convenience of changing the license code when chaining my handset)

I'm still waiting for an answer from them despite Larry have chosen to close this case.

I really want to support QuickOffice but with such bad costumer support I'm not going to purchase any more software from them in the future.
I'd rather go and wait / find modified version of the software instead of supporting them.

Seems as they keep their words after all.
As they keep their words so will I.

Larry
Posted On: Feb 20, 2009 08:51 AM
Wong,

I have requested a refund for your purchase of Quickoffice (order 244528446). Please allow 3-5 business days for the refund to process (though it may take two weeks or more for the credit to post, depending on the credit card company).

Since a refund has been requested, we do ask that you remove Quickoffice from your N82. You can remove Quickoffice from your phone by hard resetting it. Before you do this, you will need to back up your phone memory, as Nokia recommends at www.nokia.com. Once you've backed up your information, at your phone's main screen, enter *#7370# � The default lock code is 12345. This will restore the device to its original state, removing all user data, contacts, and third-party applications you may have installed. It will also restore Quickoffice to the original version that was on your phone when you bought it.

Regards,
Larry

Cheung Yuen Wong
Posted On: Feb 20, 2009 03:01 PM
Thank you for your reply.

I will reformat my phone as the deal is to not have it installed.

I also send back the file in which I got on purchase and will also delete the copy I have on my laptop.