Updated article for iOS 7: Best Apps to Edit Microsoft Office Documents (Word, Excel, and Powerpoint) in iOS 7
Can my iPhone, iPad (Mini), and iPod Touch edit Word, Excel, and Powerpoint Documents?
This is one of the most common questions that comes up when someone gets a new iPhone, iPad (Mini) or iPod Touch. It is a great question and the answer is, “Yes.”
Since Microsoft has not released an official version of Microsoft Office for iOS devices, you will need to get a third party app. These apps do a great job handling Word, Excel, and Powerpoint documents. Many of the apps allow you to create new documents that can be edited on your computer at a later time if needed. In addition, some of the apps sync with Dropbox or other cloud based services in order to allow you to begin a document on your computer and edit or finish it on your iDevice. If you do a lot of editing of MS Office documents on the your iDevice, then picking up one of these apps is the way to go. The apps vary in price from Free and on up. The best free app that allows you to edit Office documents is called CloudOn. CloudOn has a ton of features and it looks similar to Word, Excel, and Powerpoint on your computer.
The Pages app is an excellent word processing app. It can open and edit Word documents although there are some conversion errors at times. Pages then allows you to seamlessly email out a copy of the finished document in Pages format, Word format, or PDF format. The downside with pages is that it only syncs with iCloud and does not have Dropbox integration.
The following is a collection of recommended apps for iPhone, iPad (Mini), and iPod Touch that can edit Microsoft Office Documents (Word, Excel, and Powerpoint):
To read a review of CloudOn and QuickOffice Pro, click here: How to Edit Microsoft Office Documents on your iPhone, iPad (Mini), and iPod Touch