FIGURE F

Your files can be filtered and sorted to make finding what you're looking for easy.

I found that the ability to filter the list to show only DOC files, WordView, or SheetView files also came in handy at times. The list also displays the files in boldface text until first viewing, whereupon they toggle to the normal font. Tapping a document quickly opens the viewer, though WordView documents seemed to take somewhat longer than SheetView to load if they had tables or a lot of specially formatted text.

SheetView
Moving on to spreadsheets, SheetView is a quick, functional way to see your spreadsheets if you think you only need to reference the information. It boasts some features I'd love to see in other Palm OS spreadsheets, such as the ability to turn on a full screen view by eliminating menus at the top and bottom of the screen and bookmarks for finding specific information you need to get to quickly. It also offers the essential ability to freeze columns or the top row in order to keep headings in view on the small screen.

To navigate around the sheet, I simply had to drag my stylus across the screen in the direction I wanted to move or use the tiny on-screen arrows. Unfortunately, SheetView offers no bold, italic, or other formatting to help clarify the presentation.

Attachments To Go
DataViz offers an added bonus for those of you who depend on email as I do. A special Palm OS Mail plug-in application called Attachments To Go is available as a free download. It allows you to synchronize all the word processing and spreadsheet files sent to you as email attachments.

I found this to be a tremendously useful feature. I've begun using the time while waiting for a meeting to start for reviewing all my email messages with attachments. The only enhancement I'd ask from DataViz is some sort of hyperlink from within the mail message I'm reading to the associated Documents To Go file. This feature is implemented in the Documents To Go plug-in for the excellent MultiMail Pro III application recently acquired by Palm.

A few last pros and cons
Advanced as this software may be, there's one major shortcoming--no editing ability. Nada, zip, zilch. Documents To Go left me tapping away at the screen in frustration as I tried to change a sales volume entry in the SheetView or edit a limp sentence in WordView. It's a serious drawback in my estimation, given the current state of DOC reader/editors and Palm OS spreadsheets out there. I hope adding full editing capability is on the list of future enhancements.

Another weakness? For some reason I've experienced inconsistent ability to access my DOC files. Sometimes they showed up and could be selected and viewed, and sometimes not. Hmmm.

On the plus side, one extremely useful aspect I found was the ability to link files directly to Documents To Go without actually copying them from the folders where I had them stored on my PC. When adding the files to the desktop version, I simply chose the "link file" option. This tells the desktop application to look for changes to linked files during HotSync operations. The program will then update the documents on the Palm device with every HotSync. What a great boon for usability!