Weighing in at a hefty 2.1MBs, Documents to Go 5 Premium Edition is becoming better everyday. Documents to Go 5 (herein referred to as DTGPre.) sports two new major features over that of DTG 4 Professional including improved hires font support in Word to Go and SpreadSheet to Go, and the ability to edit Powerpoint Presentation files right on your Palm handheld and sync them to your desktop.

For those unfamiliar with DTG, this is one of many office suites now available for the PalmOS based handheld. Currently offering the ability to edit and view documents, spreadsheets, and PowerPoint presentations as well as download your email, DTG truly puts your desktop on your PDA.

DTGPre supports Word, Excel, and Powerpoint files, which are converted to DTGPre's format for use on the Palm during synchronization. DTGPre also supports the ability to read Palm Doc files, view PDF files, and act as your email application, including attachments.

Upon launch of any of the DTGPre applications, you arrive at a main screen where you can choose the file and file type you want to edit or view. At the top right of the screen is the standard category list view. The list view is also how you switch to documents stored on expansion card. To the lower left of the category list is the document list view, where you can select the type of files you want to view. You can select to view all types of files, Word to Go files, Sheet to Go files, as well as the other formats available.

Available via the menu are options to add or import existing documents on the Palm, delete documents, beam documents, beam DTGPre, go to the display options, and edit DTGPre preferences. The display options allow you to customize the main DTGPre menu. You can choose how documents are sorted, and view the document size (in kilobytes). You also have the option to have DTGPre show documents that have no view. This is handy for file linking, which is used when you want to have a file available for easy synchronizing to your Palm, but not actually have the document on your Palm. Instances where this can be used are when you have limited available memory, or so you can sync via a modem or wireless connection.

Word to Go

As part of the DTGPre suite, Word to Go at 396k is the heart of the suite (an office suite just isn't complete without a word processor). After selecting the Word to Go document from the main menu, you are brought to the Word to Go document screen. At the top of the screen are two groups of toggles standard to all word processors: Bold, italic, and underline formatting options along with alignment, number, and bullet drop down toggles. The alignment toggles drops down a list of the 4 standard alignments, however the number and bullet toggles only turn these on and off, more options are available in the menu. At the very bottom of the screen you find the Done button, a button with an "A" linking to the Font screen, a button with a paragraph symbol linking to the Paragraph screen, and another button linking to the find and replace screen. There is also room for the left and right scroll arrows for wide documents.

Menu options available are save, save as, preferences, zoom, standard edit menu with find and replace and find next additions, insert page break and table, font, paragraph, bullets and number formatting, and increase/decrease indent. Word to Go Preferences allow you to include Word to Go in the PalmOS find function, enable hires font viewing, show/hide the edit table controls, enable/disable active text, and confirm or auto-save changes upon exiting Word to Go. The Zoom function allows you to set the display size of text in hires mode; this is because text can appear quite small on screen and be hard to read. Word to Go's font preferences are available via the font button or the font menu item. You can set the font name, size, underlining style, bold, italic, underline, strikethrough, super and sub scripting, as well as foreground and background colors. Paragraph options consist of alignment settings, including justification, left and right indenting as well as first line and hanging indents, and line spacing. Bullet and number support includes standard bullet lists and seven different number formats. There are also restart number and continue number options.
New features in Word to Go from DTG4Pro include hires fonts, find and replace (instead of just find), table, numbering, and bullet support, as well as justification alignment. Also, pictures are viewable in Word to Go, instead of the pictures being displayed as a placeholder.

Sheet to Go

Sheet to Go is DTG's answer to support Excel files. Simply launch Sheet to Go and you arrive at the standard DTGPre menu. Here you select the spreadsheet file you want to edit and you arrive at Sheet to Go.

The main Sheet to Go window consists of a drop-down at the top right of the screen, a bar graph like button next to that, the done button at the bottom left of the screen, and Fx button and navigational arrows next to the Done button, a go button, and a field with a check mark and an X next to it. The drop-down list at the top of the screen allows you to switch between the different sheets and charts in a spreadsheet. The go button allows you jump to different cells in a spreadsheet either by comments and bookmarks or you can also enter a cell position. The graph like button at the top middle allows you to insert and edit charts in a spreadsheet.

Sheet to Go menu options include save, save as, recalculate, add/edit bookmarks, zoom, preferences, the standard edit menu, insert function/row/column/sheet, format cell/number/sheet, sort, unhide all, and reset view settings. Sheet to Go allows you to include it in the PalmOS find, via the preferences screen, set auto-calculating for use with functions, and confirming or auto-saving changes upon exit of Sheet to Go. Just as in Word to Go, the Zoom option allows you to set the size of the text in the screen, since the smaller text can be quite hard to view. Sheet to Go also has support for cell and sheet formatting and functions. Cell formatting includes basic alignment settings, bold or regular text, cell locking, and text and cell color. Number formatting allows you to set rounding options. Sheet formatting consists of the sheet name, and whether the sheet is protected or not.

Support for functions in Sheet to Go is pretty good, however you are limited to supported functions. One problem I found with function support is that if you use a spreadsheet which contains an unsupported function, the file is unreadable on the Palm, however it is viewable.

DTGPre also features chart support. Overall this seems pretty good. There are many types of charts available to create and view on the Palm, and it is fairly quick. One drawback however is that you cannot have the chart in the spreadsheet itself; the chart appears as if it is a separate sheet. Chart support does not take advantage of hires.

Pics to Go

Pics to Go is DTGPre's image viewer. Pics to Go allows you to easily synchronize pictures to your Palm device. Viewing the pictures on the handheld is pretty simple overall. Just run Pics to Go from your launcher. This brings you to the DTGPre main menu, where you can choose the picture you want to view. After you have chosen the picture to view, the image pops up. Loading the image is pretty quick when set to "fit to screen" mode. Larger pictures can also be viewed in actual size, though loading them is a bit slower. Picture size is toggled by a + or - button at the bottom of the screen.

Pics to Go does not have hires support and file sizes tend to be a bit larger than a JPEG file, however you can store pictures on external memory cards.

PDF to Go

Documents to Go also includes a PDF converter. This allows you to view PDF files on your Palm. PDF to Go works in conjunction with Word to Go and therefore doesn't support images. When you synchronize a PDF to your Palm, basically it is converted into a Word to Go document. This can be a problem in some cases, as some PDF files don't contain any text; they are essentially one big picture. These type of PDF files cannot be viewed on the Palm.

DataViz Mail

DataViz takes mail on the Palm further with its own email application. The difference between DataViz Mail and the default mail application is that DataViz Mail supports attachments; Word, Excel, Powerpoint, and picture attachments specifically.

Just as in the default Mail application included on most Palms, when you run DataViz Mail you arrive at a screen listing your emails. At the top right is a drop down allowing you to select between your inbox, outbox, deleted, filed, draft, and sent mail folders. At the bottom left of the screen are two buttons, one labeled new and the other labeled show. The new button takes you to the new message screen where you can compose an email. New email details include carbon copy, blind carbon copy, priority setting, and confirmations for read and delivery of the email. You can save a message as a draft or send it. Messages are sent via your PC when you synchronize. The show button brings you to a window where you can choose how messages are sorted, and whether or not to show the date. You can even set up a 2 line display per message for messages with long subject lines.

DataViz Mail also allows you to set up a signature for outgoing messages and whether or not to prompt you when you delete a message. HotSync options are also available and separate for local and remote hotsyncing. You can choose to sync all messages, send messages only, or sync only unread messages. You can also set filtering and the message truncation length.

Synchronization

As with any office suite for Palm, there needs to be a strong link from the Palm to the PC and vice versa. DataViz takes care of this with DocSync technology. DocSync technology allows you to sync a document to your Palm from your PC and back, with no loss of formatting. This is great for documents you may have that contain pictures, tables, and charts.

The desktop application allows full control of how and what documents are synchronized to the Palm and back. Above a list which displays the documents on the Palm and their sync status are 5 large buttons, labeled in order from left to right: Add item, Remove, Move, Details, and Help. “Add Item” brings up the standard dialog box where you can select a file to place on the Palm. You can also drag files into the DTGPro window from Windows Explorer or send a file to the DTGPro conduit by right clicking it, and under the send to option, choosing Document to Go. “Remove” simply removes a file from the list. This also removes the file from the Palm as well, during the next synchronization. The “Move File” button allows you to move a document to another location. This is handy, because if you move the file without updating it in DTGPro's conduit, it cannot sync the file with the Palm. The list below the five large buttons displays the documents to be placed or are already of the Palm. Type, size, status, view, and category columns display the information appropriate for each. Right clicking an item in the list brings up a menu. Here you can set item details, open, show, or move the original file, update the items view on the Palm, or remove the item. The item details option allows you to set the title, desired view, category, and file format on the Palm.

DTGPro also allows you to manage expansion cards and categories via the desktop conduit. Various other options are available via preferences under the tools menu. The preferences window contains 6 tabs at the top of the screen: General, Exchange, HotSync action, Presentations, Graphics, and Communications. General options include default formats for files synced to the Palm, default view for files synced to the Palm, and default category for new documents. The exchange tab allows you to set options for the file formats used to create documents on the PC (if necessary), and where they should be placed. The HotSync tab contains the settings for how DTGPro syncs between the PC and the Palm. The normal synchronize, desktop overwrites handheld, and do nothing options are available. There also is an option to make sure you have enough memory free on the Palm. This is set to 32kilobytes by default. The presentations tab includes options applicable to SlideShow to Go. Options here are default template and template location, and options to sync large and small files with the slideshow. The graphics tab allows you to choose the file format and number of colors to use when creating an image on the desktop which was beamed to you from someone else. Lastly is the communications tab, new to DTGPre, which enables automatic updates to be downloaded whenever your connected to the Internet.

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