Using Linux Created Documents in Android

We are now living in a digital age where more people are consuming content on mobile devices because it's convenient, for one. I remember the days when I worked as a Field Engineer traveling all over the U.S. I had to carry a heavy laptop and printer to major airports and get through the hassle of security before the days of 9-11. Being petite, it was a struggle to have to deal with carrying those two heavy items, my suitcase and purse. Then once I got to a company office, I had to hook up my laptop and printer with cables to crunch numbers on an Excel spreadsheet with massive amounts of data.  These Excel spreadsheets were used to determine staffing levels or how to rearrange freight at specific doors at a break-bulk dock.

Due to huge improvements in technology, my job executing those studies would be so much easier today. If I were using Canonical's Android phone concept, I could just plug in my phone to the hotel television and use LibreOffice's Calc to change formulas on spreadsheets equivalent to Excel. I could even view these spreadsheets on an airplane, whether I was using Canonical's phone or an Android tablet downloading them from either Dropbox or Google Drive.

Today, I'm going to show you that you can take documents created in LibreOffice on a Linux desktop, store them on a cloud drive, retrieve and edit them using apps on my Android phone, upload them to the cloud drive and review the Android edited documents on a Linux desktop again. What you will be witnessing is the magic of inter-Linux collaboration. Now, it is possible to collaborate with a MAC or a Windows device using the documents stored in the cloud, assuming they share the same common format like .doc, .ppt, pdf, .xls, etc. Remember, LibreOffice is capable of opening, editing and saving Windows documents. Yes, there are some exceptional cases where complex formatting may experience issues in LibreOffice. However, there should be no problem, whatsoever, viewing in PDF format. That's about as universal as the language of "English" spoken to conduct business all over the world.

Here is a summary of the collaboration scenario I executed:

Devices used for collaboration - Ubuntu 12.04 Toshiba laptop, Moto X smartphone with Android KitKat and Linux Mint 17 HP Pavilion laptop.

Cloud Storage Provider - Dropbox



Wordprocessor - LibreOffice Writer on Linux: OpenDocument Reader on Android



Presentations - LibreOffice Impress on Linux: QuickOffice and Impress Remote on Android



Spreadsheets - LibreOffice Calc on Linux: QuickOffice on Android



What I was able to do successfully is take each type of document above, whether it was a wordprocessor, presentation or spreadsheet, create it on Ubuntu 12.04 and upload it to Dropbox. Then I was able to retrieve the document on my Moto X, edit the document on Moto X and save the revised document to Dropbox. Finally, I downloaded the document from Dropbox to Linux Mint 17 and viewed or edited it.

Please note that the Android app "OpenDocument Reader" can read and edit .odt and .ods format pretty easily. However, the .odp format does not completely work. I get the headings of each slide but not the details on each slide. A potential workaround is to save the presentation in .pptx format and use the Android App "QuickOffice" to modify the presentation file. Then save the presentation file onto your smartphone and upload it to Dropbox. Once in Dropbox, you can rename the presentation file to the original filename.

If you plan to review a presentation on your Android device, you can use the Android App "Impress Remote". You have to be using LibreOffice Impress 4.3 on a Linux desktop with the presentation file opened. The app "Impress Remote" will display the name of the PC on the same WiFi network as your Android device. Before you click on the name of the PC, it will prompt you to enter the PIN number displayed within LibreOffice Impress on your Linux desktop. Then it will display the presentation file slide by slide on your Android device. You will be able to swipe through each slide on Android, which will be "mirrored" on the Linux desktop, you're viewing it from. That's a pretty cool way to train an employee or present to a customer while you're doing the controlling from your Android device.