Excel documents cannot be displayed

Most of my Excel documents are saved in xlsx format and stored in DT Pro Office on the Mac. They display perfectly on the Mac, but on DTTG I just see a message “Document cannot be displayed”. Is this a bug or is it the case that Excel’s default xlsx format is not supported by DTTG?

Just to follow up my previous post, I have tested the syncing of documents for 3 of the MS Office products: Excel, Word and Powerpoint. For all three, the XML based formats xlsx, docx and pptx are the defaults for Office 2008 on the Mac and 2007 for Windows (and probably 2010 although I have tested that). They all display perfectly in DT on the Mac. But on the iPad I find:

  • for xlsx, “Document cannot be displayed”, and there is no option for opening it elsewhere
  • for docx, it displays, with its Kind described as Rich Text
  • for pptx, “Document cannot be displayed”, and no option for opening it elsewhere

The xls, doc and ppt formats used by Office 97-2004 all display fine and are described as Excel, Word and Powerpoint documents in DTTG.

I must say that I am surprised that the testing of DTTG, before release, did not routinely run through the possible formats that a user might reasonably expect to see displayed in DTTG, given that they are supported in DT on the Mac - unless of course I am the only one with this problem.

We do not currently support all the document formats available (for display) in our desktop products. We are working on supporting as many formats as possible as we release future updates. For formats we do not support, we will attempt to offer as many “open in” (other application) solutions as possible while we are working on in-application support for display.

Thanks Mike. Could I suggest that you consider making it explicit, in the iTunes description of DTTG, exactly what formats are not supported by DTTG but that are supported by DTP on the Mac. It describes itself as a “companion” that allows one to “browse, view, and search your documents with the touch of your finger”. There is no indication that there is a class of documents that can not be browsed, viewed or searched. Customers need to be able to make an informed buying decision based on the current functionality.

When we send out our next update (1.0.1) I will make sure our marketing director the description more clear about the formats we do support (rather than list the formats we do not currently support).