This is how people often produce written reports based on data that’s accumulated and updated in an Excel spreadsheet. We’ve offered a lot of really cool tips and tools for Excel over the years, such as Saikat’s article on producing professional looking charts, and Steve’s article on cool Excel templates for project management.

In this article, I’m going to dive a little more into the background VBA scripting that allows you to actually program connections between data that might be stored in an Excel file and Word documents where you may be producing reports.

It’s actually surprisingly easy to accomplish this once you know how to add the right references, and how to lay out the syntax of the background VBA code.

Integrating Data From Excel Into Your Word Document

In this example, I’m going to start out with a fairly simple Excel spreadsheet. In reality, the Excel file can consist of multiple spreadsheets with lots of data, it doesn’t matter.

So long as you know where the data resides in the spreadsheet, you’ll be able to reach in and grab it using VBA.

Here’s what my sample spreadsheet looks like. It’s a list of expense totals that have been calculated throughout the entire year.

Now, lets say you have a manager that would like to see a nicely formatted report that describes the expenses, grouping together like items and laying it all out in a layout that’s a little more pleasing to the eye (and easier for the big boys upstairs to understand).

You can do this by incorporating objects like textboxes or labels into your Word document. When you’re in Word, just click on the Developer menu tab, and then select “Design Mode” in the Controls box. Use the Legacy Tools dropdown icon to find where you can insert labels into your document.

Once you have the label placed in the document where you want it (not always an easy task), you’re ready to program the data feed. But first you’ll need to name the label so that the VBA can identify it. Right click on the label and go into Properties. Find the “(Name)” field and call it something that you’ll remember.

Now, add a Command Button from the same Legacy Tools dropdown list, place it in your document, and double click it to open up the VBA editor. When you get your code working later, you can modify it so that the code runs on the Document Open() event. You’ll see that in the object dropdown boxes in the editor window.

To get started connecting Word to Excel, you’ll need to reference Excel. Click on Tools, and then References. Scroll down the list until you see the “Microsoft Excel 12.0 Object Library” and select it.

Once you’ve done this, the rest is just a matter of writing a ridiculously simple VBA script to pull in data from an Excel spreadsheet and automatically update the label caption with the data. Here’s how that works.

Private Sub CommandButton1_Click()
Dim objExcel As New Excel.Application
Dim exWb As Excel.Workbook
 
Set exWb = objExcel.Workbooks.Open("c:\temp\expenses.xls")
 
ThisDocument.yrTotal.Caption = exWb.Sheets("Sheet1").Cells(12, 2)
 
exWb.Close
 
Set exWb = Nothing
 
End Sub

See how that works? The “exWb” Excel application object opens the Excel file at the path you provide it, and it’ll go right into the specific sheet and cell number, extract the data, and place it into the Caption property of the label that you named “yrTotal“.

Here’s the VBA macro in action.

The hard part with dealing with labels in Word is that it’s sometimes hard to align it at the end of a sentence or alongside any other text.

One way of overcoming that is actually incorporating some of the text alongside the data in the VBA code itself.  As you can see here, I’ve put the static text right into the Caption when I create the label itself.

Now, all you have to do is include that text when you update the label with your VBA script, and just append the data from the Excel file to the end of that text. Here’s what that kind of code would look like.

Dim objExcel As New Excel.Application
Dim exWb As Excel.Workbook
 
Set exWb = objExcel.Workbooks.Open("c:\temp\expenses.xls")
 
ThisDocument.yrTotal.Caption = exWb.Sheets("Sheet1").Cells(12, 2)
ThisDocument.totHotels.Caption = "Hotels: " & exWb.Sheets("Sheet1").Cells(5, 2)
ThisDocument.TotDining.Caption = "Dining Out: " & exWb.Sheets("Sheet1").Cells(2, 2)
ThisDocument.totTolls.Caption = "Tolls: " & exWb.Sheets("Sheet1").Cells(3, 2)
ThisDocument.totFuel.Caption = "Fuel: " & exWb.Sheets("Sheet1").Cells(10, 2)
 
exWb.Close
 
Set exWb = Nothing

You can use the string concatenation “&” symbol to place connect the static text with the data extracted from the Excel sheet. Here’s what the final results look like in the updated Word document.

Again, if you don’t want to have a big, ugly grey command button in your word document, just have the data-update script run on Document.Open(), and it’ll all take place behind the scenes.

In fact, in many cases you could create the initial document once, and then you’ll never have to create it again. All you’ll have to do is open it, and all of the labels will automatically update for you with the data from the updated Excel file. All you have to do is click to Print, and submit the report to your manager. A 30 minute report just turned into a 1 minute printout!

Can you think of any other cool uses for this data-integration technique using VBA? Share some of your own ideas and thoughts in the comments section below.

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We’ve written about using PrinterShare to share printers in the past, but Google Cloud Print is a much easier alternative. After you share your printer with someone, they can print to it from their web browser – you can even print to your own printer from a browser if you’re away from your computer.

Setting Up Cloud Print

You’ll need the Google Chrome web browser installed to set up Cloud Print. After it’s installed, launch it and open its Options page.

Click over to the Under the Hood tab and scroll down; you’ll find the Google Cloud Print option hidden near the bottom.

Click the “Sign in to Google Cloud Print” button and you’ll be asked to register your computer’s printers with your Google account.

Sharing the Printer

Click the Manage Your Printers link after registering your printers to access the Cloud Print website. You can also access this page by clicking the Manage Print Settings button next to Google Cloud Print on the Under the Hood page.

The main window here shows a list of print jobs, but you won’t have anything here yet. Click Printers in the sidebar and you’ll see a list of printers on your current computer.

Select a printer and click the Share button to manage its sharing settings.

Type an email address into the box and click Share. This box will automatically autocomplete addresses you type from your Gmail contacts, so you can also start typing a contact’s name to find their email address.

Google Chrome must be open on your computer so it can forward incoming print jobs to your printer. Don’t worry, though — if Google Chrome is closed or your computer is turned off, print jobs will be saved in Cloud Print’s queue online. They’ll start printing automatically the next time you launch Google Chrome.

Accepting The Shared Printer

The person you share the printer with can sign into their Google account and access the Google Cloud Print website. They’ll see an indication that they have a new printer.

First, they’ll have to accept the shared printer.

The printer will appear in their list — a face icon superimposed over the printer’s icon indicates that it’s a shared printer.

Printing A Document

The person you share the printer with can click the Print button and select “Upload File to Print” to upload a file from their computer and print it on your printer.

You should be able to upload any PDF or DOC file — hopefully, Google will add support for additional file types in the future.

The “Other Ways to Print” option takes you to a page that lists ways you can access the shared printer from other devices. Google Cloud print is integrated into the Gmail and Google Docs mobile webpages for smartphones and Cloud Print apps are available for iOS, Android and Mac.

Cloud Print isn’t only for sharing your printer with other people; it can also provide access to your printer from other devices. You can use the apps to print from your smartphone or tablet or use the website to print when you’re away from your printer.

Future Features

Google Cloud Print is currently in beta and is evolving quickly. Currently, it supports both Windows and Mac. Linux users can’t share their printers yet, but they can still print using the Cloud Print webpage. Some printers even include Cloud Print support out of the box, so you can connect them to your network and use them without setting up Google Chrome. Expect more printers with integrated Cloud Print support in the future.

Have you tried Google Cloud Print sharing yet? Let us know how well it works for you in the comments.

Image Credit: Shutterstock

However, these free or bundled tools usually only offer the bare bones. If you’re looking for an all-in-one PDF reader, creator and editor, the latest release of Nitro PDF should provide you with all of the features that you need without breaking your budget on a product from Adobe.

With Nitro Pro 7 you can create a PDF from one or more different file types, convert PDFs to other file types, extract key data from documents, edit documents and apply secure access requirements PDFs. In the next two week, we’re giving away 50 free copies of Nitro Pro 7 worth a whopping $6000 in total!

User Interface

The first launch of Nitro Pro 7 will display a “Getting Started” screen which highlights some of the application’s features. You can easily disable this via the Do not show at startup checkbox but it is worth spending a moment looking at the various tasks on offer.

Everything is organized using the familiar ribbon menu that you might find in Windows Explorer or the different Microsoft Office applications and as such the features on offer are sensibly presented. For instance if you wish to convert a PDF to another format you will find the buttons on the Home tab; editing a PDF is possible via the Edit tab and adding passwords and redactions is via the controls available in the Protect menu.

Meanwhile via the Forms tab you can create forms on your document that comprise of text fields, radio buttons and checkboxes, as well as export and import data to and from a form on a PDF.

Protecting Your PDF

As the PDF format has become more and more widely used so the requirements for protecting and validating the contents of such documents has become increasing paramount.

Accordingly, Nitro Pro 7 features effective password, certification and redaction tools that are suitable for use in all levels of business. Found on the Protect tab, the redaction tool can be used to highlight text that should be blocked out from unauthorized viewing, and removed completely using the Apply all Redactions option.

Meanwhile Digital IDs and Signatures can be applied to a document, useful for establishing trust between yourself and the recipient of a PDF document that you have created.

Elsewhere, the Password Security setting allows you to set various passwords and profiles for the document, each with different privileges; for instance you can set a PDF document as being read-only for a specific password and even block printing altogether.

Combining PDF Documents

It so happens that I have a pretty important PDF-related task which I need to resolve. I have three documents, all in PDF format but each with a different page format that I need to combine into a single document.

Can Nitro Pro 7 help me out?

As it happens, yes it can. Using the Combine button on the Create section of the Home menu, I was easily able to merge the three documents – plus a cover – into one.

The process is simple, requiring you to first browse for the PDF files (or indeed any other file type) and add them.

Following that, all you need to do is save the combined document – with a meaningful file name, of course!

The preview view above shows two of the combined files – you can see the differences in artwork between the strips. Note that you’re not restricted to PDF documents here as you can also combine other document types into a PDF. For instance, you might wish to combine a Word document with an Excel spreadsheet.

Editing a PDF

If you’ve ever found yourself having to recreate a PDF document from scratch because the source file was lost then you will know that this is often a long and drawn out process that pretty much requires you to type the document into a word processor and save or convert it to a PDF.

PDF editing tools have been available in the past but they can prove to be difficult to use and expensive. Fortunately Nitro Pro 7 features an easy-to-use editing tool which delivers good results. Available via the Edit tab, you can begin editing text by selecting the Edit button which opens the Text Tools Format view. Using this you can select sentences, append or amend, add and remove images and even watermark the document. If you have problems editing an OCR tool is provided to convert the text so that it can be edited.

As pictured above, right-clicking a block of text and selecting Edit Text will also allow you to edit the document’s contents.

Note also that pages can be deleted and inserted or even rotated – useful if you have a page-sized image that would look better oriented in a different way.

Document Conversion

While PDF is a popular format, it isn’t the only one suitable for e-books. Sadly it isn’t possible to accurately convert a PDF document to all current e-book formats, but fortunately Nitro Pro 7 features the ability to convert PDFs into a format that is more flexible in this respect: Microsoft Word’s DOCX format. In fact, documents can be converted and exported into plain text and rich text formats, as well as images.

The results of a conversion to DOCX – performed via the Convert section of the Home tab – can be seen above. When in this state, the document can be reformatted and then converted into a variety of formats depending on your requirements.

Conclusion

Nitro 7 Pro is certainly as good an option as any of the Adobe PDF creation applications and certainly among the best of this type of software. As you can see from the screenshots above the results of my own PDF editing project were extremely favourable; this software has enabled me to perform a task that has for a long-time proved difficult and time-consuming.

Additional features that allow text editing and password protecting documents is similarly accomplished, resulting in a PDF solution that is every bit as good – if not better – than anything Adobe has ever released. Download a fully-functional trial now and take it for a spin.

As a special treat to MakeUseOf readers, we’re giving away 50 copies of Nitro Pro 7 worth $6000 in total over the next two weeks. Here’s how you can score a copy for yourself.

How do I win a copy?

It’s simple, just follow the instructions.

Step 1: Fill in the giveaway form

Please fill in the form with your real name and email address so that we can get in touch if you are chosen as a winner. Click here if you can’t view the form.

Step 2: Share!

You’re almost done. Now, all that’s left to do is to share the post. There are 2 options to choose from or you can do both!

This giveaway begins now and ends Friday, February 17th. The winners will be selected at random and informed via email.

Spread the word to your friends and have fun!

Interested in sponsoring a giveaway? We’d love to hear from you. Get in touch with us via the form at the bottom of this page.

If there’s something PDF files aren’t really supposed to be, it’s editable. The format, originally created as a way to transfer data from a computer to a printer, is essentially a digital piece of paper. Sure, there are tools that kind of do the job, but most of them end up converting the PDF to some other file before letting you re-export them. We highlighed tools for editing PDFs before, and they basically do this or something like it.

PDF Mod isn’t a tool like that – it allows you to edit your PDF files directly. This is possible because of its limited functionality. You can’t make changes to pages, but you can move pages around or remove them altogether. Basically, it lets you re-shuffle pieces of paper the way you can in real life.

It’s always best to avoid editing PDF files, assuming you have access to the source files. If something was made in Libre Office, for example, it’s a lot easier to edit the Libre Office document then it is to edit the PDF. If you just need to quickly re-arrange or remove some pages in a PDF, though, this is your go-to Linux tool.

Using PDF Mod

Open a PDF with PDF Mod and you’ll instantly see all of your pages.

Do you need to see more? You can quickly zoom in and out using the slide at the bottom of the window. Re-arranging pages is easy – just click and drag. You’ll also find buttons in the menu for removing pages, and another for extracting images from a given page.

Do you want to add pages from another PDF? There’s a button for that too. This is a quick and easy way to combine two PDFs into a single file. You can also rotate pages.

Do you want to change the author’s name, and other details? Just click the “Properties” button.

You can also quickly edit the bookmarks in your PDF. Remove, add or change the references, it doesn’t matter.

Like I said, you can’t make changes to the text, or move images around on a given page. PDFs aren’t really meant to be edited that way, just like a piece of paper. You can re-arrange things, though, and that’s what this program is for.

Installation

Do you want to install this program on your Linux computer? Check out your distro’s package manager, because it’s probably there. Ubuntu users can simply click here to install PDF mod, though users of older Ubuntu releases might find this doesn’t work.

Can’t find PDF mod in your package manager? Check out the PDF Mod website, where you’ll find a few packages and some source code you can compile yourself.

Conclusion

This simple tool is great if you ever need to make quick changes to, or to merge, a couple of PDF files. It’s got a simple interface and runs quickly. Like I said, it does one thing and does it well.

Have you made use of this? Let me know for what in the comments below. Or you can tell me about how PDFs are totally easy to edit.

You can’t edit formatted documents with this tool, but if you at least do your first drafts in TXT files you’ll find this tool useful. Even better, it connects with Dropbox, meaning your work will sync with all of your computers. Jessica pointed this tool out when she showed you how to edit and compile code online, but TextDropApp isn’t just useful for programmers. It’s also perfect for the writer on the move.

Using TextDropApp

Ready to check this out? Just head over to TextDropApp, click the “login” button and you will be re-directed to Dropbox. You will have to log into Dropbox, assuming you’re not already, and then you will need to give TextDropApp permission to read and edit your documents.

This makes sense: the app can hardly edit anything without permission. Still, some people might be worried. That’s smart, but according to the app’s creator Sam Nguyen, there’s not much to worry about:

TextDrop does not save your password. It doesn’t even see your password because it uses Dropbox’s OAuth system.

So rest assured, your password is safe. TextDropApp, as a text editor, is very low-frills. You can’t customize much of anything, and there is no code syntax highlighting. This is a simple tool for simple purposes.

The minimalist interface works well on a variety of devices, so give it a try on your tablet or your smartphone as well as your browser. It’s a great, simple way to quickly edit a document in your Dropbox.

You can open any file in your Dropbox, provided it has a “.txt” extension.

You can also create new files and save them to whatever sub-folder you prefer. It’s a very functional tool.

Security Concern

I mentioned above that your Dropbox password is safe via this service. You should know, however, that the information you write may not be. Again, from app creator Sam Nguyen:

[TextDropApp] does transiently transmit the contents of your files through its servers, although it never saves any of your contents to disk. The transmission from your browser to the TextDrop server is unencrypted, so please only use TextDrop for non-sensitive material.

In summary, don’t use this app to make a list of your credit card numbers, because that information won’t be encrypted. Grocery lists or blog posts should be fine, though.

Conclusion

I have to say, I’ve been looking for something more or less like this for a year or so. I’m glad I found it, and will be making more use of it in the months to come.

What do you think? Do you like being able to quickly edit text documents in your Dropbox, or would you prefer something more full-featured, like Google Docs integration for Dropbox? Let us know in the comments below, along with any other useful Dropbox tools we might not know about.

For instance, I am a voracious user of Slideshare, and sometimes I like to save a neat illustration or graphic for my personal use. Then there are some professional reports which come packaged as a PDF and you might come across the need to use a graphic from there in a presentation.

We had taken an earlier look at 6 Ways To Convert A PDF To A JPG Image. But over here, I am looking for something specific – extracting images only from PDF files. The solutions offered in the previous article are full-fledged converters. Here, the focus is more pinpointed.

Let’s check out a few ways to extract images from PDF files.

The Manual Way

Extracting images from PDF files is not a problem if you have the commercial Adobe Acrobat. It allows you to extract all the images (in multiple image formats) in a PDF file with a single click. Some free PDF readers like the earlier reviewed Nitro PDF Reader also have this feature. If you have the free Adobe Reader installed, then you have to slog it out by either using the Print Screen button on an individual image or using the Take a snapshot feature from the Edit menu. In both cases, you have to paste the copied image from the clipboard into a graphic editor.

The Photoshop Way

Okay, Adobe Photoshop isn’t a free product, but some of us do have it installed because it is the Big Daddy when it comes to image editors. Photoshop allows you to open a PDF document and start importing the text or the images in it. The Import PDF dialog appears as below:

You can select the images you want to extract. Click on OK and then save (or edit) the image as you would normally do. CorelDRAW also offers a similar functionality.

The Freeware Way

Well, you don’t need to get thumbprints on the Print Screen button or plonk down serious case on Photoshop if you regularly extract images from PDF files. Let’s bring up Some PDF Image Extract for the job at hand.

The 885 KB free software runs on Windows and is very handy for extracting image files from PDF documents. Plus, it comes with a few bells and whistles that give some control over what you are going to pull out from the PDF file. Installation is a breeze; just be careful to deselect the option which asks you to install the Blekko search engine as an option (i.e. if you want).

The interface of Some PDF Image Extract looks like this and using the image extractor doesn’t need you to consult any help file (though there is one).

Some PDF Image Extract allows you to extract images from PDF files by using any or all of the following features…

1. The free software can batch process PDF files and extract their images in individual folders in one go. If you have more than one PDF file to work on, this is a time saver.

2. Some PDF Image Extract comes with image format options (JPG, BMP, PNG, GIF, TIF, TGA, and PCX). In case of the JPG output option, you can also control the quality of the extracted image.

3. You can choose the page range as well as an individual page if you want to extract only specific images from the file.

4. Some PDF Images Extract can work with password protected PDF-files too. The conversion tool has a field where you can key in the password during conversion.

Some PDF Image Extract does its conversion bit quite rapidly and smoothly. It works with Windows 2000/XP/2003/Vista, and probably Windows 7 too though I haven’t tested it out on that.

PDF image extraction has quite a few uses. What are yours? How do you extract images from PDF files? Tell us your choice of method.

Great! But for me as a lay reader, the one thing that strikes a discordant note when I am using the free Adobe Reader X is the absence of a bookmarking feature. Just how the heck am I supposed to start from where I left off reading a 1000 page ebook?

Why Adobe would nix out such a basic feature is beyond me, but that forced me to look for solutions as a workaround.

The Easy Way to Remember a Page in Adobe Reader

Adobe Reader does not let you create and place new bookmarks, but there’s one little setting you can apply that will help the software remember the last page that was opened by the PDF reader. It is ‘technically’ not a bookmark, but it’s a handy workaround that takes just a checkmark. Follow the steps below to enable the native feature.

1. In Adobe Reader, go to Edit – Preferences (or CTRL + K).

2. Click on Documents under the listed categories on the left.

3. As shown in the screenshot, enable the feature that says – Restore last view settings when reopening document. Click OK and exit.

Now, open any number of PDF documents; Adobe Reader remembers the page you left it at. This may not be a bookmarking solution, may not give you the option to mark out multiple points in a book, but is a simple elegant answer to our basic requirement when we open up an ebook in a PDF reader.

JavaScript Has the Answer

Call this a plug-in or an Adobe back, but it is the only solution I could find to deliberately introduce a bookmarking feature in Adobe Reader. The small 5KB JavaScript file is packaged in a downloadable ZIP file at PDF Hacks.

1. Download and unzip the small file. Copy it into your Acrobat Reader JavaScript’s directory. In my Win XP machine it is located at – C:\Program Files\Adobe\Reader 10.0\Reader\Javascripts.

2. Open any PDF file with Adobe Acrobat Reader and open the View menu. Four new items are clearly visible under the menu – Bookmark this page, Go to bookmark, Remove bookmark and Clear bookmarks. The numbers (5,6) next to the top two options refers to the keyboard shortcut keys.

3. The functions are pretty much self-explanatory. From the page you want to bookmark, click on Bookmark this page. The following box opens up and you can assign a name to the bookmark.

4. Clicking on Go to bookmark opens up a floating box and a click on each takes you to each successive bookmark you have set. You can bookmark as many numbers of pages as you want.

5. Remove bookmark allows you to remove a single bookmark and Clear bookmarks wipes out all the bookmarks in one go.

Note: For some PDF files, the hack works smoothly. In others, you might get an internal error notification. Right click on a page in the PDF file and click on Page Display Preferences. Under JavaScript, make sure the boxes on the right are checked as in the following screen.

Inspite of the larger memory footprint of Adobe Reader in comparison to other (free) alternatives, there are some benefits like better rendering of PDF documents. The new Sandbox feature has also improved security. But the missing feature of user-bookmarking is an irritant when it comes to readers like you and me. These two simple, no hassle solutions allow us to use Adobe Reader and enjoy a few of its merits.

Do you know of any other way to bookmark ebooks in Adobe Reader? Did these two tips solve your PDF bookmarking issues? Let us know.

While the Kindle app still falls short in many areas, the recent updates do provide better functionality for e-book reading.

Personal Documents

Perhaps the best update for Kindle 2.9 app is a feature that allows Amazon members to e-mail personal documents to their Kindle app-supported device using a new Send-to-Kindle email address ([assigned name]@kindle.com.)

You can attach documents and other files, including PDFs, Word files, JPEGs and PNGs, on your computer or in your mobile device to the address associated with your Amazon account. Amazon says that “A subject is not necessary in the e-mail, unless you’d prefer to have the document converted to the Kindle format. To have a document converted to Kindle format (.azw), the subject line should be ‘convert’ when e-mailing the personal document to a Send-to-Kindle address.”

In order to use the Kindle annotation features, text documents must be converted to the Kindle format. However, in my tests some parts of say a PDF document—the table of contents for example—may not format correctly in the .azw conversion.

Other people can also send documents to your device after you approve their e-mail address. You will need to log into your Manage Your Kindle account, and select Personal Document Settings to add and improve e-mail addresses. This authorization, of course, keeps your account from being spammed.

There are some restrictions to this personal documents feature, such as submitted e-mails to your Amazon account cannot contain more than 25 attached personal documents, and it must target less than 15 distinct Send-to-Kindle addresses.

This personal documents feature enables users to do less printing, and it is also convenient for keeping your documents archived in the cloud.

Magazines and Newspapers

This Kindle update version for the iPad now also allows Amazon customers to select from over 400 magazines and newspapers in the Kindle Store. You can buy single issues or subscribe to magazines like, Martha Stewart Living, Cosmopolitan, The New York Times, and Popular Science.

Some Kindle customers however have commented that the digital versions of publications may not be as good production wise as the printed versions, so be sure to check the customer feedback section before making a purchase.

The User Interface

The Kindle app also includes an updated user interface, so that now downloaded content is categorized by All Items, Books, Newsstand, Docs. Kindle books and personal documents can also be archived to your account in order to reduce the amount of space taken up on your mobile device.

It would be great, however, if there were a section for purchased Kindle books separate from sample copies of Kindle e-books.

Social Network Sharing

The prior update to the Kindle app includes a feature for sharing selected texts to your Twitter or Facebook timeline, via a link to the highlighted passage which appears on your Kindle profile page.

I’m not sure how useful this feature is for sharing with online contacts, but I find it handy for my own reading and review purposes. You can actually access and read your highlights and notes in your Kindle account. You can also follow and network with other Kindle readers .

As an avid Kindle book reader, I welcome the new app updates, but I still long for improvements with the annotation tools. Accessing and reviewing notes, highlights, and bookmarks is not a productive experience, especially for students and scholars, in the Kindle e-reader.

Let us know what you think of the new updates. Have you started reading more ebooks on your Kindle? And what additional features would you like to see.

For other articles about the Kindle app, start with these:

• How To Use The Amazon Kindle Reader For The iPhone & iPod Touch
• iBooks Vs. Kindle – Which Is Better? [iPad]
• Reading Ebooks on The iPad with iBooks & Amazon Kindle

Images uploaded from the gallery or camera can be scanned with optical character recognition to extract text and save it to a document. Users of Android Honeycomb can enjoy an optimized version of the app for larger screens.

The Interface

The interface of the Google Docs app is clean and straight forward and not too different from the web interface. A visual overview can be found under > Settings > Quick hints.

When you click the little arrow button on the far right of a document, you can preview the respective document and view its details.

Clicking the button will open a little sidebar with document properties, including date last viewed, date last modified, owner, and a list of people who can edit the document. In this view you can also  add collaborators (people or groups), send or share the document, or rename the document. Via the settings button in the top right, you can open or delete the document.

If you want to send, rename, delete, or open a file with an alternative app, press it for a couple of seconds to trigger the menu shown in the screenshot below.

Creating Documents

The Google Doc apps supports creating new documents, spreadsheets, or documents from a photo or the gallery.

When you create a > Document from gallery or photo, the image you choose from the gallery or take with your device camera, can be uploaded as individual file, converted to a Google Docs document and embedded into a new document, or sent to web clipboard, so that you can paste it into a desired location.

When you choose the > Convert file go Google Docs document, the respective photo will be converted to text using optical character recognition (OCR). In theory, OCR is a fantastic feature, but in reality it doesn’t work very well, even with clearly printed text. However, if you experiment with the camera conditions (light, position, size of text), you might be able to get it to work for you. It also is rather unfortunate that the app can not display the source image, which is inserted on top of the recognized text, although it is very well able to display images.

Editing Documents

Editing documents within the app is possible, but it is fairly difficult. Edits can only be done line by line. Finding the right spot can be a bit of a challenge, typically resulting in short flickers of the document and a jumpy keyboard. Moreover, Google Docs does not allow you to zoom in, but forces you to work with the available text size. It must be said though that once the right line or paragraph has been highlighted, moving the cursor to a desired position works very well, unlike in some other apps.

Homescreen Widget

Google Docs comes with a simple homescreen widget. It unites four functions: opening Google Docs, viewing starred files, taking a photo and uploading it, and creating a new document.

In Honeycomb, you can add the widget by pressing an available spot on your homescreen for a few seconds or tapping the + icon in the top right, which opens the widgets gallery. The app is listed as Docs. You can drag and drop it to your desired homescreen.

Verdict

The Google Docs app is great for accessing and reading your Google documents. However, I would not recommend to create and edit documents with it. Overall, I find the app very useful and hope that Google will continue to develop and improve it.

Three relatively new applications you might consider adding to your arsenal are Mou and MarkdownMail, for working in Markdown language; and a seriously magical Mac application, FormatMatch, for automatically reformatting copied and pasted text.

Let’s check them all out here.

FormatMatch

Typically when you copy text from one source, say a webpage or email, and then paste it in another text document, the copied text does not match the font style and size of the document you paste the text into. On a Mac you have to use the “paste and match style” keyboard shortcut command (Command+Option+Shift-V) to get the style match.

But now FormatMatch alleviates this annoying problem. This little app, which works in the background, will reformat text copied from one source, and match the format of the document in which you paste the text. Here’s an example:

When I copy formatted text from the MUO article on the right, and then paste into the TextEdit document on the left, it matches the style of the first sentence in that document.

You don’t have to use a keyboard shortcut or click any button. It’s all automatic, as if what the app does was built into the operating system. And if you frequently need to deactivate FormatMatch, you can do so in the menu bar or by using a keyboard shortcut.

FormatMatch is a free download from the App Store, but it’s an application that I would gladly would have paid as much as $10 for.

Mou

Unless you’re a web developer or a writer who works in HTML formatting, you might not be familiar with what is called Markdown, “a text-to-HTML conversion tool for web writers. Markdown allows you to write using an easy-to-read, easy-to-write plain text format, then convert it to structurally valid XHTML (or HTML)” (Source: Daring Fireball.)

Based on my brief experience with Markdown, I think it’s whole lot easier to learn than HTML. And rather you’re learning Markdown for the first time or have been using it for a while, you will definitely want to check out Mou, a text editor that provides you a preview of your Markdown text as you write.

Mou is an excellent tool for learning the syntax, and it’s one that you might continue using as a text editor when you need to write in Markdown.

Mou even includes a built-in document that introduces you to the Markdown syntax. So you can start a new document in Mou and instantly start writing and Markdown let’s you actually see a preview of what you write. Markdown syntax seems almost intuitive.

In fact, sometimes writing in Markdown is easier than using keyboard shortcuts to format text, such as incorporating quotes and italics, documents headers, ordered lists, and hard line breaks.

MarkdownMail

If you get the hang of writing in Markdown and want to send out stylish HTML emails on your iPhone or iPad, you might want to purchase MarkdownMail ($2.99).

MarkdownMail enables you to write email that can include bold text, italics, bulleted lists and much more.

And with the built-in text expansion feature in iOS 5, you can set up some of your most frequently used Markdown properties to help you write using the syntax.

The app includes a preview button so you can see what your email will look like before it’s sent out. And from there you can send your Markdown formatted email in either HTML—in which the recipient of the email will view the formatted text—,or in Markdown, which will send the the actual syntax you used to write the email.

Let us know what you think of these applications. For other text editors for the Mac, check out the The Top 3 Free Coding Text Editors for Mac OS X.