What's MS Word doing in your Pocket?

Pocket Word is the streamlined version of Microsoft’s popular desktop PC word processor. It’s been available to Windows CE users ever since the first Handheld PCs were introduced in 1997. However, Microsoft did not think that users of the smaller, pen-entry Palm-size PCs wanted a word processing program. They decided not to include it, or a Pocket version of Excel, with the first Windows CE Palm-size PCs.

As it turned out, one of the most frequent requests from Palm-size PC users was for Palm-size PC versions of Pocket Word and Pocket Excel. And while a number of independent software vendors came out with Palm-size PC spreadsheet programs to take the place of Excel, no one introduced a reasonable alternative to Word.

Pocket Word for the Pocket PC

Microsoft corrected this with the release of the Pocket PC. In addition to a number of other new applications, the Pocket PC has “Pocket” versions of Word and Excel built in.

Microsoft expects Pocket Word on the Pocket PC to be used for two purposes: viewing e-mail attachments and simple text creation and editing. For these, Pocket Word works admirably.

Viewing Word e-mail attachments

Word is probably the most commonly used word processing program on desktop PCs throughout the world, so chances are very good that you’ve received an e-mail message with a Word document attached (see Screen 1). If you receive such a message on your Pocket PC you can download the attachment and open it in Pocket Word.

Screen 1: Shown here is an open e-mail message on the Pocket PC. Note the icon (bottom left, above "New") indicating an attached Word document. A truncated version of the document name appears next to the icon.

To open the attached document on the Pocket PC all you need to do is tap on the icon. The document is automatically converted to the Pocket Word format for display in Pocket Word. Several Word formatting features are not supported. When you open a document with unsupported formatting features, Pocket Word makes its best attempt to display it in a format suitable for the Pocket PC’s screen. For example, tables, which are unsupported, are converted to tabbed columns.

Another thing to keep in mind is that if you open a Word document on the Pocket PC, and then save it in any format (Word, Pocket Word, Text, Rich) you completely lose the unsupported formatting. However, if you open it in Pocket Word just to look it over, and don’t edit it, it’s still a Word document and still has all of its original formatting. You may see tables as tabbed columns, but they are still tables in the Word document. To exit the document all you need to do is tap OK, and if you did not edit the document it will retain all formatting. If you send this unsaved document on to someone else, they will be able to open it up in Word 97 or Word 2000 and see all the formatting.

One last warning about attachments: To conserve storage space your Pocket PC is configured to not download attachments. In order to receive attachments you must configure the e-mail service to download them. To make this change to an existing e-mail service tap Tools, Options, and then tap the name of the service. Tap Next until you get to the fourth screen, and then if the service is for a POP3 server tap the “Get file attachments” check box. If the service is for an IMAP4 server tap the “When getting full copy, get attachments/meeting requests” check box. Even after you make this change file attachments do not automatically download until you retrieve a full copy of the e-mail message. To download a full copy tap-and-hold on the message, and then tap “Get Full Copy” on the pop-up menu.

Creating and editing Pocket Word documents

To start Pocket Word, go to the Start menu, select Programs and then tap on the Pocket Word icon. Pocket Word opens in a list view (see Screen 2), which lists the Word documents stored in the “My Documents” folder on the Pocket PC. Any files on a storage card’s “My Documents” folder are also listed here and are indicated by a Pocket Word icon with a floppy disk.