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3.5 out of 5 mice
Reviewed Jun 12, 2009

No Macworld user reviews

Filed Under:

Business

Developer:
Mariner Software, Inc.

Age rating: 4+

Compatibility: Compatible with iPhone and iPod touch.
Requires iOS 4.0 or later.

Macworld
» AppGuide

Mariner Calc for iPhoneCurrent Version: 3.1.1

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Developed by long-time Macintosh developer,
Mariner Software, Mariner Calc unveils leading
edge spreadsheet functionality for the iPhone
and iPod Touch ~ the ability to view and edit
native Microsoft Excel files (.xls format Excel
97 and up)! Whether you are an enterprise user,
small business user or a home user in need
of access to all your Excel files on your iPhone
or iPod Touch, Mariner Calc is the ideal solution.

New in Mariner Calc 3.0
NEW - Added New Format Parser
NEW - Added ability to view pdf, rtf, rtfd, Word, Powerpoint, Keynote, Pages, Numbers
NEW - Added 10 new Templates
NEW - Added new alert notifications on save, etc.
NEW - Added double-tap to edit
NEW - Added auto-save before emailing a file
NEW - Added better support for Time Formats (durations)
NEW - Fill Down, Fill Right
NEW - Added Auto-scroll on selection
NEW - Added Auto-sum
NEW - Added New formula builder
NEW - Added Scrolling toolbar
NEW - Added Default keyboard setting
NEW - Added Support for displaying merged cells

-Mariner Calc features-
1. View native Excel files (.xls format Excel 97 and up).
2. Edit native Excel files (.xls format Excel 97 and up).
3. Wirelessly transfer files to and from your computer.
4. 32,000 row by 256 column support.
5. Supports cut copy paste, undo and redo.
6. 145 functions!
7. Support for multiple sheets.

Mariner Calc also includes 24 math functions,
18 finance functions, 17 trig functions,
13 statistics functions, 14 lookup functions,
plus logic, date, text and info functions – with
many more on the way. See the Mariner web site
for a complete list of Mariner Calc's 145 functions.
It also supports splitting panes and freezing,
as well as creating borders and changing fonts,
colors and alignment. Landscape and portrait
views are both available. It's the ultimate mobile
spreadsheet.

Mariner Calc supports the following functions (with many more on the way!):

Math functions (24)
ABS, CEILING, COMBIN, CONVERT, EVEN, EXP, FACT, FLOOR, INT, LN, LOG, LOG10, MOD, ODD, POWER, PRODUCT, RAND, ROUND, ROUNDDOWN, ROUNDUP, SIGN, SQRT, SUM, SUMIF, TRUNC

Finance Functions (18)
ANNUITY, COMPOUND, DB, DDB, FV, IPMT, IRR, ISPMT, MIRR, NPER, NPV, PMT, PPMT, PV, RATE, SLN, SYD, VDB

Trig functions (17)
ACOS, ACOSH, ASIN, ASINH, ATAN, ATAN2, ATANH, COS, COSH, COT, DEGREES, PI, RADIANS, SIN, SINH, TAN, TANH

Statistics functions (13)
AVERAGE, COUNT, COUNTA, COUNTBLANK, COUNTIF, GAMMALN, MAX, MEDIAN, MIN, PERMUT, RANK, STDEV, VAR

Lookup Functions (14)
ADDRESS, AREAS, CHOOSE, COLUMN, COLUMNS, HLOOKUP, INDEX, INDIRECT, LOOKUP, MATCH, OFFSET, ROW, ROWS, VLOOKUP

Logic Functions (6)
AND, FALSE, IF, NOT, OR, TRUE

Date functions (15)
ADDTIME, DATE, DATEVALUE, DAY, DAYS360, HOUR, MINUTE, MONTH, NOW, SECOND, TIME, TIMEVALUE, TODAY, WEEKDAY, YEAR

Text functions (24)
CHAR, CLEAN, CODE, CONCATENATE, DOLLAR, EXACT, FIND, FIXED, LEFT, LEN, LOWER, MID, PROPER, REPLACE, REPT, RIGHT, SEARCH, SUBSTITUTE, T, TEXT, TRIM, UPPER, VALUE, YEN

Info Functions (14)
CELL, CELLRC, ERROR, ISBLANK, ISERROR, ISLOGICAL, ISNA, ISNONTEXT, ISNUMBER, ISREF, ISTEXT, N, NA, TYPE

-Noteable Quotes-

-"If you need to view and edit .xls files other than Excel 2003, then Mariner Calc is the way to go. 8 out of 10.

AppCraver.com

"Rated a B+. Solid product."

iphonetestlab.com

-"If you have any need to manipulate, create,
or even just view spreadsheets on your iPhone,
this is the app to get."

Steven Sande
TUAW (The Unofficial Apple Weblog)

-"I suspect Mariner Calc will prove to be

Mariner Calc for iPhone Screenshots

Mariner Calc for iPhone Review

Recent update improves Excel compatibility, adds features

by Rob Griffiths, Macworld.com

Back in March, I reviewed Mariner Calc 1.0 (), a program that lets you edit Excel spreadsheets on your iPhone or iPod touch. At the time of my review, I had a few key issues with the program. There wasn’t any way to add folders or otherwise sort your files, you couldn’t e-mail a worksheet to someone, there wasn’t any way to save your work in progress, and the program was quite unstable. In addition, the program only really handled one—the absolute simplest one—of my four test spreadsheets properly.

Saved by the Button: Mariner Calc now includes a Save button within the editing screen, making it easy to save your progress.

With the recent release of Mariner Calc 1.2, however, many of those concerns have been addressed, although there’s still no way to e-mail a file off the iPhone nor to sort your files. However, stability is greatly improved—I’ve yet to experience a crash while using this version of the program.

Equally as important as the stability are the improvements in the program’s handling of Excel files. Out of my four demo files, the only one that really doesn’t work right is the complex example, which contains array formulas. The simple and medium sheets now work perfectly, including the fancy mixed text and numeric calculation I use on the medium-difficult example. With these improvements, Mariner Calc is now much more useful for editing Excel files on the go.

There’s also a new Save button within the editing environment, so you won’t lose all your work if the program does happen to crash. There’s no Save As, so if you want to duplicate a worksheet, you’ll need to do that from the Mariner Calc file management screen.

Mariner Calc still has some issues if you’re going to move files back and forth between Mac and iPhone and edit them on the iPhone. When you move such edited files back to the Mac, you may find certain customization and formats gone. For example, merged cells are removed, and custom row heights are all reset. Some users have reported issues with print areas and margins changing, though I haven’t seen that myself.

Overall, these are nice improvements in Mariner Calc. Though it’s still missing e-mail capabilities, as well as any way to organize your files, the programs editing skills are now at least equal to those of Spreadsheet and Quicksheet, my two other favorites in this niche.

Mariner Calc is compatible with any iPhone or iPod touch running the iPhone 2.1 software update.

[Senior editor Rob Griffiths puts his finance degree to work reviewing Excel-friendly iPhone apps, including MobileFiles Pro (now called Quicksheet) and this round-up of spreadsheet editing apps.]

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