I'm new to theiPad3 and am needing an app that I can use to open, edit and save Office docs that are sent in emails as attachments. I also need to be able to print them out. Which apps are best for this?
The two biggest (ie, most known) are Documents To Go and QuickOffice. I have both. Documents To go makes desktop syncing a snap with its desktop sync client, and I have never lost a file with it. It does support reading and writing files to some cloud storage sites such as Google Docs/Drive, Dropbox, etc. This is a rudimentary function, and does not really (or at least readily) support the actual transfer of files between cloud and device. However, I am having major problems with some Excel files in D2G, it does not support some data functions that call data from other sheets in the workbook. QuickOffice does not have that problem.
However, QuickOffice does not sync with anything. Rather, it depends on cloud services such as Google Docs/Drive, Dropbox, etc. And this is fully integrated, you can copy/move files between cloud and device, and even between cloud services if you configure more than one. QuickOffice has no problems with those same Excel files, and it has, imo, a better editing UI. However, and to me this is a fatal flaw, it has corrupted several of my document and spreadsheet files so badly, I had to recover from backups and rebuild the new data. Once is a fluke, twice is an accident, three times is a program flaw.
I now use Apple's Numbers for my Excel files on the iPad and just deal with the fact that it can only save out to xls and not xlsx and I am considering doing the same thing for Word documents with Apple's Pages.
Rumor has it, though I haven't heard anything in the past couple of months, that Microsoft is working on an iOS version of their mobile Office suite. It's in their interest to do so.