Written by Marisol Dahl
Raise your hand if you spend the entire workday in your office, at your desk. No one? Only a few? That's not surprising.
With our jobs more mobile, more global, and more on-the-go than ever, we're spending less time in the office and more time out on the field. We're hopping on planes, meeting new colleagues at coffee shops, and hosting conference calls while cooking dinner.
You may not always have the luxury of a decked-out and teched-out office at your fingertips, but there are times when no matter where you are, you just gotta get stuff done. Here are a few of my favorite apps that help make on-the-go office-y things a breeze.
20+ Apps That Transform Your Smartphone Into An On-the-Go Office
Notes, Notebooks, and To-Do Lists
- Todoist: you can make lists for different projects and assign different tasks for different days. You can even add recurring action items.
- Wunderlist: Great for making multiple separate to-do lists.
- Notes: the good ol' fashioned iPhone app. Super quick and easy for when you want to jot down a new idea.
- Evernote: Create notes, sort them into notebooks and notebook stacks, and more! This app syncs across devices and makes it easy to share and work on notes with others. Everyday I’m finding new awesome tricks with Evernote—it’s my number one must-have.
File Access and Storage
- Dropbox: Cloud storage for all your files so you can access them anywhere. All of my files are on Dropbox, and I have very little that is just stored on my computer. With this app, I basically have the entire contents of my computer at my fingertips no matter where I am.
- Google Drive
Word Processing and Editing
- Google Docs: Syncs up with all your Google Drive documents and allows you to do all of the fancy editing that you normally could with Google Drive. Great for quick drafting that's immediately available to view on other devices and share with other people.
- Microsoft Word: Beautiful integration with Dropbox word documents. This is great for creating more formal documents to send and share. It has a few more formatting options than Google Docs, and you can do almost all the fancy formatting like in regular Word on your computer, like inserting tables, adjusting margins, fiddling with fonts and colors.
- Adobe Reader: Great for annotating PDFs that you can grab from other apps like Mail and Dropbox. You can highlight, underline, draw, comment, and more. Major bonus: it can convert files to and from PDF format!
Scanning and Faxing (yes, I said faxing)
- Scannable: This new app from Evernote will make any old piece of paper into a beautiful, crisp electronic file. No bulky printer needed—scan and send any piece of paper in seconds.
- JotNot Fax and FaxFile: I know, who faxes anymore? But every once in a while there's a situation in which something must be faxed. Just these past couple years, I’ve become much more comfortable with faxing than I thought I’d ever be. These apps are reliable and simple.
Calendar and Mail
- Gmail: Easily usable for any account on Google Apps for Business.
- Mailbox: People swear by it!
- Sunrise: A great calendar app that integrates iCloud, Gmail, and Outlook calendars. You can set it to give you notifications so you’ll always be on time.
Business Collaboration and Connection
- CamCard: perfect for quick business card scanning and for transferring your own contact info. If you want to get really fancy, there's FullContact Card Reader. Through Zapier integration FullContact is able to automate a lot of different actions once a new card is collected, including automatically adding that person on LinkedIn or to your Google Contacts.
- If your workplace uses online social work platforms, you bet there’s an app for that! Download Asana, Podio, Trello, Basecamp, and more to keep up with all project updates on-the-go.
Time Tracking and Invoicing
- Whatever you use for tracking time and sending invoices at the office, there’s probably an app for that. I particularly love Freshbooks and Harvest.
There you have it. With these apps, staying on top of your work while away from the office is totally manageable.
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So, what did I miss?
Do you have any other must-have apps that make working on-the-go easy?
About Marisol Dahl
Marisol is currently a Sociology and Education Studies major at Yale University. A longtime New Yorker, her interests include business, communications, and marketing. Marisol started her blog in 2011 as a way to document her college years and beyond. When not running around campus and catching up with her school reading, she enjoys spending time with her family, reading dystopian fiction, and trying out new recipes. She can be reached on Twitter at @marisoldahl.