Zoho Writer - Document Editor Reviews

**UPDATED REVIEW
I’m updating this review from 3-4 stars because I was able to retrieve my documents from the second time they were deleted with the help of zoho support. The first time i lost my documents, I got a new phone and lost the documents in the transfer since I did not have an account. I’m relieved I was able to retrieve at least some very important documents!

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First review: I was really enjoying using this writer tool (via app.) You can add a lock to your documents which is great. Documents and revisions automatically save. ZohoWriter does not require you to have an account in order to start writing but BEWARE your files will disappear (I’m unsure if they are able to be retrieved). I am thinking it happened when I recently turned my phone off and back on. I had months of some really important writing - all gone. This is a writer’s nightmare. If anyone knows how I might retrieve these documents please reach out! Again, I did not have an account as ZohoWriter DOES NOT require it - maybe that needs to change so this doesn’t continue to happen.

My friend and I use Zoho to share our collaborative stories with each other. The website works well enough, and we have a great time editing with each other live. ZohoWriter on the other hand offers none of the convenience of the site. Typing lags so far behind what you are writing, you might as well be carving it into a stone tablet. And heaven forbid you want to copy and paste more than one word into it. The thing bogs down to near crashing with as few as 20 words selected to be pasted.

We have had more than a few issues where it will randomly place our curser somewhere else in the document while we are using ZohoWriter , and we will lose random sentence fragments pages away from where we had been working. If they even get written down at all.

And don’t you dare even think about any kind of formatting while on ZohoWriter , it won’t translate to the site version. You won’t get any of the double space periods your phone placed in there either. Don’t forget about the weird random extra spaces between words that you get as well. That’s if it doesn’t just not save huge chunks of text at random.

We still use the site, and will keep using the site, but we cannot safely use ZohoWriter and you cannot either. At least not until an acceptable update makes it useable.

I actually really like this idea, being able to type up a document and know that it will still be there no matter what happens to the data on my local device. Writer is one of a few good options out there. However, writer lacks some features.

Writer lacks the nice spacing on either side of the text, the left and right margins. Many other note taking and word apps nicely highlight the text via those margins. Even Zoho docs does it, so why not ZohoWriter? They need to give it more of a page feel in my opinion or at least have this as an option.

Then there is search. I would like to be able to search within my documents. It is easier to find content this way. Right now it appears to only be able to search file names.

Last but not least, it would be nice to be able to multi-select items within ZohoWriter to send them all to another app or drive. Far too many apps lack this very basic feature and it would be very worth while to add it to writer.

Besides these missing features though it is a good alternative to Google docs. Keep up the good work!

I like Zoho’s products a lot, they’re free and they get the job done just as well as Docs or Word. I love the interface on the desktop app, and the phone app is a great companion, especially when using notes on one and writing on the other. Where the issue lies is with the iPad app, it constantly crashes and gives me a message that it couldn’t save and deletes a portion of my progress. Sometimes I need to write on the iPad for convenience or because I cannot get to my computer, and the issues that ZohoWriter has makes it easier to write them somewhere else then copy and paste to my existing document.

I use Zoho for everything and I love it but ZohoWriter and the other desktop versions of Writer are missing one really important feature. Being able to put the file into a specific folder. I don’t like having to remember to go into Docs and moving it after it is created. Also, since Workdrive is headed to replace Docs it would be nice if we could choose to save to their as well.

I have noticed some lag the bigger the file gets but for the most part it gets the job done.

Most concerning is that when I use my microphone to input text, sometimes the text disappears. This has happened several times in the course of the last half an hour since I downloaded ZohoWriter , so I am going to get rid of my account because it’s just not usable for me.

Also: less concerning but slightly time-consuming it is the fact that every time I navigate away from the screen, it has to reload my document.

And finally, I couldn’t figure out if there was a “select all” option. I saw cut and basic select, but for my work, “select all” is a must-have capability. Maybe I’m just silly couldn’t figure it out, but that played a small role in my decision to stop using ZohoWriter.

I love the way everything is organized, but as I’m typing, the keyboard will bug out and it almost seems too laggy.

There is a lot to like about ZohoWriter. After doing some research it fit my needs best. But it freezes often, every 30 minutes before iOS 13 and more frequently now. You can’t write a period the usual way. For example, that last period came as all of mine do on an iPhone: two taps of the space bar. On ZohoWriter a period is there until you save the file. Then it’s gone. So I changed my style to actually type a period, but it seems some of these disappear, too! These are issues are PRIOR TO iOS 13. Under 13 it’s even worse. They couldn’t write ZohoWriter properly for 12. Why should I think they can fix it for 13?

I’m a fan of zoho for the most part. But being a business owner and especially one that writes software ourselves, it seems to me that zoho tries to do way too much and doesn’t pay attention to detail. Slow down. If you’re going to build an app, at least let me get past the first page which shows me how to swipe left or right for more options. I don’t care about options if I can’t use them. Don’t block the interface with tool tips and no way to get it out of the way. God gave you a brain. You’re smart. Use some common sense.

I’ve tried a lot of writing apps, but I keep coming back to this one because it is simple and it just works very well for what I need.
Would like to see a dark mode option for iOS, but other than that it pretty much does everything I need it to do.

If they add in a setting that lets you change the unnecessarily large font size then I’ll give this 5 stars

EDIT: I wish it could go even smaller, but now that I’ve found it, it’s a lot easier to write without people being able to see it from miles away!

Viewing documents is the best you can do with ZohoWriter. Even minor edits—adding a period or a space—can cause it to crash. Or worse, cause it to reload, which will result in your edit occurring in the wrong place in the document, or only some of the characters you typed showing up. I often end up creating more issues than I started with when I try to make edits. Long story short, yes, it works as a document viewer. No, it doesn’t work as a document editor.

UPDATE: Zoho corrected the problem in the most recent release (5.6.1). ZohoWriter now functions as expected.

ORIGINAL REVIEW: I have been using ZohoWriter daily for years. Overall I like it. But I just installed the newest version (5.6) and it is completely unusable. It crashes constantly.

I have an iPhone 7 running iOS 13.1.3.

So there’s another problem that I encountered. Sometimes ZohoWriter crashes and deletes whatever I had just typed at the time. It’s a little frustrating to deal with. Also, whenever ZohoWriter shuts down, it undo some of the changes I have made and even messes up some of the words I have typed. For example I typed “The fantasies...” and after ZohoWriter crashed, and I went back to sync my work, it saved as “Th ntasies...”

I have to say I found Zoho docs online today and I absolutely LOVE it. It is so useful. It’s like having a full-featured version of Word online. The UI in phenomenal and ZohoWriter complements that. ZohoWriter is very similar to the google docs app but is compatible with your zoho docs, which in my opinion has a way better website. Thanks for this amazing service!

Amazing App!!! The developers must be intelligent and hard working to create such an application. I can’t count how many times I chose Zoho Writer over Google Docs. I love the interface and how easy it is to use and share.

I would suggest adding more templates though.

Whatever you guys did with your segregation of the apps with work drive and writer, destroyed ZohoWriter for us.

Great, now 50 employees can’t access Writer on their phones because when you click a document in WorkDrive, writer opens and crashes. Brilliant, it’s been doing this for 4 months and you all still haven’t fixed.

Maybe Zoho One isn’t what I thought it was. Diss appointed in you guys.

Super disappointing. ZohoWriter lags horribly while you’re trying to type, and if the document is more than a few pages it crashes and shuts itself down immediately. Tried restarting my phone as well as uninstalling and reinstalling the entire app, with the same results. I use Zoho all the time on the desktop, so it’s a shame that that same usability doesn’t translate to ZohoWriter .

Thanks for the great alternative to Google documents! It would be even better if it listed saved docs in alphabetical order and if you added a search field!

Soo glitchy! It’s horrible! Please fix ZohoWriter! Every time I erase a letter or sentence, or do anything, it takes ages and doesn’t show the change. I have to keep closing and opening the document if I want to see what I’ve done to it. It crashes after 3+ changes. Not usable at all. I’ll probably have to migrate all my notes to google docs because I need to access my notes from my phone.

Taking notes with Zoho writer on IPad is incredibly frustrating. There are SO MANY bugs. Indentation buttons don’t work. I’ll be writing and the numbering will bug out when skipping to a new number (pressing enter to create a new number to continue taking notes). When it bugs out, I’ll close out ZohoWriter , to restart it, and progress will be lost and not saved. And on and on the bugs go. It’s actually garbage. I hope they fix this crazy buggy app.