Using Apple’s iWork suite of apps to produce Office-compatible documents on the iPad

Apple’s iWork suite of apps include Keynote (for presentations), Pages (for word documents) and Numbers (spreadsheet).  These apps tend to be very intuitive, yet powerful – beating “all-in-one” types of office apps such as Quick Office or Documents to Go. Each app retails for £6.99 on the app store. These apps suffered from limitations in the past but with the release of iOS6 one can easily transfer documents created within these apps onto Dropbox or any other cloud-based storage service.  These videos, produced by iPadagogy show you how easy their use can be….

• KEYNOTE

• PAGES

• NUMBERS

Credits: iPadagogy

Uploading Quick Office HD Pro documents to your Dropbox account on the iPad

If you are wondering how to upload documents from Quick Office Pro to your Dropbox account, there is a way and it is a very straightforward process….

•  Open Quick Office Pro HD on the iPad and notice on the left hand side both your iPad’s drive (“on Nicolas’s iPad”) and any other cloud-based accounts you might have set up (Go to Settings to set them up). My Dropbox account is referred to as “Nicolas Forsans” in the screenshot below. You can also see my GMail account below it, followed by my Evernote account.

• Identify the file you’d like to transfer onto your Dropbox account. For the sake of this tutorial I will transfer the default “File Manager How to.pdf” file which comes with Quick Office by default

• In the same way as you would select the file and send it by email or to the bin (notice the icons at the bottom of the screen, one for the bin, one for email, one for sharing), long-press the selected file name and move it to the icon that represents your Dropbox account on the left-hand side of the screen. Note: I could do the same thing to send it to my Evernote account.

• As you drag the file to your dropbox account, the file manager no longer displays files that are locally stored onto the iPad – instead it shows you the various files and folders that make up your Dropbox account. You can then drag the file onto one of the sub-folders or (and it ill probably be easier that way) just drag it to the root of your Dropbox folder by releasing it above the Dropbox icon on the left hand side, as I’ve done it on the screenshot – you can always go into your dropbox folder later on and move the file from root to individual sub-folders

• Job done: your file now appears in your Dropbox account; Obviously you would use the same method to bin the local file by dragging it to the bin icon, email it or send it to any other cloud-based account you might have set up

Save2pdf for iPad

An app that attracted my attention is Save2PDF for iPad which enables the conversion of emails, documents, contacts and webpages into pdf documents.  A key feature of the app is the merging of several documents into a single PDF file even if they are of completely different formats. Which means you could create a pdf document made of separate documents such as spreadsheets, charts, text, webpages etc.   This sounds really interesting..!

You can read about the app here – retailing for £3.99 I will test it in the next few days and report back on this blog.

CloudOn for iPad or Office in your pocket

 

An app that has just been released in the AppStore is CloudOn for iPad – previously only available in the US and Canadian app store.

What’s great about the app is that

(1) it integrates with your Dropbox account, Google Drive and other popular cloudservices

(2) it allows you to edit your Dropbox documents (and create new ones) using MS Office software, How they manage to do that I don’t know. But with the app you have a fully funtional version of Microsoft Office which may make Quick Office and the like completely redundant.

The downside of Cloud On is that it requires a live Internet connection to work – this is because it connects to Microsoft office servers. This is unlike Apple’s suite of Office software, Quick Office HD Pro and Documents to Go – all of which will be reviewed here in due course.

Try it for yourself – follow the link for the free download or take the tour here

Meanwhile Microsoft is widely expected to bring a version of its Office software on the iPad and on Android. The word on the street is that Apple and Microsoft will be joining forces for the launch of the iPad 3 early in March – there have been reports of a working Office app for iPad, although Microsoft has denied its existence. Clearly someone saw a live demo of the app running on the iPad (see pic) so someone is lying…! Although doing so would promote the platform of one of Microsoft’s main competitors, it would strategically makes sense if Microsoft does not want to fall into irrelevance. Until such a time, CloudOn will fill the gap – give it a try. Why they are giving it away for free I am not sure, office workers would happily pay for sticking to what they know best, i.e. Office.

Meanwhile, look for a forthcoming post on Office editing software for the iPad…