Document sharing?

[Morrus]

I have a PC with OpenOffice on it. And I have an iPad.

I have a 70+ page document on the PC in Open Office format.

I'd like to be able to work on the document on my iPad sometimes, on the PC other times, and for changes to reflect on both devices.

What are my options?

 

[Nellisir]

Dropbox. Maybe Google Docs. I'm sure there are others. I used Dropbox because I've always used Dropbox, and other people use Dropbox, so it's convenient. Never had a problem with it.

 

[Morrus]

So the file's in Dropbox. What do I do then? Is there a word processor on iPad that can download, edit, then re upload to Dropbox?

 

[Nellisir]

Oh heck. I thought you had a word processor on the iPad. I'm mac-averse, so I have a Nexus. That said....

Here's the Dropbox on iPad app: https://www.dropbox.com/ipad

Here's something that might work for editing: https://www.rollapp.com/openoffice There's a comment on a forum that this operates "in the cloud", so you need to be connected to use it, but I'm not sure if that's true, or how true it is, or how often you'll be offline with your iPad.

It's Google Drive, not Google Docs. My mistake. Box is also mentioned as an similar program.

Basically, Dropbox will create a Dropbox folder on your PC linked to your Dropbox account. Any files placed in this folder will update the online version. Open the Dropbox file, work as usual, and save. When you switch to another device, open the dropbox file again, work as usual, and save. I'm pretty sure you can open and edit files wholly in the cloud as well, so you could open a file from someone else's computer without installing dropbox (just go to the site and log in to see your files) and work on it.

 

[Morrus]

So basically I'll looking for a word processor in the App Store which specifically says it can interact directly wit Dropbox? (As you probably know, the iPad doesn't natively store files outside of apps which use them, otherwise the the solution would be trivial).

 

[darjr]

google docs works on the ipad, don't they?

 

[Nellisir]

So basically I'll looking for a word processor in the App Store which specifically says it can interact directly wit Dropbox?

And can edit Open Office files.

(As you probably know, the iPad doesn't natively store files outside of apps which use them, otherwise the the solution would be trivial).

I didn't know. Getting an iPad was never really a consideration for me, so I never looked into them at all. I'm not sure if the Dropbox app will allow files to be stored natively on the iPad and update them when it gets access to the net, or if it requires web/net/cloud access to work every time. My Nexus is wi-fi only, so I need a hotspot to get online. From the quick glance around I did earlier, it looks like a lot of the word processor programs for the iPad actually operate "in the cloud", so you wouldn't have or need the files on the iPad at all.

I'm not sure why I'm the only one posting in this thread; it's a bit of the blind leading the blind here. I had to do a lot of cross-platform file sharing in school over the past few years, so I'm OK suggesting Dropbox, but the gadgets on either end I'm less familiar with.

 

[Umbran]

You're real problem is trying to use an iPad for productivity work.

Go with Google docs. Upload the document. Edit in the browser, from either machine, and you don't have to worry about apps. Download it when you're done and need to do something else with it.

 

[Nellisir]

You're real problem is trying to use an iPad for productivity work.

I didn't want to be the one to say it.

 

[pedr]

You probably want an app like Office 2 HD or Docs to Go. Either of these will open files which you save in Dropbox (or SugarSync, Google Drive, etc) and should be able to save edited copies back. This may not be as seamless as using a Mac with Pages and saving documents in iCloud, but so long as you close documents when you're finished and ensure that the latest version is on Dropbox, that should work.

I'm not sure whether any of the iPad wordprocessors will open Open Office's file format, though - you may have to use Open Office's implementation of the .doc or .docx file format to enable editing (http://support.dataviz.com/support.srch?docid=14354 for Docs To Go, for instance).

According to this from two years ago, Docs to Go is best for preserving the formatting etc of documents created on the desktop: http://www.janet.tokerud.com/writing-on-the-ipad-part-2-rich-text-options/

(The bottom line is that the iPad isn't a great tool for editing documents beyond text editing. It's probably best at it when paired with a Mac and Pages, because Apple have designed Pages, particularly the latest version, to focus on interoperability. One alternative is a cloud-based implementation of Microsoft Word, such as 'Cloud On', but that doesn't make sense in this situation where you're not using Word on the desktop, and it's not free. It looks as if the rollapp office app might do the same thing and work better with Open Office files, so it could be a solution.)