Want to know more about how to use Pages on your Mac?
You can also watch this video at YouTube (but with ads).
MacMost Now 740: Mountain Lion iCloud Documents
Comments: 33 Responses to “MacMost Now 740: Mountain Lion iCloud Documents”
Comments Closed.
MacMost Online Courses
Keyboard Shortcuts PDF
Are there any apps that can use iCloud this way with pdf documents?
I'm not sure. Which PDF creation app do you use now? I'd contact the developer of that app and ask them to add iCloud support.
Actually, a quick search shows that PDFpen has a "PDFpen Cloud Access" app for Mac. Not sure how it works, but check it out and let us know.
You can now use Preview to store PDFs in iCloud. However, this only seems to work from Mac to Mac - there is no iOS app which will connect to these PDFs when you move them to iCloud. Maybe Apple will fix this in iOS 6, or with a new app.
My biggest gripe with iCloud documents is that it doesn't allow me to reply to email with an attached file when that file is stored in iCloud....unless I'm missing something....when you hit reply and go to choose an attachment, there is an option for "iCloud" in the usual folder view, but this folder comes up as empty (despite the fact that I have numerous documents stored in iCloud). This is a big problem for me, because I have to reply to emails sending out documents about 25 times a day, and this makes the process so much more cumbersome (having to copy the email address of the sender, go to the file in the app and start a new email thread). They need to fix it so that we can reply to emails (in Mac Mail app) and choose an iCloud document to attach.
Both of your comments relate to the same thing. iCloud documents are app-specific. If you store a Pages document, it is only available for Pages. A Preview document is only available to Preview -- and there is no Preview app for iOS, so there is nothing that will access that iCloud space. Mail iCloud documents are only available to Mail. You can save an attachment to iCloud from Mail, and then access that attachment to send to someone else. That may not seem very useful, but the alternative was not to have iCloud documents for Mail at all.
If you are looking for a way to save document from one app (PDFs from Preview) and open them in another (Some PDF reader on iOS) then you have lots of other options: DropBox or something like it, iTunes, etc.
I was concerned about how saving to iCloud would work, as I'm always searching for documents using Finder. No need to worry, as Finder searched and found the iCloud document instantly - very impressive.
Previously when using iDisk, I'm sure my documents were saved both locally and on the server. If you want to save locally while using iCloud, it seems that you would need to drag the document across to the desktop (and keep your eye on version control).
Thanks for the great video!
Gary, Will I cloud synch files saved to iCloud with your Hard Drive for offline access while you may not have connectivity to the internet? (similar to DropBox?)
Yes. You can access the files locally while not connected, and then it syncs with the server the next time you connect.
Awesome! I'm glad they came out with this. Since Lion, I had wondered if there was a way to map to the iCloud.
You lost me at "when you first open up pages here". How? Where? Thanks your videos are very helpful.
Run Pages however you usually do. Some people use the Dock to launch apps, others use LaunchPad, others use the Applications folder, etc -- however you run Pages.
I too would like an IOS Preview app to allow PDF files to be read from iCloud. PDF Pen in theory has a similar facility but too many PDF files fail to open once uploaded. I have come to dread the file icon with the question mark? Also am unable to work out what causes it to happen
Try the DropBox app. Use DropBox on your Mac, then put your PDFs in the DropBox folder. Then the iOS DropBox app sees them and you can open them. I use this quite a bit.
Gary, Is there really any good reason to use iCloud, if I have Dropbox installed? I cannot see any functionality that iCloud offers (other than the iOS type interface), that I cannot get with Dropbox. Or am I missing something here?
Perhaps you don't mean "use iCloud" but "use iCloud for documents" -- what the video is about. Because obviously iCloud is a lot more than documents.
But for documents, it works better if you have iOS in the mix. With Dropbox you could share Pages documents between Macs, but not with Pages for iOS since there's no way to open the DropBox files -- you can view them in some 3rd-party apps, I guess, but not to edit them.
So it makes sense to use iCloud for apps that support iCloud (Pages, Keynote and Numbers -- but soon a lot more as 3rd party devs start to use it) and DropBox for the rest.
I believe you can go to Dropbox, select the file, then "Open in Pages" from the icon in the top right (I forget what it's called...).
Yes, you can! So that makes it even a better option. But what it does is copy it over to Pages. It is a copy, and the original in your DropBox folder will remain untouched. Then there is no way to get the new version back to DropBox directly -- you'd have to use iTunes, email it or use iCloud to then complete the loop back to your Mac.
I have found there is no "save has" in Preview,so i am using ColorSync Utility.
I found how to change the name in Preview,but when i click on the outside it reverts back to Screen Shot. Gary
In Mountain Lion? There is. Hold down Option, select the File menu.
Thanks for pointing this out Gary.
One thing I want to do but for the life of me cannot seem to figure out is how to share a document in Pages with another iOS user. iCloud currently supports sharing of photos but not documents (I have a huge gripe with this!). If I use Dropbox to share the document, the other user can see but not edit it. Furthermore, with Dropbox, I cannot edit the document in Pages for iOS without it opening up a copy of that document within Pages for iOS — which means the now edited doc cannot be seen by the other user since the new/edited doc is now in iCloud. So… is there *any* way that I can easily edit a single document across all my Apple devices and still be able to share the most recently updated document with another iOS user?
iCloud doesn't currently have a share-with-others function like that. Using DropBox is a good way to do it -- I don't know why they can't edit the document. I definitely use it that way all the time. Check your sharing settings for that DropBox folder as you definitely can set it up that way.
I have upgraded to mountain lion and pages is now 4.2 (1008) though when I open up the open dialog box it seems to be like the previous 4.1 and there is no signage for icloud anywhere. Please can you help.
J
Perhaps you don't have iCloud turned on in your System Preferences? Or, if you do, you have Documents turned off.
Yes it is turned on. As is documents and data on system preferences. ?????
When they you should see iCloud/On My Mac in the upper left corner of the open dialog in Pages. Look carefully for it. If not, maybe a visit to the Genius Bar for a first-hand look will help.
Have solved the problem. I updated through mac AppStore and all is fine now. Many thanks though.
Nice one, Gary, thank you.
Am I correct in thinking there is no way to have files on my local disk automatically store/update to iCloud? It's either one or the other, right?
iCloud files ARE on your disk. If you have two Macs, then they would be on both disks. iCloud is the service that syncs the files between the disks.
It is hard to grasp how this works, thus the "cloud" metaphor. The idea is not to worry about where the file is located -- it is everywhere.
I watch you daily on my TiVo. Keep up the good work.
My wife and I both have iPads. But we share an iMac. Is there a way with 2 iCloud accounts to both send iPad pages documents to the one pages program on the iMac?
To send each other Pages docs, either email them to each other, or use a cloud sharing service like DropBox.
So, there is no way to share the iMac pages program?
You mean documents within Pages, right? Not the app itself.
Many ways. You can email or use DropBox like I mention -- those are just two, there are other apps that facilitate sharing like DropBox. But iCloud Documents is for seeing your own documents on your own account.