MacMost Now 503: Sharing Documents With iWork.com

You can share your Pages, Numbers and Keynote documents using Apple's iWork.com service. Others can view your documents right in their browser, and make comments and notes if they are using Safari. You can even upload Keynote presentations and present right from the Safari.

You can also watch this video at YouTube (but with ads).

Video Transcript: Hi! This is Gary with MacMost Now. On today's episode, let's look at iWork.com. So iWork.com is a service from Apple that allows you to share your Keynote, Pages, and Numbers documents online. Let's take a look. So here I am in Pages, and I've chosen one of the sample documents that's got formatting and the image at the top. I'm going to click on the "share" button here, which will then take me to this page here. 
If I'm not signed in using my Apple ID, it will ask me to do that or create an Apple ID account. It's free right now as iWork.com is in a public Beta. So I can choose to share with others, publish on the web, or upload for private use. All three of these will put the document at iWork.com. 
So the first option here is the most comprehensive. It allows me to share the documents specifically with other users. I can add a list of email addresses of people to send an email to automatically that the document's available for them to view. I can use a subject and message for that email as well and to say whether or not I want them to be able to leave comments or download the document.
I click this "show advance" button here. You can't see it all, but I can change the name of the document as it appears there. I also can choose as you can see Pages '09 and PDF as available formats for the download. Below that's Pages '08 and Microsoft Word as well. I can also, just below that, set a password for people so they need to use that password to view it online.
If I go over to "publish" here, it's much simplified. I can simply set a name for the document if I want and same thing for the upload here, which will make it available online but not publicly viewable by others, just by me. So let's just click on the simple "publish" one here. I'll give it an example, and publish. It will generate the different documents and upload it to iWork.com. 
Now here's what it looks like on the web. I'm signed in to iWork.com, so I'll see more information here since I'm the owner of the document. You can see I can view the document. Everybody can do that, and this is all done with dynamic HTML. It does not require to be able to view it as a PDF or anything. 
Now when you invite viewers, you use their name and email address just like you would have before if you had chosen that option instead of just public sharing, and those people would get an email with a link that has a specific URL for them. So when they're viewing the document, it knows who's viewing it. So when they're leaving notes, you know who left the note. 
So here's how notes work. You can highlight something in the text here, and then you can click on the note button here, and it will link a note to that piece of text. The note will just stay there. You can also go in "add notes to the entire document" here on the right, like that. It says who posted it and when. Now somebody else viewing this document can view these notes, and hit "reply" and "reply to a note," and then post it there. They can add more notes here on the right, and people can keep basically making notes to your document. 
So it's a great way to share something between a bunch of people, have them review it, and give you some feedback. The great thing is is you can also download this as a Pages document, PDF, or Word file, and these notes will actually remain intact. So when you're finished, download the Pages document, see all your notes in there, and make changes to your Page document in Pages. 
So you have all the levels of security that you need. You can post something completely publicly and let other people view it. You can post it and have specific people be able to add notes and view it. You can require a password so even if somebody knows the specific URL where it's at, they still can't get at the document unless they know the password. 
Now to go and look at all my documents, there's a link here partially hidden by me "shared documents." I click on that, and it will go to my iWork home page here which shows all the different documents that I've shared. So you notice that not only have I shared a Pages document, I've got a sample of a Numbers spreadsheet. You can add different things in there and notes and do the same kind of thing. 
You can also share Keynote presentations. And the interesting thing about Keynote presentations now is that when you view them online, they actually have a lot of the features like transitions that you would normally only see if you were viewing them in Keynote. So this is something new this week. 
So for instance, if I view this Keynote presentation here, even though I'm just in the browser, you can see the transitions actually work. Now not all the transitions and features of Keynote will work. Apple has a list of what works and what doesn't right here, so you can check that out for yourself. 
So iWork.com is a great way to be able take your documents with you, especially something like a presentation. Instead of having to worry about bringing your own laptop or anything, you can just put your presentation up on iWork.com, use any computer, launch the browser, and play the presentation from there. It also works with iPad apps. The iPad iWork apps allow you to publish your documents to iWork.com as well.
So a lot of different features. You can check out some more information about iWork.com at Apple. Now it's in Beta right now, which means they're adding new features all the time, like they added the Keynote features this week. 
So it's free to use, and it's also something that's going to just keep changing. We'll have to see what happens with it in the future, if Apple charges extra for it or makes it part of MobileMe and what features eventually end up as part of the online iWork suite. Until next time, this is Gary with MacMost Now.

Comments: 11 Responses to “MacMost Now 503: Sharing Documents With iWork.com”

Richard Greene

14 years ago

Gary,

Just a note of appreciation for your fine work. I check in with you every day and especially look forward to the videos. They are just the right length - informative, interesting, and well presented. I always take note of your non-obtrusive advertisers as developing your content is obviously a full time commitment. Happy New Year!

Gary Rosenzweig

Thanks!

Daniel EYER

Just did a Keynote for a friend. My side went fine, but they are not a Mac user and do not have a Apple ID. Do you know how they can get a iWork account (free) and be able to review the Keynote using iWork?
Thanks again for all the info you provide. I am still wearing my MacMost "T" and always get the question "What's MacMost?"!!

Did you try sharing it with them anyway? They will need to use Safari on Windows to get all of the same special effects in the presentation as you see. But when you set up the iWork.com document, you can just make it public. Or, just use their email address as the user for sharing. I don't think they need an Apple ID unless they want to set up their own iWork.com account. Otherwsie, just send them the link to the document that iWork.com provides.

Huk

Thank you,
I am watching your video very often and very helpful.

Regards,

Mary

13 years ago

Is there any way for a person viewing the document to edit it? Is there an ap for that?
Thanks. I found your video concise and to the point.

You edit the document with the same app used to create it. Pages, Number, Keynote, etc.

joe bautista

is it possible to put documents on iwork from a windows based computer?

Have you tried it? Go to the web site and log in and try.

John Pollard

12 years ago

Time to take this video down since iwork.com is kaput replaced by iclouud. It's confusing to go look for it.

You are right in that this iWork.com is no longer available. This video will remain here for historical reasons. I don't remove episodes as MacMost is a publication, like a newspaper or magazine.

Comments Closed.

MacMost Now 503: Sharing Documents With iWork.com

Comments: 11 Responses to “MacMost Now 503: Sharing Documents With iWork.com”

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