.Jasonified()

The iPad is an extremely useful device but is flawed by the fact that every application you install seems to have it’s own “sandbox” for storing files. Typically this means you have to copy files back from the device using iTunes and that’s useless when you’re on the road.

iWork is on example where the files are stored locally on the iPad but inaccessible by any other application on the iPad.

So here’s a (relatively) quick and simple way to get iWork documents into Dropbox.

(You’ll need Filer or ReaddleDocs for this and configured with your cloud storage e.g. Dropbox.)

1. Create your document in iWork (e.g. Pages)
2. E-mail the document to yourself (I know this is a little crazy but bear with me) as either a Pages doc or Word doc (whatever suits your needs)
3. Check your e-mail and you now have the document attached
4. Click it to view it within the mail viewer.
5. Click “Open with..” and select your file manager e.g. Filer

Your document is now transferred/opened in the file manager (e.g. Filer). Now all you need do is use the MOVE option in Filer OR the Upload (move doesn’t work with Dropbox) in ReaddleDocs to upload the file.

Now you can go to Dropbox or another supported app and see your document, even put it back into Pages for editing.

It’s a hack solution and not as elegant as I’d like but it works and is a pretty good solution at least until Apple all apps to share / access the same storage system.