Getting Down With Numbers for iPad Excel

Spreadsheets – iPad Excel

If you are using your iPad for business, and there is no reason why you shouldn’t, then at some point in time you are likely to want to open up an Excel spreadsheet. You can be sure that the iPad is an excellent tool for enterprise and business use, So what are the iPad Excel spreadsheet applications that you can use on the iPad?

Numbers for iPad

If your needs, with regard to using spreadsheets on the iPad are in the realms of a normal user and don’t involve, complicated spreadsheet macros, then Numbers by Apple is a very good application to use. For 95% or more of spreadsheet users, Numbers will do a great job for you and it is very intuitive to use. This is a good iPad spreadsheet way of working. Of course as you expect Numbers is a great looking application that Apple have created and you can also use Numbers with iCloud. When you are using iCloud it means that spreadsheets that you work on with your iPad, your iPod Touch or your iPhone, that have iOS five installed, can save your documents to iCloud and push them out to your other iOS five devices. This means that you can start working on a spreadsheet on your iPhone, while you are out and about and then you can get into your iPad Excel spreadsheet in Numbers for iPad by picking up your iPad. Numbers on the iPad will read in any of your Excel spreadsheets and it is also possible to export Numbers spreadsheets out to the Excel format. Strange as it may seem, but it is also possible to insert photos into a Numbers spreadsheet as well as tables, charts and shapes. Obviously it’s a preoccupation with Apple and their applications, that they should look good as well as work properly.

iPad Excel spreadsheets using other office type applications

As you might expect there have been a number of office type applications created for the iPad including iPad Excel spreadsheet opening apps. These applications are all quite similar in terms of their capabilities and functionality. You can expect to be able to open up the spreadsheet and do what you need to do. When you have finished you can save it, export out to a different format, using the usual modes of moving files within the iPad system. Generally you can move files to the iPad or copy your files off the iPad using iTunes synchronisation or quite likely it is possible that you might use Dropbox or even Good Reader to move files to iPad.

Numbers for iPadiCloud and iPad Excel

The synchronisation that you get automatically using iCloud was expected on launch day to work across all of the Apple platforms. Unfortunately this was not the case, as when you want to open up a document that was created on the iPad or other iOS 5 iCloud system, the only way to do this is to go to the iCloud website on your Mac and login. Once you have logged in you will see your Numbers, Pages and Keynote documents in the iCloud system and they are available for you to download. This is all well and good, but it is not the same as having the synchronisation that we were led to expect we would have, from iCloud across our Apple devices. In the iCloud web interface you can choose a document that you want and download it to your Mac. When you have finished with your documents and is ready to be put back into iCloud again, it is necessary to do some drag-and-drop of your document into iCloud, to manually upload it. It is most certainly, not as seamless as we were led to believe it would be and we can only hope that Apple will make changes to this in the near future.

Despite some of the drawbacks with using iWork iCloud applications, as I have just mentioned, personally I think that these are still probably the best applications for you to use to do your iPad Excel spreadsheet sort of work.

One thought on “Getting Down With Numbers for iPad Excel

  1. softwarekandalu says:

    EasyCloud for OS X, their Utility app that allows Mac users to simply drag and drop data files into the EasyCloud Drop Window to have those files immediately available on all their Macs and iDevices. The app’s two functions, Drop and Mac to Mac, support the following file types via iCloud: .pages (iWork), .numbers (iWork), .keynote (iWork), .doc (Microsoft Word), .excel (Microsoft Excel), .ppt (Microsoft Power Point), .txt (TextEdit Application), etc. The Drop function sends files directly to all the user’s iDevices containing the matching app and via a common iCloud account. The Mac to Mac function enables both syncing and file sharing between Macs sharing the same iCloud account. A browser window displays all files available for sharing between Macs, files can be opened or deleted, and the list refreshed. http://www.kandalu.net/products/easycloud

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