Microsoft Word for iPad – Or Pages From Apple

For the life of me, I cannot understand why so many users of computers think that when they start using the amazing iPad it is going to be necessary for them to have Microsoft Word for iPad. On the desktop computer Microsoft Word is a large application which has an unbelievable amount of bloatware. The iPad is much more refined than that, Apple has provided us with some excellent office applications and these will usually also suit the people thinking in terms of Microsoft Word for iPad.

Pages Application for iPad – A Better Alternative

In Pages on the iPad, we have a nice and useful toolbar whether you are in landscape or portrait view. In the top left corner there is a button called Documents, this is where you’ll create new documents and open documents that you have already created. One nice feature of Pages on the iPad is that it will save your documents as you work, automatically. The next button to the right is an undo button and with the undo you can rectify something where you have made a small mistake. Also on the toolbar you can find an info button, and insert button, a tools button – which is for checking spelling and more and a full-screen button which allows you to view the application in a full-screen mode.

It is extremely easy to work with styles within your document and I have found Pages to be almost a desktop publishing application. The stylisation toolbar allows you to add style to your documents easily. If you double tap on some text you will see the style ruler. Tap on the fonts button to change how your text looks. You can change the font, the font size and the character styles. 

Adding Styles To A Paragraph

A nice little feature in Pages is where you triple tap on a paragraph to select it and then you tap the info button on the toolbar to choose a style. A small window pops up and there are style options and you can choose an option within that list to apply to your selected paragraph. I am sure that Pages is a much better application than a possible Microsoft Word for iPad.

In the iPad application, Pages, you can work with objects, moving, resizing and rotating your images. If you tap on a picture within the document there are a number of things you can do with it. With the image selected you may touch within the image and move it, or if you tap and hold down on one of the blue edge handles on the sides of the image, you can resize it. It is a pretty sweet move when you touch and hold the image with 2 fingers, wait just a moment and then turn your fingers, this will rotate the image. You will also notice that the text is wrapping around the image. You can change the way the text wraps around by tapping the info button, tapping arrange and then changing the wrap from automatic to around, or you can have it so that it does not wrap all around the object by choosing Above and Below.

All The Bells And Whistles in Pages iPad Application

Computer users that are switching to use the amazing iPad and away from the idea of using Microsoft Word for iPad, will enjoy working with objects within Pages. It is easy to add photographs, tables, shapes and charts. It is a snap to add an object to a page, all you have to do is to tap the insert button, choose your shape or chart or whatever, perhaps one of your own photographs and it will be inserted into the document. If you tap the object one more time you’ll see a pop-up menu which will allow you to do cut, copy or delete.

In Pages for iPad there is an excellent navigator which is found on the right-hand side of the document. If you press and hold down, a little loupe device pops up that looks a little bit like a magnifying glass with the numbers in it. Those numbers are the page numbers, and you can move that little navigator up and down to choose where you would like to be in your document.

Sharing your Documents

A major part of creating documents on whatever type of computer you’re using, whether it is the amazing iPad, or even a Windows computer, is sharing your work. In the iPad application Pages, it is extremely easy to share your documents with others. From within the application on the iPad you can e-mail your document or copy it to iTunes on your Mac or PC. Moving or copying files to the iPad is not as difficult as some people would like to make out.

iCloud is Coming

In the autumn of 2011 we will also have the facility of iCloud, and with iCloud, a document created and worked on within either the iPad or on your Mac will be automatically saved and pushed to the iCloud service and then pushed to our other iCloud enabled computers. You can also use Dragon Dictate to enter the text into Pages on the iPad, it offers excellent speech to text recognition.

As would be possible with an application called Microsoft Word for iPad, if such an app is ever created, (I doubt it though) within Pages it is easy to organise your documents. Although non-iPad users believe it is not possible to create folders, it is actually quite easy to have folders on the iPad within the Pages application. To organise your created documents on the iPad into folders, all you have to do is to touch and hold any document and then drag it on top of another. So I suggest that you don’t worry about Microsoft Word iPad and stick with the Apple products.