sharing between mac pc and iPad

Question

sharing between mac pc and iPad

Help me out here. I am very experienced with Excel, but brand new to Numbers. I have a spreadsheet that I use to keep track of my checking account. It's a basic spreadsheet. Is there any way I can post the one file someplace where I could access it via my MacBook Pro (via Numbers '09), my work Windows PC (via Excel 2007) and via Numbers on my iPad? Basically, I want to be able to add transactions to my spreadsheet from anywhere and not have multiple copies of the file. Is there some sort of online storage service that comes with iWork or should I use my MobileMe? Since it's a basic spreadsheet I shouldn't have to worry about having the file being used by three different programs, right? How should I save the file each time? Any pitfalls I need to watch out for?

MacBook Pro 15" 2.0 GHz Intel Core Duo, Mac OS X (10.6.4), iWork '09, Numbers for iPad, Excel 2007

Posted on Sep 2, 2010 6:36 PM

Reply

Answer 1

Badunit

Level 7

25,442 points

Sep 2, 2010 8:14 PM in response to Paul Oldewurtel

Serving a file up from a common place, be it from one of your computers or MobileMe or elsewhere is simple enough. Being able to edit and save that file is simple from your PC or your MacBook, including being able to export it from Numbers on your MacBook as an Excel file. But the iPad is a different animal. You can view an Excel file easily from MobileMe or from other places. You can import it into Numbers on the iPad and make edits in Numbers. But getting it back out of iPad Numbers can only be done via iTunes or by email or iWork.com; you can't easily get it back to where it came from. Maybe there is an app that will let you send it back to the server directly but I am not aware of it and have not done it. Also, Numbers on the iPad will not export into Excel format (maybe an update or next version will add this feature, who knows), so you cannot create an Excel file for your PC.

Also, importing and exporting from Excel to Numbers to Excel isn't a one-to-one conversion. The resulting Excel file will probably not look like the original. But you can test that out for yourself because you have both Excel and Numbers.

Oh, and why are you messing with your checkbook at work? Quit messing around and get back to work. 🙂

Message was edited by: Badunit

Reply