Can Word documents be stored in iCloud?

SugarSync, as I said 🙂

Hi,

Please excuse my ignorance. I am not a computer geek and understand little of the technical terminology used in some of the posts.

I have had an iPhone for a couple of years and have recently been a convert to Macs having bought an iMac and Macbook Air and have Microsoft Office 2011 installed on both.

I wish to be able to create, edit and read MS Word documents on my Macs and read them on my iPhone and have them all sync with each other. Am I right in thinking that in order to do so via the iCloud I have to purchase Pages on the Macs for £13.99 and Pages on the iPhone for £6.99 (I am in the UK by the way!).

If I am getting confused, and there is an easier and cheaper way, can someone enlighten me as to how I can do this. Step by Step instructions would be preferred!!!

I have the iPhone, iPad, IMac and MacBook Pro. I used mobile me all the time. Now with iCloud it is a total different story. The only way to view your Word, Excel etc docs in iCloud, according to what I do now, is to open the doc in GoodReader on my iPad or iPhone, then move the doc into my iCloud from there. You cannot access your iCloud account from your iPhone or iPad but only by using a computer and then sign into your iCloud account. So, I am totally not using iCloud for my docs but am running DocsToGo and SugerSync. A real pain in the " you know where". So I see iCloud as something to use for music, find my iPhone/ iPad and photos. With documents stay away. A huge step back from MobileMe.

thanks, sorry i missed it in the thread. I've been reading all over the place and get kind of fuzzy.

I think i'm just going to wait until Mountain Lion comes out and see what the server version has to offer. Hopefully i'll be able to run a website using Mountain Lion and my 3 TB GoFlex Home Station.

I'm also considering trading in my iMac and my MBA for a new MBP Retina (posted a new thread about that one... if you have any opinions it'd be great to read them)

mac0904 wrote:

thanks, sorry i missed it in the thread. I've been reading all over the place and get kind of fuzzy.

I think i'm just going to wait until Mountain Lion comes out and see what the server version has to offer. Hopefully i'll be able to run a website using Mountain Lion and my 3 TB GoFlex Home Station.

I'm also considering trading in my iMac and my MBA for a new MBP Retina (posted a new thread about that one... if you have any opinions it'd be great to read them)

I would wait and let others deal with 'new model' issues, but that's me.

Sorry for late reply but only just picked up this thread

Do not waste your money on Pages or Numbers.

I have been a MS Office user for many years - a competent user but not a expert, however basic functions such as data filter do not exist in Numbers.

Bought both & after wasting a day trying to manipulate my spreadsheets I gave up.

Stick with Excel & Word.

I am also disappointed iCloud does not accomodate Excel, as MobileMe did so will investigate Drpobox or similar.

Well, this thread really isn't about whether MS Office is superior to the Apple offerings or not, it's a discussion about how to cloud sync office documents with iCloud.

That said, I'm going to disagree strongly with you. I AM an expert MS Office expert (MOS and MSCE) and for most users the Apple products will fulfill their needs. I've just taken an entire advanced statistics course using nothing but Numbers and Pages and didn't feel I was lacking any tools.

Also, to your complaint, Numbers does have data filters, I use them all the time.

It's terrific to have a strong opinion, but don't assume that your lack of knowledge about a product means the product is no good, or that something that doesn't work for you isn't perfect for anyone (or everyone) else.

iCloud doesn't accomodate Excel is backwards. ANY software can use iCloud, as long as the software programmers put in the code to do so. iCloud doesn't need to accomodate Excel, Excel needs to be updated to use iCloud, which is something only Microsoft can do (expect it in the next version).

Now, if you just want to upload Excel documents to iCloud, that can be done easily as mentioned several times in this thread. Go to the iCloud page and upload your Excel or Word or Powerpoint document, and it will sync to your iDevices. I prefer using a third-party solution. My favorite is Sugarsync, but any of them will do; Dropbox, Google Drive, Skydrive, etc.

Message was edited by: stephen.bradley spelling correction

My comment was in response to Fougere question as whether to spend $ on Pages for iPhone & Mac and therefore within the context of the thread.

I am glad you get full compatible functionality.

Unfortunately an assistant at a Mac store was unable to obtain the functions I needed after 1 hour of investigation.

So the problem may not be functionality but simplicity of operation.

As per several other contributors to this thread & your preference I am investigating third-party options.

Thanks for your advise.

I don't know what everybody's talking about, it is possible to upload and download Word, Powerpoint, and Excel documents. I use it all the time and have been using it for a whole year, alongside Pages, Keynote and Numbers.

You upload it, and download it as a Word document.

We know that you can upload and download Office documents through iCloud.com.

People are looking for more functionality though, specifically:

1. Saving into and loading from iCloud in MS Office software, rather than having to manually upload and download.

2. Editing those documents on an iDevice without having to convert them to Pages/Numbers/Keynote, because those programs on an iDevice are much more limited, so formatting and structure changes often have to be made. Other apps like DocsToGo, OfficeHD, etc do a much better job of working on Office documents, but they don't currently work with iCloud.

Short answer: we know, thanks, that's not the issue.

I'm new to the cloud feature and am using Mountain Lion. When I went to save a document from iText, it gave the Cloud as a storage option - I chose that, thinking that this document would then be accessible in the Cloud by my iPad and iPhone (in addition to the Mac I created it on). Is this not the case? If so - how do I FIND the document?! I have the cloud enabled everywhere, but see no place for finding documents that I chose to store there. What am I missing?

I'm afraid I'm not familiar with itext (do you mean TextEdit on Mountain Lion?).

Unless there is an iOS version of this itext application you mentioned, then the short answer is "no".

Basically, iCloud is sandboxed. That means only the application that created a document can see that document.

Example: If I use Textedit on OSX to create a document in iCloud, then I go to my iPad, I can't open that file with Pages, even though pages can easily open text files. I'd have to create the document in Pages for OSX so that Pages for iOS can "see" it.

Now if I go to another Mac, like my laptop, I can open TextEdit on that Mac and see/edit my document in iCloud no problem Unfortuatnely, there isn't currently a TextEdit version for iOS (I expect one though).

Right now, if you want unrestricted syncing of documents to the cloud and across devices your best bet is a third-party syncing solution like Sugarsync, which also has a really nice iOS app that will let you access your stuff. Another popular syncing program is Dropbox. Both work on Mac, Windows, iOS, Android, etc.

Programs such as QuickOffice for iPad/iPhone can read and write to Sugarsync, so you can access and edit all your stuff and keep it in sync across devices automatically.

Sugarsync link: http://goo.gl/llHqF

Thanks so much for the explanation, Stephen... iText is just another "simple" text editor that has slightly more features that TextEdit. So wow - it won't even open TEXTEDIT files?!! That seems really ridiculous... I'd heard the term "sandbox" but didn't know what it meant exactly... So why is Apple making the iCloud work that way when all these other companies (DropBox, SugarSync, GoogleDrive, etc.) are allowing all document types to be shared "in the cloud" - ??!! Apple really needs to get on board with this... 😟

Jacki wrote:

Thanks so much for the explanation, Stephen... iText is just another "simple" text editor that has slightly more features that TextEdit. So wow - it won't even open TEXTEDIT files?!! That seems really ridiculous... I'd heard the term "sandbox" but didn't know what it meant exactly... So why is Apple making the iCloud work that way when all these other companies (DropBox, SugarSync, GoogleDrive, etc.) are allowing all document types to be shared "in the cloud" - ??!! Apple really needs to get on board with this... 😟

Apple have elected to use a higher level of security than those other Apps, your choice is whether to use Apple's services or a 3rd party provider.

Sorry mate, it's unlikely Apple will get on board. They're trying to accomplish two things with this approach: simplicity and security. By sandboxing data so it's married to one particular app, they ensure that a badly written or malignant application can't modify/delete/access your data, it can only damage what it creates.

So, if iText blows up from a bug and deletes everything, your non-iText documents can't be hurt.

Simplicity, Apple is trying to remove the file system metaphor. The iPhone has never had a user-accessible file system, deliberately. They don't want to add one with iCloud, it raises the complexity of the user experience. For the vast majority of users, this isn't an issue. People don't want to open Pages documents in the Numbers app (wouldn't work anyway) or Word docs with Excel. So locking data to an application doesn't affect them. For users with more intense needs, of course there's already an ecosystem of services out there with iOS apps to let you manage your files with the control that Apple won't provide.

More advanced:

I just hooked up with smestorage.com. They are a cloud services aggregator. That is, their app allows me to see what's in ALL my cloud accounts (Skydrive, Google, Sugarsync, Box, DropBox, iCloud, etc) all from one place. It's a tiny bit clunky to navigate versus the simple, polished Sugarsync app, but it's pretty good. It even supports Amazon AWS for those of us with lots of data to store.