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How do you access Preview documents on iCloud?

In Mac OS X Mountain Lion you can save Preview documents into iCloud. How can you view these same documents on your iOS device?? Thanks :-)

Posted on Jul 25, 2012 8:46 AM

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Jul 25, 2012 11:54 AM in response to David Cittadini

I've stored .pdf documents via Preview on my Mac running Mt. Lion to iCloud only to be stumped trying to figure out how to access those docs in IOS on my iPad and iPhone. I have two .pdf reader apps (PDF Reader and Adobe Reader) neither of which give me an option ot link to iCloud. Since Apple doesn't offer Preview as an IOS app. what to do?

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Jul 26, 2012 4:31 AM in response to David Cittadini

I was kind of thinking Apple would release an update to iBooks that would include access to the iCloud pdf files. Crazy they would allow you to put pdf's out on the iCloud but no way to access them on your IOS devices. Surely they have a plan for doing this. If not what is the point of enabling it in ML.

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Jul 26, 2012 11:39 PM in response to David Cittadini

I can't figure it out. Apple specifically stated that all Preview docs would be available:


Documents in the Cloud

Preview in Mountain Lion supports Documents in the Cloud so you can access your PDF documents and images from anywhere.


Mountain Lion is great - but I'm disappointed about this.

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Jul 27, 2012 3:47 AM in response to ClaytonJA

I am very disappointed also. I have already moved all my Pages and Numbers documents from DropBox to iCloud and that part is working great. The only thing I have left on DropBox are a large number of PDF files. I was really hoping to move them to iCloud so that I would no long have to use DropBox. But if I can't read the files on my iPad, moving them doesn't help me at all. I am hoping that in IOS6, Apple will have a fix, but then again it really doesn't help me as I have an iPad 1 and IOS6 won't be running on it.

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Aug 5, 2012 3:49 PM in response to David Cittadini

Same situation - need a way to share some important PDFs with my iPhone - used Preview to store them in the iCloud, but can not find a way to access them with my iPhone, or the iCould web interface either.

The iCluld web interface does not even have an icon for Preview documents.

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Aug 7, 2012 12:33 AM in response to David Cittadini

Sadly, this appears to be a glaring problem in the implementation of Apple's "Documents in the Cloud". Every app is a walled garden. The lack of Preview and TextEdit on iOS means those documents will never appear in iOS unless Apple releases new apps or changes their own rules. Similarly, anything you store in iOS apps without Mac equivalents will never appear in the "Open" dialogue box for Mac apps, even if they can open the files (think GoodReader in iOS with some PDFs and JPEGs not appearing in Preview on the Mac, etc.).


You can actually see this quite clearly if you go to "~/Library/Mobile Documents". It will be full of folders with names like "com~Apple~Keynote" for things made on your Mac and "[Random Numbers]~com~apple~mobileiphoto" for things made on your iOS device. The contents of each folder is what appears in the "Open" dialogue for each app, and none of the other content will appear.


If you think this is a bad way to manage documents, I strongly recommend that you go to http://www.apple.com/feedback/icloud.html and leave a comment. Personally, I think it would make the most sense to have a single storage area and simply display all documents that an app (Mac or iOS) could open. As it stands, Apple's document model for iOS won't allow this.

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Aug 7, 2012 1:58 AM in response to Mike Stitzer

Same situation here, PDF file saved with preview but not accessible from any iOS device.

I found my PDF File (like Mike Stitzer said), and i just copied it in the GoodReader Folder.


Now the file is accessible from GoodReader.

Maybe an Automator Task can automaticaly resolve the problem... the time for Apple to give us a better solution.

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Aug 7, 2012 2:24 AM in response to dougi83

Yeah, you can definitely take matters into your own hands on the Mac side of things (for now), but be warned that Apple doesn't support playing with those files. Things could get horribly out-of-sync or corrupt. In my experience so far that hasn't been the case, but who knows what iCloud is doing behind-the-scenes.


The biggest downside to this manual method is you lose sync once you move the PDF from Preview to GoodReader, in terms of seeing it in Preview. You have to keep manually moving it back and forth on the Mac to see it in both apps. An Automator folder action might work, but you'd have to be sure it works perfectly or risk issues.


Good luck!

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How do you access Preview documents on iCloud?

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