Documents shared from Pages only open in browser?

Same issue here. Created a doc on my Mac to share. The recipient was able to open it in Safari on iPad, then there was a link at the to of the web page to open it in the native Pages app in iPad. However, it seems to just save it to recipients cloud. It is not truly shared (collaborative) document that we can both edit. It is two separate copies...one for me and one for him.

Am I missing something here?

The kind of collaboration you are looking requires using the browser version of the app, which is only possible from a Mac or PC.

Does anyone else think this is totally nuts? I just paid $20 to get Pages on my 2011-vintage Macs so I could stop using MS Word, and now it turns out I have to email Pages documents back and forth between my Macs and my iPads. What was Apple thinking?

If you're reading this message, please take a minute to send Apple feedback asking that they get iWork collaboration working sensibly on all devices. http://www.apple.com/feedback/pages_ios.html Thanks.

Bill999 wrote:

now it turns out I have to email Pages documents back and forth between my Macs and my iPads.

That's crazy. If they are all on the same Apple ID and you have the settings correct, documents are supposed to sync among your devices via iCloud. It that is not happening, something has gone wrong.

This forum is for the free web apps you access via your browser on a Mac or PC. Are you using those? They are totally separate from whatever you bought for your Mac.

1) That certainly is crazy, but it's Apple's doing, not mine. No, we are not all on the same iCloud ID. That's why we need to share documents

2) As for the forum, I am discussing Apple's main provision for document sharing from inside their Mac and iPad Pages apps: emailing a link to a document in iCloud. Why can't I use the iPad (via Safari, if it comes to that) to edit a Pages document whose link was shared from a Mac? Sorry, that limitation makes no sense to me.

3) In fact, I don't even want to use their Web tools when both authors have some kind of Apple device. It seems to me that iCloud should permit joint editing of cloud-resident iWork documents, like other cloud-based collaboration products. If what Apple wants is for everyone to use their Web tools in the manner of Google Docs, then in my opinion it should stop selling iWork apps altogether. Is it clear to anyone exactly which model Apple is moving towards? Personally, I'm confused, as well as $20 poorer.

Hi,

Because you are sharing cocuments not devices and virtual memory.

Does collaboration work at all if one user edits a document from the Pages app on an iPad, sends the link to a Mac user, and that person tries to edit the same document via the browser on the Mac? I can't test this myself because I have only one ID.

Documents can be sent from one user to another.

Good question. Someone sent me the link to a draft Pages document, which I could not edit on the Web. I downloaded the document onto my iPad and edited that copy using the Pages app. I emailed the link to the revised document to the original author. Using an iPad, that person could only download my version of the document, edit it on her iPad, and print the final result.

Following your suggestion, the original author opened my email on a Mac AirBook, clicked the link, and was then able to make her revisions using Safari. After she closed the document tab in Safari (I have no idea whether that step was necessary), I returned to the still-running Pages app on my iPad. After a delay of a second or two, my document acquired the original author's new revisions. When I modified the document once again on my iPad, the original author was able to follow the link in my original email to get back to the shared document in Safari, where she saw my latest changes.

So, going from an iDevice to a Mac via a shared iCloud link works, relying on Apple's Web iWork tools. If you want to go the other way, the recipient of the Mac email has to download the Pages document onto his iPad and send a link to the iPad copy back to the original author. Then both can collaborate using the shared iPad copy. Thanks for the idea.

Bill999 wrote:

Following your suggestion, the original author opened my email on a Mac AirBook, clicked the link, and was then able to make her revisions using Safari. After she closed the document tab in Safari (I have no idea whether that step was necessary), I returned to the still-running Pages app on my iPad. After a delay of a second or two, my document acquired the original author's new revisions. When I modified the document once again on my iPad, the original author was able to follow the link in my original email to get back to the shared document in Safari, where she saw my latest changes.

Thanks for confirming that, which is how I understand it is supposed to "work" at this beta stage, with the addition that a PC user can also edit the shared iPad copy via browser (even though there is no Windows version of Pages).

Unfortunately the web app is pretty limited so far. Hopefully Apple will expand its features so that it is not so inferior to the iOS and OS X versions.