Pages, numbers & keynote

4 min read

iPad tips and tricks

Pages, Numbers & Keynote

The iPad and Apple’s iWork apps are great for working on the go

Since they were first released in May 2011, Apple’s iWork suite for iPad – that’s the Pages word processor, Numbers spreadsheet and Keynote presentation app – have gone from strength to strength. While the iPhone versions are OK for editing and modifying docs on the go, the larger screen offered by Apple’s tablet makes the iPad’s iWork apps as powerful and easy to use as their Mac counterparts.

To get the most out of Pages, Numbers and Keynote you need a keyboard. Apple’s own Magic Keyboard Case is ideal, as it offers a trackpad that’s great for the precision needed when selecting a spreadsheet cell or piece of text. You might consider getting an Apple Pencil too. The Apple Pencil is an excellent optional extra that again gives a greater level of precision. You can also use it to write by hand, with your handwriting being converted into editable text.

One of the best things about Pages, Numbers and Keynote is that if you save your work to their respective iCloud folders, you can pick up where you left off on another device, or even from a web browser. This is very convenient. You can, for example, start writing a letter or memo in Pages on your home Mac, save it to iCloud and then continue with it on your iPad on the train. If you created a Numbers spreadsheet at work and want to add to it at home over the weekend, you can do that too. And if you need access to one of your iWork documents when you’re out and about without your iPad or notebook, you can check it on your iPhone, or if you need a bit of quiet or a research book, pop to the local library and access it online at icloud.com. You can even make edits, directly from the browser.

Pages is great for writing, and you can do a surprising amount with it considering it’s free.

All this for free

If you need to send an iWork document to someone that doesn’t use Apple devices, you can export them to their Microsoft Office equivalents, as PDFs and several other formats depending on the app. For example, Pages can save as EPUB, Plain Text and RTF documents, and Numbers can export to CSV or TSV. Best of all, Pages, Numbers and Keynote are free for anyone with a Mac or iOS/iPadOS device, and have been since October 2013. If you don’t have them on your iPad already, it’s a good idea to download them. If you don’t use them, give them a go. It’s surprising how easy they are to work with.

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