Use Pages in iPad

The main reason I say that Apple’s $9.99 Pages iPad app may not be the best tool for most word processing on the iPad is that it’s complicated to get documents into and out of it. Although Pages can now connect directly to your iDisk or a WebDAV server, and can receive documents via Document Support (in addition to importing via iTunes and exporting via iTunes, email or iWork.com, the only options available at first), the process is still cumbersome.

Leaving aside the issue of material that may be lost during import, you can’t make a document available to both Pages and any other word processor, on any platform, without the lossy process of importing and exporting. For example, if you normally store documents on your iDisk or in your Dropbox and edit them on various computers, you can’t do that with Pages. The best you can do is to import a copy, edit it in Pages, export a second copy to edit elsewhere, and continue the process repeatedly. So, for documents you need to edit in more than one place, another option, such as those described in Use Google Documents (shortly ahead), or Documents To Go, might serve you better.

However, for documents that will be created and edited entirely on your iPad, and that go beyond plain text to include styles, graphics, tables, and suchlike, Pages can be a great tool.

Using Pages should be fairly self-explanatory, but I do want to point out (or remind you about) a few items of note:

• Importing: Although Pages can import documents from Word and from Pages ’09 on the Mac, remember that some formatting and other page elements will be permanently lost—including comments, tracked changes, footnotes, endnotes, and bookmarks. In addition, fonts that aren’t present on the iPad will be replaced, 3D charts will be converted to 2D charts, multi-page tables will be split into multiple single-page tables, grouped objects will be ungrouped, and a variety of other changes may be made.

For complete details about import changes, read Apple’s “Pages for iPad FAQ,” at http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4065.

• Printing: Like the other iWork apps, Pages now supports AirPrint. To learn how to use it (or how to print if you can’t), read Print from Your iPad.

• Keyboard shortcuts: Pages supports all the standard shortcuts when used with an external keyboard (see Use Keyboard Shortcuts). Although you can use Pages with the iPad’s virtual keyboard, it becomes immeasurably easier and more comfortable to use, especially when typing long documents, on a physical keyboard—and the possibility of using shortcuts for common commands such as Cut, Copy, and Paste is a big reason for that. However, not all keyboard shortcuts you may be accustomed to on a Mac or PC word processor apply in Pages—for example, there are no shortcuts for applying bold, italic, or underline styles.

Source of Information : TidBITS-Take Control of Working with Your iPad 2011