How to work with iWork's new file formats
With the recently released 2013 versions of iWork for OS X and iOS, syncing documents across Macs, iOS devices and even iWork for iCloud is now a seamless transparent process: Open and edit a document in one location, and the changes are instantly reflected at every other location that has access to the file. With very few exceptions, a document’s appearance remains identical on each platform. Warnings about file conversions and omitted features have all but vanished.
For anyone who has struggled with iWork file syncing over the years, this is fantastic news. It wasn’t always this way.
In the beginning…
When Apple introduced iWork for iOS apps in 2010, transferring an iWork ’09 document between a Mac and an iPad required a tortuous procedure mediated by iTunes. To transfer a file, you manually exported or imported it; there was no live syncing. Transfers also required converting the document to the matching platform-specific format. Especially when going from Macs to iOS devices, this often meant stripping out features unsupported by the more limited iOS apps.
In 2011, with the introduction of iCloud, true syncing of iWork documents arrived—but only among iOS devices. Transferring a document from a Mac to an iOS device required an intermediate stop at iCloud. From there, an iOS device could access the file (assuming you had iCloud enabled on the device), converting it to the more feature-limited iOS format. Any editing done to a file on one platform had no effect on a copy of that file previously transferred to the other platform.
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