Drop Box it’s a great service and it’s easy to get files from your free DropBox storage to iPad. iPad App. But how about going the other way from an app like this? Pages? through a service called DropDAV it’s pretty easy too.
DropDAV can be used to copy files from iPad to a computer via DropBox
First, sign up for a free 2GB DropBox account. After installing it, download the application linked above. This way you can access your files on iPad. You can sign up for a DropDAV account to save files to iPad. The cost is 30% of what you pay for DropBox. So DropDAV is also free if you only use the free DropBox service. Get the premium versions of DropBox and pay 30% of the monthly/yearly fee.
So, go to setup now DropDAV. On this page, you will use your DropBox username (your email address) and password to connect the two services. Go back to iPad and launch Pages, Numbers, or Keynote.
Use My Documents Sharing feature to copy to DropBox using WebDAV
Go to the My Documents screen page by page (tap the button in the upper left corner). At the bottom of that screen is a box on the far left and a copy button with an arrow on it. This is the iPad share or copy button. Tap this to reveal the menu above and select “Copy to WebDAV”. The resulting screen will ask you to log in. Use the https://dav.dropdav.com server address. Next, enter your username and password for DropBox and tap Sign In at the top right.
Select desired folder in DropBox and open files from DropBox. You can edit the file and then return to My Documents. Hit the share button and copy the file back to the DropBox folder of your choice. You will have a choice as to which file format to use. For example, in Pages you can save files as Pages file, PDF or Word file. The same is true for Numbers, but instead of Word there is Excel and PowerPoint as Keynote. If there is a file with the same name, it will ask you to replace it. The edited file will overwrite the original.
It works great. This is now our way of saving files created or edited in Pages, Numbers or Keynote to DropBox for editing on Mac.
there is a problem currently by editing Pages files created/edited by iPad on a Mac. Pages file gets corrupted when opened on Mac. You’ll see some really weird behavior, so don’t spend too much time formatting it as you’ll probably lose it. The solution is to just open the file edited on iPad from DropBox folder on Mac. Copy everything and then create a new Pages document on Mac and paste it there. If you’ve already done a lot of formatting, you may want to copy it to DropDAV as a Word file if you plan to edit further on the Mac. Use PDF if it’s final.
It’s ridiculous that Apple didn’t acknowledge or fix the above issue but I hope they fix it soon.
