Saving files on iPad Air 2?

Evilguppy

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Say if I were to not use my MacBook Air anymore, and only use my iPad.
Right now whenever I receive a file by email, like a PDF, I save it on Evernote.
Is there a way to save those files to the device itself?
 

sparksd

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I tried this -

Emailed myself a PDF.
Long-selected on the file in the email.
A menu of apps to open with popped up.
I chose iBooks.
Opened and closed the file in iBooks.
Checked the iBooks library - the PDF was in there.
Deleted the email from InBox annd then from Trash.
Rechecked the iBooks library - file still there and could be opened.

So it appears that iBooks made/saved a copy of the emailed PDF in its own library on the device.
 

Evilguppy

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Sorry - made my long reply while you were entering this. What did you find?

I used ibooks, exactly as you described.
I have the hardest time figuring out the simplest things when it comes to tech, so I usually go the most tedious and complicated road about it, purely by ignorance, lol.
The 21st century is a rough age for some middle agers. :concern: :biggrin:
 

sparksd

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I used ibooks, exactly as you described.
I have the hardest time figuring out the simplest things when it comes to tech, so I usually go the most tedious and complicated road about it, purely by ignorance, lol.
The 21st century is a rough age for some middle agers. :concern: :biggrin:

It's been confusing for me, coming from Android. In Android I thought of files, etc. in a physical sense, like on a PC, and associate them with a location on a device. But with iOS, it is more of a logical association where a file is associated with an app that can open it and you don't know where the file itself is at. In Android I would have just copied the file over and selected an app to open it.
 

Evilguppy

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It's been confusing for me, coming from Android. In Android I thought of files, etc. in a physical sense, like on a PC, and associate them with a location on a device. But with iOS, it is more of a logical association where a file is associated with an app that can open it and you don't know where the file itself is at. In Android I would have just copied the file over and selected an app to open it.

I liked Android... until software updates, that is. Then, it became painfully clear that Android either hates me or loves to bully me, LOL. So I went for simplicity, performance and reliability instead. Life is good. :D
 

sparksd

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I liked Android... until software updates, that is. Then, it became painfully clear that Android either hates me or loves to bully me, LOL. So I went for simplicity, performance and reliability instead. Life is good. :D

I went through the Lollipop updates on several devices and while on most I didn't have any issues with over-the-air updates, one device had to be factory reset and have a fresh full install done (including unlocking the bootloader, etc.). While I enjoy screwing around with these things like that, most people don't and they shouldn't have to - it should just work and do what it is supposed to do. Too many of these things require your own IT dept. to keep running. What really impressed me with Apple products was that we were able to set up an iPad and leave it with my 95 year-old mother to use without a problem. Simple and it works reliably.
 

volsfan0911

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I've owned a Tab 10.1 (great screen, expandable storage) and an iPad 2 (currently). Even though I'm on an Android phone, I prefer my iPad because of simplicity, the accessories ecosystem and the (literally) no-brainer integration back to my MBA. After being an uber-geek for so many years, I find myself using my phone these days as ....... well, a phone. I call people and I text. I love my Droid Turbo's stock keyboard, hate my wife's iPhone 6 keyboard (hence why I'm rocking the Droid these days). Anything else generally gets blown off or put on a to do list until I get back to my iPad or MBA or desktop. Of course, I am 50 and also have beaten cancer twice now so I don't get wound up about details like I used to either ;)

So, to get back on subject - dropbox or evernote is my preferred storage. EN offers offline storage (user definable) for a ridiculous amount of data. It handles all of my offline needs. I also find reading (magazines, articles, pdf, whatever) better on the iPad. Guess it's the aspect ratio as others have mentioned. With LTE and VZW 10GB data plan, I don't worry about local storage on the iPad other than music and that's a no brainer obviously via iTunes (getting music organized from pristine 96/24 FLAC to smaller, lossy and worse sounding aac files for on the fly listening? that's a different story).
 

volsfan0911

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I liked Android... until software updates, that is. Then, it became painfully clear that Android either hates me or loves to bully me, LOL. So I went for simplicity, performance and reliability instead. Life is good. :D

See post above. VZW is driving us Droid owners crazy with their decision to wait until 5.1 on Lollipop. I'm starting to think we'll never get it and that's OK too. One huge advantage to iOS is you get updates when Apple sez. Not on Verizon's schedule 'cause if you have to wait on VZW's schedule? It won't happen.
 

Evilguppy

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I've owned a Tab 10.1 (great screen, expandable storage) and an iPad 2 (currently). Even though I'm on an Android phone, I prefer my iPad because of simplicity, the accessories ecosystem and the (literally) no-brainer integration back to my MBA. After being an uber-geek for so many years, I find myself using my phone these days as ....... well, a phone. I call people and I text. I love my Droid Turbo's stock keyboard, hate my wife's iPhone 6 keyboard (hence why I'm rocking the Droid these days). Anything else generally gets blown off or put on a to do list until I get back to my iPad or MBA or desktop. Of course, I am 50 and also have beaten cancer twice now so I don't get wound up about details like I used to either ;)

So, to get back on subject - dropbox or evernote is my preferred storage. EN offers offline storage (user definable) for a ridiculous amount of data. It handles all of my offline needs. I also find reading (magazines, articles, pdf, whatever) better on the iPad. Guess it's the aspect ratio as others have mentioned. With LTE and VZW 10GB data plan, I don't worry about local storage on the iPad other than music and that's a no brainer obviously via iTunes (getting music organized from pristine 96/24 FLAC to smaller, lossy and worse sounding aac files for on the fly listening? that's a different story).

Dropbox vs Evernote: Do you have a preference and if yes, why?
 

volsfan0911

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Short answer? Evernote. I subscribe to the premium edition ($45/year up front or $5/month) gets you practically unlimited uploads and killer native OCR (optical character recognition) within the app. You can just scan directly to EN from anywhere and let the application figure out the OCR on the back end. Their mobile app is excellent as well with wonderful mobile document scanning/camera capture. Example - I go out to eat on a business lunch. Get receipt, scan to EN via phone app and camera. Throw away receipt afterwards or give back to waitress. It converts to pdf within the app, you can tag with "business expense" or whatever else you need and then I put in my "porter consulting" notebook. You can also attach to expense reports later as a PDF if needed, etc. If I want to see how many times I ate at "on the border" then I can search on that exact term within evernote and it will show just those notes with that exact string (amazingly accurate too).

Long answer: I do keep Dropbox as well although only the 2GB free account (plus some referral bonuses for a total of 8GB total). If Evernote is a virtual "file cabinet" accessible from anywhere then I'll call dropbox my "virtual junk drawer" to throw music, video, pics into. Pluses include utter simplicity of use (although they've made it a little more complicated lately and scalable to enterprise level). Although you can get extremely sophisticated with dropbox and do wonderful things with it, I use it at this point as above.

Hope that helps? Pardon the rambling :)
 

SquireSCA

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What about Google Drive? You get like 20GB for free with your email account, so why not use that?

I too am trying to figure this stuff out... I have some PDF's, like shop manuals for my bike and ATV, and some other Word docs... and would love to have them on the iPad rather than my phone, for easy viewing...

On the phone, I just plug it in via USB and drag any files I want to the phone, and they copy just like any thumb drive would. No software needed, works on Windows, Linux, etc... File format is irrelevant, so even if the phone can't actually use the file, you can still use it as a portable HD to transfer files to work, whatever...

So I am struggling to figure that out here. There is no simple file system, everything has to go through iTunes, which I hate, and it severely limits what you can copy... I was able to take the PDF's and add them to my iBooks screen in iTunes and it can then push them to the iPad when it synchs, but what about Word docs? Excel spreadsheets?

I want to put them all in a folder(s) and just open them up with I need to, without having to jump through hoops or chew up bandwidth always loading everything from the cloud?

Can this be done?
 

sparksd

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What about Google Drive? You get like 20GB for free with your email account, so why not use that?

I too am trying to figure this stuff out... I have some PDF's, like shop manuals for my bike and ATV, and some other Word docs... and would love to have them on the iPad rather than my phone, for easy viewing...

On the phone, I just plug it in via USB and drag any files I want to the phone, and they copy just like any thumb drive would. No software needed, works on Windows, Linux, etc... File format is irrelevant, so even if the phone can't actually use the file, you can still use it as a portable HD to transfer files to work, whatever...

So I am struggling to figure that out here. There is no simple file system, everything has to go through iTunes, which I hate, and it severely limits what you can copy... I was able to take the PDF's and add them to my iBooks screen in iTunes and it can then push them to the iPad when it synchs, but what about Word docs? Excel spreadsheets?

I want to put them all in a folder(s) and just open them up with I need to, without having to jump through hoops or chew up bandwidth always loading everything from the cloud?

Can this be done?

Hello fellow iOS newbie and longtime Android guy! See this as a way -

http://help.apple.com/iwork/1.3/safari/index.html#tanb5b5c582

I would imagine that .doc files would work the same way but with a different target app on the iPad. I too am struggling get used to files viewed as application associations rather than physical entities to be moved around by drop and drag. I do like this new iPad though.
 

sparksd

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What about Google Drive? You get like 20GB for free with your email account, so why not use that?

I too am trying to figure this stuff out... I have some PDF's, like shop manuals for my bike and ATV, and some other Word docs... and would love to have them on the iPad rather than my phone, for easy viewing...

On the phone, I just plug it in via USB and drag any files I want to the phone, and they copy just like any thumb drive would. No software needed, works on Windows, Linux, etc... File format is irrelevant, so even if the phone can't actually use the file, you can still use it as a portable HD to transfer files to work, whatever...

So I am struggling to figure that out here. There is no simple file system, everything has to go through iTunes, which I hate, and it severely limits what you can copy... I was able to take the PDF's and add them to my iBooks screen in iTunes and it can then push them to the iPad when it synchs, but what about Word docs? Excel spreadsheets?

I want to put them all in a folder(s) and just open them up with I need to, without having to jump through hoops or chew up bandwidth always loading everything from the cloud?

Can this be done?

I'm also starting to use an app called FileBrowser that allows me to work with files on a networked device - I used it to copy a file from a drive on my desktop PC to the iPad in a location called My Files (wherever that may be. I then opened the file using Excel on the iPad. I use the same FileBrowser app to open & play .mp4 movies I have stored on a NAS on my network - it streams the movies as opposed to copying and playing. Not sure how efficient all of this but at least at works in a way that I recognize.
 

SquireSCA

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I'm also starting to use an app called FileBrowser that allows me to work with files on a networked device - I used it to copy a file from a drive on my desktop PC to the iPad in a location called My Files (wherever that may be. I then opened the file using Excel on the iPad. I use the same FileBrowser app to open & play .mp4 movies I have stored on a NAS on my network - it streams the movies as opposed to copying and playing. Not sure how efficient all of this but at least at works in a way that I recognize.

Yeah, I have File Manager installed and it lets me use iTunes to drag and drop files in there.

Bet even there, Apple is annoying me a bit here. One of the PDF files is 51mb, so when I click on it in File Manager, which is the only place you can find it in, as any of the PDF apps can't search for it and find it because there is no physical file system to the end user... So I have to load File Manager to find it. ok. I do that, and when I click on it it tells me that the file it too big for the stock pdf viewer to load... so I have to tell it to use Adobe Reader, which I installed.

And I have to do that every damned time because the iPad is not smart enough to remember a simple user preference.

THAT is where Apple is missing the boat. For all of the talk about simple, intuitive, it just works...

I have to go through MULTIPLE steps to copy and open a stupid document, and I have to keep telling it which app to use to open a standard file format, because it can't seem to remember what it used the last 37 times to open that same document... LOL

This is what Android fans find annoying about Apple. To Apple users, this is how it has always been, so they don't see a problem with it.

For those of us that have done it a better, more intelligent way for years, it is a big step back in usability, no?
 

sparksd

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Yeah, I have File Manager installed and it lets me use iTunes to drag and drop files in there.

Bet even there, Apple is annoying me a bit here. One of the PDF files is 51mb, so when I click on it in File Manager, which is the only place you can find it in, as any of the PDF apps can't search for it and find it because there is no physical file system to the end user... So I have to load File Manager to find it. ok. I do that, and when I click on it it tells me that the file it too big for the stock pdf viewer to load... so I have to tell it to use Adobe Reader, which I installed.

And I have to do that every damned time because the iPad is not smart enough to remember a simple user preference.

THAT is where Apple is missing the boat. For all of the talk about simple, intuitive, it just works...

I have to go through MULTIPLE steps to copy and open a stupid document, and I have to keep telling it which app to use to open a standard file format, because it can't seem to remember what it used the last 37 times to open that same document... LOL

This is what Android fans find annoying about Apple. To Apple users, this is how it has always been, so they don't see a problem with it.

For those of us that have done it a better, more intelligent way for years, it is a big step back in usability, no?

Here's another way to get that PDF into Acrobat but using iTunes:

https://support.apple.com/kb/PH17645?locale=en_US

The directions are for spreadsheets and the Numbers app but I did the same thing for a PDF file on my PC and the Acrobat Reader app on the iPad. After transferring the file this way, the file shows up in the Acrobat file list on the iPad - to open that file I need only open the Acrobat app.

Great, that works. But what if I want to open it in iBooks? It doesn't show up in that app. A different example - I got a bunch of pictures into the Photos app. But I wanted to use PhotoMgrPro to also look at those photos. PhotoMgrPro allows me to create a "folder" within the app and then select photos from the stock Photos app to import. But it appears it may be making another copy of the photos as opposed to just linking to their original location. I clearly have a lot to learn.
 

SquireSCA

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Here's another way to get that PDF into Acrobat but using iTunes:

https://support.apple.com/kb/PH17645?locale=en_US

The directions are for spreadsheets and the Numbers app but I did the same thing for a PDF file on my PC and the Acrobat Reader app on the iPad. After transferring the file this way, the file shows up in the Acrobat file list on the iPad - to open that file I need only open the Acrobat app.

Great, that works. But what if I want to open it in iBooks? It doesn't show up in that app. A different example - I got a bunch of pictures into the Photos app. But I wanted to use PhotoMgrPro to also look at those photos. PhotoMgrPro allows me to create a "folder" within the app and then select photos from the stock Photos app to import. But it appears it may be making another copy of the photos as opposed to just linking to their original location. I clearly have a lot to learn.

I will try that and see if it works any better, but yeah, this is my main gripe with Apple products. It is like the OS is designed for children, everything is locked down, simple user preferences are simply not allowed.

This is so behind the curve it is funny. Just basic everyday tasks are a major chore, and yet most Apple fans sit around smugly talking about how easy and simple things are. I guess to them it is simple, because they have never done it a better way... sigh...
 

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