This chapter is from the book
This chapter is from the book
This chapter is from the book
Opening Documents
When you launch one of the Office for iPad apps, it tries to help you get to work as soon as possible by opening to the Recent tab of the file manager (4.9). In the Recent tab, files are sorted and grouped chronologically.
)
4.9 The file manager’s Recent view gives you a chronological retrospective of your work.
To open one of the documents on the Recent tab, simply tap on the document.
To open documents that aren’t shown on the Recent tab, tap Open; then follow these steps:
In the first column, tap to select the storage location for the document: your OneDrive, your iPad’s internal storage, or (if you’re working in a business) a SharePoint server (4.10).
4.10 Tap to select your OneDrive as the location for the document. Your OneDrive’s folders appear.
If you chose your OneDrive in Step 1, tap the folder that contains the document you’re looking for; then tap to select and open the document you want.
or
If you chose iPad in Step 1, tap to select and open the document you want. (There are no folders in your iPad’s internal storage.)
The document opens.
)
Refreshing Your Online Storage View
Your OneDrive storage is dynamic, and the contents of it may have changed since the last time you viewed it in the file manager of one of the Office for iPad apps. You can refresh the view from the server by tapping and dragging downwards on any of the columns in the file manager, which will refresh the view for that category in the file path. For example, if you want to refresh the folders on your OneDrive, tap and drag the folder column down (4.11). You see the standard “waiting” icon for a second at the top of the column; then the iPad will check with the OneDrive server, the view will refresh, and the column will return to normal.
)
4.11 Drag down in a column to refresh the column’s contents from the server.
That being said, I’ve experienced buggy behavior from the OneDrive system where I renamed a file on my Mac, OneDrive reported that the changes were synchronized, but the file didn’t change its name on my Windows machine or iPad for hours. This may just be a bug that will be fixed soon, but you should occasionally make sure your file are changed as you expect.
Pinning documents
There’s a way to keep frequently used documents available at the top of the Recent tab, ready for easy access: pin them. When you pin a document, a new Pinned section appears at the top of the Recent screen (4.12).
)
4.12 Frequently used documents can be pinned to the top of the Recent list.
To pin or unpin a document, follow these steps:
- In any of the Office for iPad apps, switch to the file manager.
- If it isn’t already set to the Recent tab, tap Recent.
Find the files that you want to pin to the top of the Recent list, and tap the pin icon to the right of their file names.
A new Pinned section appears in the Recent list, with the file in it.
or
To unpin files and remove them from the Pinned section, tap the pin icon to the right of their filenames.
Managing recent documents
The Recent list allows you to make some other changes to your files. Tapping the Share icon for a file in the Recent list displays a File sheet (4.13) with several functions:
- Share is discussed in the next section.
- Move to Cloud is only active if the selected file resides in the iPad’s internal storage. Tapping this command brings up a Choose Name and Location dialog that allows you to move the file to OneDrive.
- Remove from Recent removes the selected file from the Recent list, allowing you to declutter the list.
- Discard Changes is only active if you have turned autosave off for the document and allows you to abandon any changes you made to the document.
Properties shows you additional information about the document (4.14).
4.13 Tap the Share icon for a file in the Recent list to show additional management abilities.
4.14 The Properties sheet gives you useful information about the document.
)
)