iPad: The Missing Manual

Chapter 10. Get Productive with iWork

When you think of the iPad, word processing, spreadsheets, and presentations probably aren’t the first things that come to mind—unless they’re the first things that come to your mind on any topic. After you’ve used the iPad for longer than two hours, it becomes apparent that it’s a great little device for consuming stuff (videos, eBooks, web pages), but not so much for creating stuff, like, well, word-processing documents, spreadsheets, and presentations.

Apple’s iWork suite for the iPad attempts to change your way of thinking. For many years, iWork—comprised of the Pages, Numbers, and Keynote programs—lived on some Macs in the giant, looming shadow of Microsoft Office. After all, Microsoft Word, Excel, and PowerPoint are the de facto industry standards for documents, spreadsheets, and presentations, from corporate offices to college campuses.

If you’re considering buying Apple’s iWork suite (or have it already and don’t know where to start), this chapter is for you. iWork is not a do-all, be-all desktop suite, but neither does it take up gigabytes of hard drive space for files and features you’ll never use. It can, however, keep you productive—even if you’d rather use your iPad to watch episodes of The Office rather than work on a spreadsheet for the office.

Meet iWork

If you’ve never heard of iWork, you’re not alone. It’s oldest component, the Keynote ...