iPad spreadsheet suggestion/help

[Rollotamassi]

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Hello all,

I am a IT guy and my girlfriend is a personal trainer who recently purchased an iPad. She want's to begin to use the iPad for her personal training business for things like keeping spreadsheets for expenses and logging workouts with her clients. I figured it would be easy but it's turning out to be a lot more difficult that I had first anticipated. My first plan was this -

Use a Google Drive to set up a base file structures. The Root would have 4 folders. Workout Templates - Expenses - Clients - Training Materials

Inside the workout templates folder would be various blank templates for various workouts like core, full body, upper body, etc. Inside the the clients folder would be a folder with each clients name. What I wanted to be able to do was to have her navigate to the workout templates folder, open a copy of a template, fill in the data and then save it to the clients folder. Then for the next session she would open another blank template and save it to the folder so that every session has it's own log.

The problem is that from what I have seen the option that exists when using Gdrive on a standard web browser to "open a copy" doesn't exist on Gdrive for ipad. The same goes for the Numbers app when using it with drop box. Does any one have any ideas on how I could get around this issue?

Thanks!

 

[twerppoet]

Actually, each time you open a spreadsheet from DropBox into Numbers, you get a new copy. That's because you can't actually sync a spreadsheet in a cloud service (other than iCloud) with Numbers. You can only import and export; though you can export over the top of the old copy. At least you can in Box. I have not tried doing so in DropBox.

Anyway, yeah, you could use DropBox as a kind of template holder for Numbers. Or you can do what I do, and create a folder in Numbers just for templates, and hope you're smart enough to not work with the original.

Ok, I actually do both. The local files because it's faster. The cloud (Box in this case) files because I'm not always that smart.

As for spreadsheets in iCloud, Numbers offers the ability to create duplicates locally. The duplicates get synced automatically.


I tried to find a way to duplicate/copy a file using the Google Drive app, but found nothing.

You can go to Google Drive in Safari, switch to the Desktop version using the link at the bottom of hte page (if you end up in the mobile version) and use the usual controls to copy the file.

Don't try to actually edit the spreadsheet there. The desktop spreadsheet editor does not work well, if at all, on the iPad.

Some of the other Office compatible apps will sync directly with Google Drive, or other cloud services like DropBox. I don't remember which sync with which services; but the most popular are:

Documents to Go
Office HD
QuickOffice (actually Google now owns this one, so you make look real close at it)
Polaris Office

There is another one somebody keeps mentioning lately, but darned if I can remember it's name.