Taking ipad to meetings to save paper

[flamenco45]

I have an email with 5 word documents that I need for a meeting. To save printing them all out (over 50 sheets), I was wondering if I could just take the iPad and view them on screen. Problem is there is no Internet in the building. I have tried reading each of the documents with the wifi turned off and I can see each one. Would this still be the case in 3 days time or does the iPad forget email attachments after a while? How can I save the documents to view in a meeting? I have a memory stick and an adaptor for the iPad. Would that work?

 

[KevinJS]

Probably would depend on your email. My Exchange account drops emails after a certain period of time, my gmail does not.

Personally, I would save them to Pages and use them from there. It might be a cut down program compared to Word, but it's still a neat app and worth the $10 that it costs.

 

[KevinJS]

The adapter, presumably, is the Camera Connection Kit. It is unlikely to work with external memory, whether thumb drive or SD card.

You could get the VGA or HDMI adapter so that you can mirror the display to a projector, but I have to admit I've never tried this, so I can't say for certain that it would work.

 

[f4780y]

Personally, I put the documents on Dropbox and then use DocumentsToGo to view / read them. If you have no connection to the outside world you can pre-read them when you have a connection and the documents will stay downloaded in DocumentsToGo.

If you are using documents which are viewable natively from Dropbox (many doc types are), then you can "favourite" the documents and they will remain downloaded as local copies too.

 

[yellowhorse]

If you turn them into PDFs you can save them in iBooks or PDF expert. Some of the programs out there with drive on iPad functions allow you to save Dox to this program through iTunes. If you open it you might be able to ave to or print to PDF depending. If not just convert them. Your mail will phase them out depending on how many mails your preferences save onboard. The open in feature may give you some options as well. There are many classes I've been in where I had to keep notes. Several people recommended notability in this forum and I got it. love it. So does my son. But obviously you need to try it out before you go to class at home. I imagine whatever your software capability is on iPad will depend on if you can pull it off a external.

 

[s2mikey]

I do this all the time at our village board meetings which I am a member of. Everyone is taking notice too. They've all asked about it and I have a feeling others will be following my lead. There just isn't any reason to bring hard copies to most meetings or whatever.

 

[moncks]

I have the same need. I use the app DocsToGo which allows me to put the original word, excel or powerpoint documents on my iPad and to edit them in need. It also allows me to create word or excel documents on the iPad. There is a desktop application that allows me to switch the documents back and forth and allows me to print. I use this all the time to take documents into meetings and back home to edit as well.

 

[quake5254]

Mine is to save space in my bag.

 

[websquad]

I am secretary of a non-profit corporation and have to take minutes once/month. I purchased a blue-ray connected keyboard for my iPad 2 in hope that it would be a good solution. Alas, if fell far short of the flexibility I get with my laptop -- so, for me, the laptop wins and the iPad 2 stays at home.

 

[budman41]

I don't know what everyone's preference is for ebooks, but if you install and register the Kindle app, you can email any word doc to an @kindle.com address that will go to your iPad. Then you can download from there and they will be on the device. You don't need to convert or anything. I believe you get 5gb of document storage with the amazon account. This is, of course just another way to do this as all the ways described above work well, too. I like this way because it also works for ebooks not bought through amazon as long as they are in the mobi format.

 

[f4780y]

I am secretary of a non-profit corporation and have to take minutes once/month. I purchased a blue-ray connected keyboard for my iPad 2 in hope that it would be a good solution. Alas, if fell far short of the flexibility I get with my laptop -- so, for me, the laptop wins and the iPad 2 stays at home.

That's a shame, I've found my iPad + Bluetooth keyboard to be a great meeting aid when combined with my 2 favourite note taking apps, Evernote and Notability. Far easier to manage than my laptop when jumping from meeting to meeting, venue to venue all day in my experience. Far less to carry about. Instantly up and running, and no worries about running out of juice during the day