This may help someone?

[frenchman96]

Hi Guys

Only a beginner on iPads, but this may help....I downloaded the PAGES app, and am very pleased with it.

I have a lot of files on laptop, contained in 2 folders for 2 kids, and thought they will be better copied onto my iPad for
when I need them.

So with the help of guys on this forum, I used ITunes to transfer doc files to IPad, but when I tried the same with XLS
files(excel) iPad would not accept.

So after a bit of thought, I opened the files on laptop, did a copy paste to WORD, and saved it as a doc file, which I then could transfer to IPad.

Hope it helps.

 

[twerppoet]

Ahh, well, Pages is a word processor and .xls files are spreadsheet (Excel) files. I'm not sure how well they will work in Pages. I'm surprised it imported them at all. Apple's equivalent of Excel is Numbers; just as Pages is Apple's answer to Word. The .xls files should be much more useful if you import them into Numbers.

The third member of the iWorks suite is Keynote. It can import Power Point (.ppt) files.

 

[frenchman96]

It only imported them because I had changed file extension to .doc file, for as you rightly pointed out, it is a word processing file. I just thought, it is one way of doing it and it worked for me.
Thanks for reply

 

[twerppoet]

No problem. As I said, I was surprised it imported, but if the results satisfy you, good enough.

 

[frenchman96]

Hi Poet

Now I have looked at it, it's not perfect, and not suitable to work on if needed, but to have as a backup is ok I guess, thanks for input.

 

[twerppoet]

If you mean backup, as in the files are stored safely in case the originals go south, you're going to be disappointed. The file change and import are permanent. You won't be able to export the files back to Excel and use them. You could probably export them back to Word, but they will degrade even further from the originals.

If you mean backup as another means of viewing the files on the iPad, I suppose it might do.

If you want to work on the spreadsheets on the iPad you are going to have to get a spreadsheet app. Numbers is not the only option, but if you're already familiar with Pages and like it you'll probably like Numbers too. Though it does go about things differently than Excel and will require some adjusting to how you think about creating and using your spreadsheets.