iPad Suddenly Stopped Accessing OneDrive?

Hi,
A friend - who has an ipad - has suddenly been unable to access the OneDrive (cloud) app (similar to Google Docs), which we have been using to write an article for most of the past year.

My friend says that when he tries to access OneDrive he gets a message saying that he should buy and download Word for Mac, and the he needs to pay a $100 subscription (not sure if this is to do with Word for Mac, too, or to do with OneDrive).

I cannot find anything on Google about a change in access to OneDrive for ipad users, but thought that people here might know something.

Any other ideas are welcome.

My ideas so far have been:
1. I could go into OneDrive and re-'share' the article with him (this did not work - my message to him was bounced back to me twice with no reason)

2. Post a question here on MacRumors.

3. Switch to some other cloud based app such as Google Docs (which I have used with others, and would prefer to not use for several reasons).

4. I will copy the text of the document into another document, and attempt to share that with my friend.

5. I will send the document (Word) by email to my friend, suggest that he uploads it and tries to share it with me.

Does anyone have any ideas?

Thanks,

gvdv

Found a workaround, and am investigating others.

Will post more later.

Hi Night Spring,
Thanks for the reply.

My friend was actually trying to do what he has done many times over the last 6-8 months that we have been using OneDrive to write, which is to open the document in Word Online using the OneDrive app that he has on his ipad.

I suggested that he try to go directly to the OneDrive webpag, login and open the document from there (one of my suggested workarounds), and this worked immediately.

Other 'tests' that I did all failed - i.e., again 'sharing' the article with him (i.e., giving him reading and editing access to the article), which has worked for the last 6-8 months, and which I only had to do once 8 months ago; sending him a link to the article (giving him reading and editing access - I sent this link from within OneDrive, and in an email, and he never got the OneDrive version); copying the contents of the article into a new OneDrive file, giving it a different name, and sending this to my friend.

My attempts to re-share the article from within OneDrive were not sent to him, and I got a 'message sending failed' (or some such description) email in my inbox to that effect on the three or four occasions on which I tried that.

My friend did get a message to say that he could open the file in the ipad's Pages app, but we tried that several months ago, and the conversion wreaks havoc with the formatting, so rejected that as an option.

We can only conclude that Microsoft is trying to make some money here (as all corporations, Apple included, do by making access so proprietary).

The only test that we have not done is see if my friend can open the file through the OneDrive app on his PC laptop. If we are right about the reason that this cannot be done, he should be able to do this.

Thanks, once again, for your reply.

gvdv

Hi Night Spring,
Yes, that could have something to do with it, but there are also other factors potentially at play here, too, so I am not sure.

For example, my friend's Internet Service Provider (a major company) at times will not deliver or accept emails (my workplace has a problem with that ISP sometimes doing that), and it is possible that my friend did not get some of the emails I had sent him because his ISP would not receive them.

Anyway, we have a workaround for now, which is good.

Thanks for your posts.

gvdv

Hi GalFriday,
Thanks for your post.

I am aware of the information you mention, but was more interested in why my friend with the ipad has suddenly been unable to access the OneDrive site through the OneDrive app that he has on his ipad.

There are some potential answers to this (see discussions earlier in thread), and we do have a work around, so it is not that he cannot access the site at all from his ipad, just that he is no longer able to do it from the OneDrive app..

Thanks, once again, for your reply.

gvdv.