iPhone icloud drive

[Delta Heavy]

Hi All

A quick question if anyone can help, with icloud drive will we be able to save microsoft files ie .xls and will they sync. Will you be able to access icloud drive on a non apple computer. At present i use sugarsync drive at home and i have a folder on my work pc synced to my sugarsync drive, this way i can access all my personal files at work and all my work files at home, is icloud drive the same principle. I do not use documents in icloud as i dont like it and the support for non apple files .xls is not great as i have to save them on my work pc and upload it creating lots of copies of the same file, with sugarsync i have only one file and it syncs, i am hoping icloud drive is this format.

Anyone have any ideas on this. Finally would i be able to access icloud drive through an app on my ipad?

Thanks Delta

 

[FSMBP]

Hi All

A quick question if anyone can help, with icloud drive will we be able to save microsoft files ie .xls and will they sync. Will you be able to access icloud drive on a non apple computer. At present i use sugarsync drive at home and i have a folder on my work pc synced to my sugarsync drive, this way i can access all my personal files at work and all my work files at home, is icloud drive the same principle. I do not use documents in icloud as i dont like it and the support for non apple files .xls is not great as i have to save them on my work pc and upload it creating lots of copies of the same file, with sugarsync i have only one file and it syncs, i am hoping icloud drive is this format.

Anyone have any ideas on this. Finally would i be able to access icloud drive through an app on my ipad?

Thanks Delta

You can save any type of file to iCloud Drive - you can access them from Mac, PC (via web-browser) or iOS device.

 

[proshots4you]

I'm intrigued to know, once files, office documents specifically are stored with iCloud Drive if they can be accessed within the Mail program on iOS for sending / downloading purposes......now that would be really nice
Use dropbox now but do not like the send "link only" option for sending files via email

 

[loanhighknight]

You can save any type of file to iCloud Drive - you can access them from Mac, PC (via web-browser) or iOS device.

Could be wrong, and it was only shown briefly, but I think what they showed in WWDC for Windows was actually a mounted drive on your computer, similar to the mechanism Dropbox uses on Windows, not a browser-based thing. It creates a folder on your computer and keeps it synced.

Might just be wishful thinking on my part though.

EDIT: Nope, I lied. The iOS8 site shows a web browser.

 

[7enderbender]

So it's the same as google drive or Microsoft's One Drive. Only with less space.

 

[Septillion]

So it's the same as google drive or Microsoft's One Drive. Only with less space.

If Office files were saved to OneDrive, collaborating can be enabled when multiple people accessing the same file. Seems like this stuff is powered by SharePoint. Not sure whether iCloud drive would support this.

 

[Yptcn]

Offline access

Will it be possible like in Dropbox to mark files as favorites to be able to view them offline ? This is a very useful feature when traveling abroad .

 

[/V\acpower]

I use the iPad as a "laptop replacement" (i'm a teacher, so I usually manage lots of Pages, Keynote documents, images and tons of PDF.

Like mentionned a couple of post earlier, I use Documents 5 (by Readdle), which is the closest thing to a "Finder" in iOS.

I use it mainly as a way to Sync specific folders from Google Drive. One of the best feature of the app (apart from having a filesystem, making it so you can download stuff from the internet, manage files, read a big variety of media files) is that you can add Cloud accounts like Google Drive or Dropbox, and "sync" specific folders (or all of them) so that every files and subfolders are automatically downloaded and available offline, and also, any change to a file in Documents is automatically uploaded to the Cloud too. So it work as a replacement for the Dropbox or Drive app.

Also, since iOS 8 extension, it's possible for an app to act as a "file location". When an app has a file picker, let's say Pages. You open the document picker, and you can activate another app, like Documents, as a location. Then you can browse from Pages the file system of Documents, pick a .pages file, open it, edit it and automatically the changes will be saved to the Documents app and not into iCloud Drive. Basically, working exactly like Pages and Finder in OS X.

I can also create a new file in Pages, and from Pages move it to Documents as a local file, in any folder I want. It will then delete the copy on Pages iCloud Drive folder and create a copy in the Documents app.

The only real "drawback" to that method is that it seem that Documents isn't able to do that "file editing from another app" thing with "Cloud synced folders". My ideal method would be to have a Google Drive synced to Documents, and then from Pages open any .pages file from Documents and edit it as I wish. However it doesn't seem to be possible, probably some limitation from either iOS extensions or Cloud syncing. However, if you wished to simply used document as local storage of files (moving files to Documents either from another iOS app, from a computer using iTunes or "Wi-Fi Drive" function), it would work exactly like a "local storage Finder" for iOS, since you would be able to use those files in any app that support the iOS 8 File picker and edit them without having to create multiple copy (like you had to do before iOS 8).

My ideal scenario however would be to be able to set the iCloud Drive app from iOS 9 to have an "offline mode", to make sure that every files is available offline. I don't have the iOS 9 GM installed right now, but from what I can remember, I think that the iCloud folders of specific apps normally download the files automatically to work offline (like the Pages folder, or the Keynote folder), but any other folder I create in iCloud drive or from an app that isn't installed on iOS, are not necessarily available offline. If that was the case, I would instantly make the switch to iCloud Drive for all my work related files.