iWork doubles file size! Have you noticed??

[thompps]

Hi All,

I have come across an odd problem whilst setting up my new iPad2 - I absolutely cannot find any mention of it on the internet which in turn makes it hard to believe it is in any way a common problem. Surely others would have noticed?

The problem is that any file I create in Pages, Numbers or Keynotes at least doubles in size when I sync to my iPad and open it in iWork.

Example: 20kb file in Pages on my Macbook. If I either uploaded via iCloud or sync'd with Dropbox arrives on my iPad (dropbox reports it as correct size, no info on Pages menu).

As soon as the file is on the iPad (not even opened it at this point although it makes no difference if I do), it syncs with iCoud. At this point it turns into a 300kb file.

If I download the file, it is now permanently bigger. The only way to reduce it back to normal is cut and paste into a new document and save it.

However as soon as you load it back to iCloud the problem comes back. If the file is created on the iPad Pages, then it is immediately 300kb even if you only write 1 character.

My guess is that a huge amount of meta-data is contained in the iPad version of Pages, which is then kept with the file for future syncing. This seems unacceptable and will hugely impact my storage requirements.

But I can't believe no-one has noticed this since iCloud was released which make me doubt my own set-up.

Please can someone test and let me know your results?
Just create and save a file on your Mac and iCloud / Dropbox etc to your iPad. Once the file is in your Pages/Numbers/Keynote, let it sync and then check the file in on your www.iCloud.com iWork to see it's size.

Thanks very much, any other advice gratefully received.

 

[RodThePlod]

As soon as the file is on the iPad (not even opened it at this point although it makes no difference if I do), it syncs with iCoud. At this point it turns into a 300kb file.

I wonder if this is due to the 'versions' feature where you can revert back to any prior version of the document/spreadsheet, etc. I guess those delta changes have to go somewhere!

TBH - I've not played with this so I might be way off here, but that's my first thought.

RTP.

 

[talmy]

The format for iWork iOS documents is different from that of iWork OS X, so you are paying a penalty for translation. Versions doesn't save history in the document but in the hidden folder .DocumentRevisions-V100 in the root of the drive -- they never travel with the document across devices (unfortunately).

 

[RodThePlod]

Versions doesn't save history in the document but in the hidden folder .DocumentRevisions-V100 in the root of the drive -- they never travel with the document across devices (unfortunately).

Ahhhh - good to know. Thanks for clarifying that

RTP.

 

[thompps]

iWork doubles file size!

Thanks for the input. Another blow for using it as a work tool. It has noticeably increased my dropbox folder size already.

I hope at least with all this extra data in the file it doesn't lose anything from my Macbook iWork files whilst 'dumming down' to the iOS apps. More advanced things like macros or advanced formulas in Numbers.

 

[khopmor]

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPad; CPU OS 5_0_1 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/534.46 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.1 Mobile/9A405 Safari/7534.48.3)

Got exactly the same problem with Daedalus Touch, an iPad only app.
To flush redundant metadata, it helps to reset the iPad. Even then file sizes are unrealistic huge.
I wrote to the developers, am awaiting their answer.

 

[joel6653]

Similar behavior on an iPad

My file sizes don't bump up right away just by saving them to iCloud. But when I open (on the iPad) a Numbers file that was saved from the iMac to iCloud, even if I don't make any actual changes, the file will appear larger (triple or better) after iPad syncs it back to iCloud.