For years Ive been trying to replace my macbook with my iPad when it comes to traveling for work.However, this is onespot where my iPad has not been able to compare to a mac. I write 3-4 reports a week for my clients. Currently I use microsoft word on my Mac. I have a document template with specific formats (ex. check box as a bulleted list, formatted text and paragraph spacing. In addition, they have the following features:
Connected fields, where when I enter the customer name in one spot on a table, it automatically updates other fiends in the header and footer to match
Adding Figure captions, where I can hyperlink those elsewhere in the document (ex, I have "see Figure 4 on page 11", as I add new figures or the pages shift, alt+f9 automatically updates all of the references
Simiar to the above with headers, I reference different sections in the report and the referenced page numbers automatically update
I also insert a lot of pictures and add shapes (arrows and circles) to point out details.
Ive tried Microsoft word for iPadOS, but these dont do references, and when I add pictures they by default "wrap around text" instead of being "in line with text"; so im manually needing to change this on dozens of pictures which is time consuimg. Ive also tried using "Pages", but it lacks the features of referencing sections of a document and updating those page numbers as they change. So I feel pretty stuck using Microsoft Word on Mac for writing these reports. But Im curious to know if the iPad community has any recommendations of any other document creators that may have these features?
Have you considered writing markdown using e.g. Textastic or Archimedes? Technically it allows all you described. That would also nicely integrate with a something like Joplin or Obsidian for knowledgemanagement.
Another option is typst - but I think iPadOS betas for any related app are currently all in closed Testflight, so for now the easy way is to use the web interface.
