How to Use Documents in iCloud

iCloud seems to be all the rage these days for Apple users, and deservingly so. iCloud will store your content as well as let you access your music, photos calendars, contacts, documents and more from any of your iOS and Mac devices.

I remember the good ol’ days back in college when I would write papers the night before, but forget to save it to my flash drive or email it to myself so I could either work on it more or print it at school. If Apple had come out with iCloud back then, I wouldn’t have had that problem!

When storing documents on the Cloud you are able to then access these files from another one of your iOS or Mac devices. Here’s how:

First, you’ll need to make sure you have the Documents & Data option enabled in your iCloud preferences. From your iOS device: Settings > iCloud > Documents & Data > On. From your Mac: System Preferences > Internet & Wireless > iCloud > check Documents & Data.

There are a few ways to save a document to the Cloud. If you are in an iCloud-compatible app (like Pages, Numbers, Keynote, etc.) on your Mac, you’ll want to go to File > Save (or Command-S) and choose iCloud from the menu. Name it and hit “Save”. This file will automatically be pushed to iCloud.

The second way to save to iCloud is if you have a file you’ve already created and it’s saved on your machine, you can easily drag and drop the file onto the iCloud document pane. To do this, open the application that the file was created in. For instance, if you have a Numbers document you’d like to push to iCloud, open Numbers. If Numbers wasn’t already open, you should get the iCloud document pane. Open a Finder window and locate the Numbers document you’d like to add. Then, you can simply drag that file from Finder to the iCloud window pane and boom, it’s there!

The third way to save to iCloud is to open the file that is locally saved to your computer. At the top of the document window is the file name, click on the name and choose “Move to iCloud” (not you must save the file first, if your document is Untitled the “Move to iCloud” option will not be available).

To access the document from a different device than the one you just saved from is super simple. Let’s say you now want to open your Numbers document on your iPad, open the Numbers app on your iPad and choose the file you had previously created. There it is! You can now work on it from your iPad, save it again, and then continue working on it again later on your Mac. It’s really pretty cool.

Note that you need to be running Mountain Lion on your Mac for all of these cool iCloud features and have at least iOS 4.3.3 or later on your iPhone (3GS or newer). Enjoy!