iPad Pages sharing tip - How to share/export iPad Pages’ documents

iPad Pages document sharing FAQ: How do I share iPad Pages documents?

After working with a friend's iPad lately -- specifically the iPad Pages application -- I asked him how you go about sharing iPad Pages documents. We did a little research, and found at least three ways to share/export an iPad Pages document.

iPad Pages sharing - Share/export documents via email

It seems a little cumbersome, but probably the most common way to share an iPad Pages document is through email. Here are the steps to follow:

1. Open the iPad Pages app.
2. From the My Documents screen, select the document you want to share/export. (Do this by centering the document in the My Documents view.)
3. Tap the icon at the bottom of the Pages screen that looks like an arrow that points to the right. (Technically the iPad 'sharing' icon.)
4. Choose the "Send via Mail' option, and then follow the usual email steps.

From what I've seen, this is currently the easiest way to export an iPad Pages document.

Share/export an iPad Pages document by exporting it

In a second approach, you can also export your iPad Pages documents by "exporting" them to your File Sharing folder, and then accessing this folder from iTunes:

1. Open the Pages app on your iPad.
2. From the Pages' "My Documents" screen, select the document you want to share/export. (Do this by centering the document in the My Documents view.)
3. Tap the icon at the bottom of the screen that looks like an arrow, pointing to the right. (Technically the 'sharing' icon.)
4. Choose the 'Export' option.
5. In the Export Document window, select the file format you want to export to.
6. The iPad Pages app will export a copy of your file to the File Sharing folder. You can access this folder from iTunes.

Note that you can export Pages documents in a Pages format, Microsoft Word '97 format, or PDF format.

As a personal observation, this is pretty lame. Hopefully in a future release you'll be able to share your documents directly to network drives directly from your iPad. As someone wrote on another blog site a while back, going through iTunes for something like this is a form of masochism.

iPad Pages sharing - Share/export your iPad Pages documents with iWork

You can also share your iPad Pages documents through iWork.com, but I don't have an iWork account, so I can't really say much about this. The initial steps are similar to the steps shown above:

1. Open the Pages app on your iPad.
2. From the My Documents screen, select the document you want to share/export. (Do this by centering the document in the My Documents view.)
3. Tap the icon at the bottom of the screen that looks like an arrow, pointing to the right. (Technically the 'sharing' icon.)
4. Choose the 'Share via iWork.com' option.
5. At this point I assume you log into your iWork account, but again, I don't have iWork, so I can only speculate.

If you're already paying for an iWork subscription, this iPad Pages document export approach may be as easy as the email export approach shown earlier.

How to export/share your iPad Pages documents - summary

I hope these iPad Pages document sharing tips have been helpful. If/when I discover some new ways to export iPad Pages documents, I'll update this article.