Sharing Publisher documents between iMac and iPad

[JBPhotos44]

I hope that some patient soul can point me to the area of this forum or the Affinity Help for a step-by-step process of sharing and working on Publisher documents between my iMac and my iPad. It must have been covered somewhere but I can't find it. And if I'm posting in the wrong area please accept my apologies in advance.

I want to continue editing a Publisher document, which is on my iMac, on my iPad when away from base. I have saved it to iCloud and can (eventually) access it on my iPad. But when I save any changes I make on my iPad to iCloud, I don't see this in the document I load from iCloud on my iMac.

What am I doing wrong please?

As I say, a step by step guide would be enormously helpful so I can start from scratch and get it right.

[Affinity-Inspiration]

That’s iCloud not syncing documents. It’s a pain. I always use Dropbox all the time now as it’s instant. I do the same all the time. Home and away. iCloud was driving me nuts.

You will probably have all sorts of changes happening now if iCloud ever catches up.

Edited June 21, 2024 by Affinity-Inspiration
Updated

[JBPhotos44]

Thank you for that very quick and helpful response. DropBox works!

But why oh why does iCloud not work? It should Mr Apple!

[Affinity-Inspiration]

21 minutes ago, JBPhotos44 said:

Thank you for that very quick and helpful response. DropBox works!

But why oh why does iCloud not work? It should Mr Apple!

Icloud does work eventually. In its own time. But it’s useless for working across devices.

 

[airwhale]

My experience with iCloud is rather good, even if syncing time can be troublesome at times. I'm on a European server probably and it usually works just fine for me. However,  there's one thing I need to do in Affinity that I don't really need in many other apps. 

I must always Save and Close the file on one device before Opening it up on the other. Once I am done with a session, I re-Save and Close the file.

A file that is kept open on iPad (in the grid of files on the start page) will not reflect any changes done to this file on the Mac until it's re-opened. If you forget and continue working on iPad, then Save, you will overwrite the changes you did on Mac. My theory is that iPad keeps a local copy of the iCloud file and it's not written back to iCloud until you explicitly choose the "Save" option.

It is a bit old school, but once you get into this habit, it should work fine across devices.

Anyway, if you have DropBox and that works for you, I'd keep doing that

[Paul Mudditt]

17 hours ago, JBPhotos44 said:

I hope that some patient soul can point me to the area of this forum or the Affinity Help for a step-by-step process of sharing and working on Publisher documents between my iMac and my iPad. It must have been covered somewhere but I can't find it. And if I'm posting in the wrong area please accept my apologies in advance.

I want to continue editing a Publisher document, which is on my iMac, on my iPad when away from base. I have saved it to iCloud and can (eventually) access it on my iPad. But when I save any changes I make on my iPad to iCloud, I don't see this in the document I load from iCloud on my iMac.

What am I doing wrong please?

As I say, a step by step guide would be enormously helpful so I can start from scratch and get it right.

The huge mistake people make with the iPad app is keeping the document in the sandbox after transferring to another device. In the sandbox, the document is like an open tab on the desktop app, very convenient for editing but not for transferring to another system. No matter that you have saved to iCloud or dropbox or onedrive, if the document is in on the app home screen or in an open tab on a desktop the file is effectively still open and immune to changes you make to the iCloud file on the other device.

So the golden rule is to use the iPad EXACTLY the same as you use the desktop app.

Do your work then save to a cloud folder THEN YOU MUST CLOSE THE OPEN DOCUMENT on the desktop tabs OR the iPad sandbox/home screen before opening on the other device. Repeat this procedure when moving back to the other device.

EDIT: In an ideal world the app home screen sandbox would not exist on the iPad app, but it is needed because of the way iPadOS multitasking works compared to a desktop operating system. The iPadOS forces apps to close down after you switch from them, if you had a normal file open then data would be lost so it has to be kept in the rather volatile sandbox inside the app rather than in an iCloud folder outside the app and it is this that causes the transfer between devices issue and hence why you need to save to a folder you have created, then close/delete the file from the home screen/sandbox.

Edited June 22, 2024 by Paul Mudditt
iPadOS file handling during task switching added.

[JBPhotos44]

Many thanks.  I seem to have got to working now, ensuring I close everything down each time.

Very grateful for the advice.