HOW TO | work with any file format
1 Office file formats
iOS is capable of natively viewing many office document types without the need for extra apps. Microsoft Office and Apple Pages documents are all supported, as well as TXT, RTF and PDF. When you receive one, just tap it to open it. However, if you want to edit these files, there are some great options. Microsoft Office for iPad is free for viewing documents, and will always format Office files correctly, which other apps can struggle with. However, you have to pay a yearly subscription if you want to edit documents. Apple’s Pages, Numbers and Keynote apps are free to anyone buying a new iOS device, and let you open and edit MS Office file types, Apple’s KEY, PAGES and NUMBERS file types, CSV files, RTF and TXT. For OpenOffice file formats, including ODT, ODS and ODP, you can view them for free using OOReader (though complex documents might require an IAP to unlock the ‘Pro’ version). To edit these document types, use the Documents Unlimited apps by AppsVerse inc – there are separate iPhone and iPad apps.
If you need to annotate or sign a PDF, Adobe Reader is a good free option (see more on this on page 58), which also lets you open encrypted PDFs (which many legal documents may be sent as). If you’re working with lots of PDFs, however, GoodReader is a more organised way to manage these files.
If you’re sent documents in ZIP form, you can sometimes use iOS’s Quick Look option to view the contents. For properly unpacking ZIP or RAR archives, though, use the free app iZip, which can unzip these formats (as well as many others) even if they’re encrypted, and create its own ZIP files.
2 Creative file formats
For files created by creative pro apps, there’s often not much in the way of editing, but there are viewing options. PSD Photoshop files can only be opened by Adobe’s Photoshop Touch app if they come through its Creative Cloud service. Use the free PSD Viewer for Photoshop to open these files on iOS generally. For AI files, grab the free doctape viewer app, which is a cloud service that actually converts the file to a PDF for easy viewing. For INDD InDesign files, there are a couple of apps that rely on InDesign’s built-in preview image to enable you to view files, the free ADOView and the paid-for SneakPeek. In both cases, you have to tweak your InDesign settings before they can work properly, but in the case of ADOView, this is explained in the app. To view EPS files, you can use doctape viewer again. For SVG files, use the free Inkpad app – this works best if you use Open In… to save the files into Dropbox, then use Inkpad’s Import command and built-in Dropbox support.
For DWG CAD files, you can use the free AutoCAD 360 app to view and edit the files, or use the paid CAD View 3D app by Afanche Technologies to view more CAD file types. ATView 3D Professional from the same developer is compatible with a wide range of 3D app file types. For Rhino 3DM files, use the paid iRhino3D app.
3 Image file formats
iOS can view JPEG, PNG and TIFF files without extra apps, but while Apple’s iPhoto app is capable of opening many raw photo file types using the iTunes File Transfer feature, it can’t open them directly from on the iPad. You need an app called PhotoRaw (there’s a Lite version too), which can open a huge range of raw file formats – including those from Canon, Nikon, Olympus, Sony, Samsung and many more – and perform basic edits and export to JPEG. iOS doesn’t support viewing GIF files natively when sent in emails (though it does in Messages, oddly). Open them in Adobe Reader and you see the animation, though.
4 Audio/video file formats
MP3, WAV, AIFF, WAV and M4A in AAC or Apple Lossless audio files (up to CD-quality 16-bit in our tests) can all be played natively by iOS. For FLAC, AmpliFLAC Free lets you listen to up to 120 seconds of a song without paying. Equalizer Pro is a paid app that lets you listen to both FLAC and OGG tracks.
For video, the iPad can play most MP4 and MOV videos natively. For MKV, WMV and AVI files, use the free-but-basic VLC for iOS app, or the great paid AVPlayerHD.