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annie90

macrumors member
Original poster
Mar 23, 2012
67
1
Hi,

Just wondering if there is any way that I can set .doc files from my icloud drive to automatically open on the pages app instead of the word app on the iPad. I would like to keep the word app on my iPad but open all my documents through pages. I'm a college student and my lecturers post notes etc as a word doc and I would like them to automatically open in pages as I like the smart annotation of the apple pencil in the pages app
 

happygodavid

macrumors 6502
May 14, 2007
250
264
Northern Virginia
I just poked around and couldn't quite figure it out, but maybe this will help. On a Mac, it's easy; on an iPad, not so much from what I can tell. Settings>Pages... nothing there. I don't have Word, but maybe that would have a setting for it.

What I did find: if you use the Files app on your iPad, you can drop files into iCloud Drive, Google Drive, Dropbox, etc. Navigate to the Word file you want to open in Pages, touch and hold, tap the right arrow, tap Share, swipe the app list over to Copy to Pages, and that should do the trick. This may be the longest possible way to do it, and it's not automatic, but that's all I could figure out for you without having Word on my iPad. If it helps, great; if not, sorry!
 

NoBoMac

Moderator
Staff member
Jul 1, 2014
5,774
4,364
I don't have Word, but maybe that would have a setting for it.

Nothing in Word as well for anything like that.

Unfortunately, with iOS sandbox architecture, nothing like desktop world and defining default apps for filetypes.

As mentioned, as close to as going to get is the Share Sheet options.
 
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