Downloading excel spread sheet to my ipad from work

[JudeII]

Objective: to bring In to my iPad, on a routine basis, a large excel spreadsheet from work. I would want to search, sort, analyze and report out on this data file. Points:
- I have an iPad 2
- I use Citrix to access work
- I have access to my personal email from work and my iPad
- the file would be several meg in size
- it would need to be updated at least weekly
- I want it to be resident on the iPad due to connectivity challenges
- ideally I would set up the report as a production report to be automatically captured and sent to my iPad
- I would want to be able to manage old data files manually

The data on the file is pivotal to my daily work.
Any thoughts would be helpful as my IT team at work does not formally support iPad
Thanks,
Jude

 

[giradman]

Hi Jude - welcome to the forum!

I'll just suggest one option but certainly others exist: 1) Use Dropbox installed on your computer & iPad - the free version provides 2 GB of storage; upload the Excel spreadsheet to Dropbox from your work computer & then download to your iPad - simple and wireless; and 2) Use a program on your iPad that can open the Excel spreadsheet; I have Numbers on my device but others exist (do some searching on Office Apps; several excellent threads already exist).

However, keep in mind that these iPad spreadsheet programs do not offer all of the features of Excel on a computer - if you have a complicated spreadsheet, then the manipulations you outlined above may not be possible? Again, a review of previous threads related to these apps discusses their limitations on the iPad.

Good luck - and please post back you solution(s) - may help others!

 

[ssarmazi]

Jude,

If you're looking for anything more than basic Excel, then apps like Numbers, QuickOffice, Office2 HD (which all can read/write Excel) really aren't an alternative. None of them can handle even what I consider to be basic Excel features such as filters - this isn't their fault because I've read that these involve some Microsoft functionality which obviously isn't in iOS.

I know you have connectivity challenges, and I'm not sure if this would work through Citrix, but here is the only solution I can think of for you - assuming you have access to the Internet at work, I would recommend the free Onlive Desktop app. This app, when you launch it on your iPad, gives you a Winows desktop with Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and a couple of others. There's also a $5/month pro version which gives you more, but you won't need that for excel.

This basically gives you *full* Excel 2010 functionality, and the files that you create/save on the iPad get synced to your free storage on their website.

So the way it would work is you'd upload your file from your work laptop to your online storage, then modify it to your heart's content on the iPad. When you're done, it automatically syncs back to the web, so when you're back at work, you just download from the web and you're good to go.