Pages, Numbers don’t allow cursor positioning

[Padcatt]

..and I have this directly from an apple support person, who consulted senior advisors and the programming department for those apps.

first off, it’s very difficult to interact with type at all, but if you do manage it, you can select a whole word, and you might be able to put you cursor before or after a word, but not within a word. It’s also very difficult to reliably place you cursor anywhere amongst text.

supposedly apple intends it to function this way, but I can’t conceive of a user who wouldn’t want to be able to edit text in every sense, combination and permutation of the words, “edit text”

Maybe the iPad model doesn’t matter, but when it’s a “Pro” anything, fine-grain editing is expected.

Anyone know about this?

thank you

after talking to another apple advisor, turns out you can do granular editing, but it requires more tapping, and some pausing so that the taps (separated by pausing) will let you select words/letters by tap/hold - magnify..put cursor where needed.

in Numbers, it’s trickier than in Pages, but it is possible.

 

[twerppoet]

I used the Notes app and this site to test these. Hold in mind that selection acts different depending on whether you are in edit mode (cursor present) or view mode (no-cursor). I’m only covering edit mode here.

Tap on a word - places a cursor at the end of the word. If the tap is held too long, will sometimes place the cursor inside the word.

Tap between words - Usually places the cursor at the end of the first word, but sometimes at the begiing of the second. No idea what causes the difference. Very touchy,

Tap and hold until maginfing glass appears - cursor may be dragged to any point in the text.

Double tap a word - will select the entire word.

Tap then tap-drag a word. Will select the word and continue selecting words in the direction dragged.

Tap on a paragraph to place cursor within, then double tap above cursor with two fingers - selects entire paragraph. All but this last one works when editing on this site.


Note: If you have an physical keyboard with arrow keys, the cursor may be moved using them. You can also select text using Shift, and Shift-Control/Option/Command with the arrow keys.

 

[pablomanila]

..and I have this directly from an apple support person, who consulted senior advisors and the programming department for those apps.

first off, it’s very difficult to interact with type at all, but if you do manage it, you can select a whole word, and you might be able to put you cursor before or after a word, but not within a word. It’s also very difficult to reliably place you cursor anywhere amongst text.

supposedly apple intends it to function this way, but I can’t conceive of a user who wouldn’t want to be able to edit text in every sense, combination and permutation of the words, “edit text”

Maybe the iPad model doesn’t matter, but when it’s a “Pro” anything, fine-grain editing is expected.

Anyone know about this?

thank you

after talking to another apple advisor, turns out you can do granular editing, but it requires more tapping, and some pausing so that the taps (separated by pausing) will let you select words/letters by tap/hold - magnify..put cursor where needed.

in Numbers, it’s trickier than in Pages, but it is possible.

Have you tried putting two fingers on keyboard to convert to trackpad?

How to use the keyboard as a trackpad on your iPad

 

[twerppoet]

Have you tried putting two fingers on keyboard to convert to trackpad?

How to use the keyboard as a trackpad on your iPad

BTW, this works even when you are using a physical keyboard. Just place two fingers where the keyboard usually appears, wait for the cursor to pulse once. Hold longer to enter text selection mode.

 

[Ian_NZ]

Have you tried putting two fingers on keyboard to convert to trackpad?

How to use the keyboard as a trackpad on your iPad

In iOS 12 if you touch and hold the space bar the whole keyboard becomes a track pad. It is then easy to locate the cursor anywhere.

 

[NSquirrel]

Thanks Ian_NZ. Very useful and works on my iphone 8, with ios12, too, which isn’t always the case between iPad and iPhone.