How to integrate DropBox with Pages, Numbers and Keynote on the iPad

A few months ago we showed you at Apple how to save files generated by the iPad iWork suite in DropBox from the iPad and without using any computer or extra feature. Techinch

The only problem with that method is that it was somewhat messy and extensive, so saving a file in DropBox was almost more complicated than sending it to a computer and doing it there comfortably.

How to integrate DropBox with Pages, Numbers and Keynote on the iPad

Luckily, it seems that there is another much simpler way (very much) to “make” DropBox compatible with iWork . Since in this case it is not Apple that is stingy, but the service itself that does not include support for the WebDAV protocol.

Adding WebDAV support to our DropBox account

The whole problem of integrating DropBox with iWork comes down to one feature that the system does not have. As I mentioned earlier, the device does not support WebDAV service so iWork cannot set up a DropBox account to automatically save documents.

The simple way to solve this shortcoming, without doing ten steps and wasting more time than anything else, is to use an intermediate service capable of adding support for this protocol in our DropBox account.

For this we have several options such as DropDAV limited and DropDAV, both have a similar operation and options, although the first is paid for transfers over 2Gb per month while the second is completely free.

In both cases the configuration is identical: access the website of these services, log in to DropBox and allow access to our account through these services.

Once the service is configured, the result will be the WebDAV data that will connect our DropBox account to the service, which will be able to manage our data in a simple way.

Setting up a WebDAV account in iWork for the iPad

Well, we already have our account, it’s time to go to the iPad and configure our program (in this case I’m talking about Pages, although the steps are identical for all three programs) with those data.

To configure the account we have to access any of the options that allow us to access a WebDAV server. These can be “Copy to WebDAV” or “Copy from WebDAV”.
The most secure is that your data is https:/dropdav.appspot.com as server and then your email and password as username and password.
Once configured, we can access the option with our account, which logically shows all the structure of folders and files in our DropBox.