So I've come to the conclusion that the file sharing for apps like Numbers and Pages built into the iPad and iTunes, in its current incarnation, is junk, a hack, and borderline unusable.
Basically, if you aren't familiar with this, you specify in the sync settings for iTunes, what files, for each app, you want loaded on to the iPad. What it DOESN'T tell you, is its not creating an association between that file on disk on your machine and syncing it, what its really doing is putting a copy in a bucket that will synchronized over.
When the sync is completed, you have to go into the iWork app you are dealing with (Numbers) in this case, and "import" from the bucket to the local storage for the app.
To transfer back to the Mac or PC is EVEN WORSE. You have to export from the iPad app to the bucket, sync the iPad, then copy the file out of the bucket and back to its proper spot in your documents folders.
So many things can go wrong. You can import an old copy from your PC and overwrite the one on the iPad. You can export an old copy from your iPad and overwrite the new copy in the bucket. You can save a bad copy from the bucket and overwrite the good copy on your desktop. Or you can just save it in the wrong spot, and now you have 1 copy on the iPad in local storage, 1 copy in the bucket, 1 copy in the files original location on your desktop, and 1 saved somewhere else by accident. Doing any of these things is basically irreversible, so do it on the road, and you are SCREWED.
This is awful, and Apple needs to have this sorted out in time for OS 4.
It's so bad that they should have just given everyone MobileMe iDisk support and 2 gigs of free storage there just for file handling rather than this.
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-Scott
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