Last week Dr. Drang lamented the inability to share a Numbers template between Mac and iOS. He then very cleverly showed where the Mac iWork template files are buried and how to get them onto iOS. This is a problem I’ve struggled with for years. Not only does iWork not sync templates between iOS and the Mac, it also doesn’t sync templates between two Macs. If you create a template on Pages on your MacBook, you’re not going to find it on Pages on your iMac.

When I first heard about Apple’s re-invention of the iWork suite, I hoped that this would be one of those itches that Apple could scratch with a unified code base for the iWork apps on all platforms. It was one of the first things I tested. Unfortunately, no luck.

Apple isn’t alone in this problem. I have the same issue with just about every other productivity app I use among my various Macs and iThingies. A few years ago I had a catastrophic drive failure. With all my various backups schemes I recovered all of my data. I thought I was a real Grade-A super-nerd. I was so impressed with this data recovery that a few months later I nuked my final SuperDuper clone of the wrecked hard drive and moved on. The very next day (Next Day!) I had call for a Numbers template that I created on that machine and never managed to migrate anywhere else. I opened Numbers, looked at the blank template list and thought to myself, “whoops”.

So this pesky template problem led to the first data loss I’ve experienced in a long time. Because this problem persists, I’ve come up with a much less clever solution than the good Doctor’s. I added a Templates folder to Dropbox. In there I’ve got a series of subfolders related to the various productivity apps I use and every time I create a document that I want to keep as a template, I save a copy there. Over the past few years, these folders have grown and I’ve got a nice little bank of templates I can access from any device.

You may be thinking that a similar solution could be accomplished (with the iWork suite at least) by creating a document folder called Templates and saving a documents to this impostor. That’s true but I prefer keeping them on Dropbox to save iCloud space and not junk up iCloud directories that are already not very friendly to high numbers of documents.

I still save templates to the iWork suite and certain of my other productivity apps but I also always make a copy into the Dropbox bank. If you are concerned about security, you could also save the directory to a Transporter. (I’m actually planning to make that move myself.) Because the iWork suite is now so closely related on each of the platforms, I suspect Apple does have template syncing on a white board somewhere in Cupertino and it will eventually show up. Even though, I still plan on keeping this folder. The iWork apps aren’t the only ones I’m saving templates from and there is something comforting about having your own set of backups. Just in case.

I keep threatening to stop writing about this story but some part of me can’t resist. Last week Microsoft’s chief of marketing explained how there were a lot of reasons to keep Office off the iPad. Then days later, Mary Jo Foley reported we could see Office on the iPad by July.

How many times must this carousel go around? Clearly there are warring factions at Microsoft. Putting Office on the iPad means a lot of money (or more likely Office 365 subscriptions) but Office ubiquity also makes their own platform (like the Surface) less special.

For years now, we’ve all been wondering if Microsoft will put Office on the iPad. While there is a version of Office for the iPhone, it still is missing on iPad. If Office does find its way to the iPad, I don’t expect it to have all the bells and whistles that Office has on Windows or the Mac (or even the Surface). In fact, I’d expect it to be feature limited. That is the compromise that would let the anti-iPad wing Microsoft finally capitulate. “Make it for the iPad, but don’t make it as good.” This isn’t without precedent. That appears to be the tack they used with Office Mobile for iPhone. I suspect that if/when Office does make it to the iPad, it won’t be that impressive and we’ll all wonder why we spent so much time on this merry-go-round to begin with.

I noticed last night that the camera roll on my iPhone was using 6GB. Between iCloud and other mechanisms, my photos are backed up but I’ve been sloppy about cleaning out my camera roll. I could do this on the phone but it isn’t very fast. So I fired up my favorite Mac app for managing/copying/deleting lots of images at once, Image Capture. I’m often surprised by how many Mac owners don’t even know this application exists. It is part of the operating system and ships on every Mac. Rather than trying to manage large numbers of images from iPhoto or Aperture, Image Capture lets me triage my iOS photos first. I can select multiple images for management, export to my Mac, and, ultimately, deletion. There are even a few Automator hooks. There really isn’t anything magical about this little utility but once you know it’s there, you’ll probably find use for it.

Google Adsense makes my brain hurt. The best (and only) way to promote your company, product, app, or service to the MacSparky readers is through a week-long sponsorship. What do you get? An exclusive ad in the right margin and a post in the RSS feed. I only take one advertiser a week. I’ve got just a few weeks open between now and July and much more availability in the second half of the year. If you’re interested, send me a note.

The Omni Group has recently started distributing manuals and books about their software through the iBooks Store. I think it is a great idea. Frankly, I don’t know why more people aren’t using this method to connect with customers, especially in the Mac/iOS market.

I was disappointed to see the online document management service, Doo, shutting down. It seemed like they were onto something but perhaps they were too early. I have no doubt that at some point in the future online, organized document storage will be the rule, not the exception. The question is whether it will be our own private, controlled “online” (like The Transporter provides) or someone else’s.

This may be a lawyer thing but I spend a lot of time reading Word documents with tracked changes. Today Jeff Richardson at iPhone J.D. reviewed a Word file viewer, Reader 7, that doesn’t let you edit those documents but does an excellent job displaying them for review.