As I’ve mentioned before, my main tool for writing is my iMac. I switched to an Apple computer, after many years of using Windows, in January 2013 and I haven’t looked back. I love my iMac. I’ve had fewer problems with it in the year and a half I’ve had it than I typically had with Windows machines in any given month. Before I got my iMac, I was already a lover of iPhones and iPads.

This past April, when Apple lowered the price and upgraded the processor on the MacBook Air, I got one. Of course my plan was to be able to write on both my iMac and my Macbook and seamlessly synch between the two. I also wanted to synch with my iDevices. Though I don’t write on them, I do look at files sometimes and read through drafts.

I had been using Microsoft Word/Office, but would have to buy another license for my notebook if I wanted to use it. But with the purchase of my latest iPhone and now my Macbook I had Apple’s Pages word processor on all of my devices for free. Since Pages synchs up using iCloud, my problem was solved.

I really wanted to like Pages and it’s not awful. If I were writing for any other purpose than publication, it would be great. Sadly, it just wasn’t a good fit for me. All the publishers require Word documents. While pages exports to Word files, there are almost always errors. They are usually minor—maybe an extra line or something, but they are there. That meant I had to write in Pages and then fix any formatting errors in Word. If I then found an editing error, I had to make the change in Pages, export to Word, and then fix the formatting errors again. If I didn’t, I ended up with multiple versions of documents, all with slightly different errors. That’s what happened.

I wrote three books using Pages, but finally I have had to buy another license for Office to use on my notebook. I thought about Office365, but Microsoft in their wisdom offers a license for 1 computer or a license for 5 computers. I can’t be the only one that uses a desktop/laptop combo and needs two!

So, I have two copies of Office now. How do I synch them? iCloud works pretty well, but until the next version of OSX, it’s difficult to use it with anything other than Apple’s own applications. Microsoft offers One Drive for Mac, but the interface is not smooth and using One Note, I have found that their synching isn’t the quickest. Finally there is Dropbox. Not only does it work faster than either iCloud or One Drive, but the Dropbox app for the iPad and iPhone allows you to view and print Office Files (and not Pages).

So as of today, I’ve got my writing arrangement all configured. Word on both computers. Dropbox to synch my files and view them on phone or tablet. And all my most up-to-date files organized and ready to go.