Why won't iCloud let me download Pages documents uploaded from a computer?

It often happens that I create a Pages document on my home laptop, upload it to iCloud, then want to download it from iCloud at school. For some reason, iCloud doesn't support this—I need to, at some point between those two steps, open Pages on an iOS device synched with my iCloud account. Then it'll work fine. I assume this has something to do with a preview being included in the file, as in iCloud it shows up as a generic .pages document rather than the customary document preview image thing, but I can't see why. Pages does include a preview in its saves, and "Include preview in document by default" is checked. What's happening, and is there any way I can get around it without use of an iPad or iPhone?

asked Jan 17, 2012 at 23:57 15.2k 22 22 gold badges 80 80 silver badges 135 135 bronze badges

Use Dropbox. It can support this and much more. It's not an Apple product, but works great with Macs, iPads, and iPhone. You can get a free account here: dropbox.com

Commented Jan 18, 2012 at 12:18 How are you downloading it? from iCloud.com or automatilcy through your Apple ID onto the computer? Commented Jan 18, 2012 at 12:26

Well, there's no way to automatically download iWork documents to the computer, so iCloud.com. Or did you mean the Mobile Documents folder?

Commented Jan 18, 2012 at 13:39

I am not sure why, but I always have to open files uploaded from a computer on my iPad at least once before I can download them from iCloud.

Commented Jan 18, 2012 at 13:39

What I mean is are you going to iCloud.com to download teh docs, or are you just opening Pages and finind them in recent?