New setting lets you share documents you want others to view but not edit

Apr 2, 2014 07:27 GMT  ·  By

Apple is offering new versions of Pages, Keynote and Numbers on OS X and iOS platforms, featuring a range of new features, settings, options and tweaks, as well as the usual bag of fixes and improvements across the board.

OS X customers who rely on Pages to write documents get a new “view only” setting that lets them share documents that other people can view but not edit. Users can now delete, duplicate and reorder sections using the page navigator, and inline images and shapes in table cells are preserved on import.

A range of copy-paste style improvements have been made, and users will notice better placement of inserted and pasted objects. Other improvements have been made in areas like Instant Alpha image editing, Media Browser (search), AppleScript support, bi-directional text support, text box behavior, EndNote support (including citations in footnotes), and ePub export.

New Arabic and Hebrew templates are available, Hebrew users also get a much-needed word-count function, and Pages now lets users create custom data formats, control the z-order of bubble chart labels, and show rulers as a percentage of document size.

Keynote and Numbers, the other two apps comprised in the iWork suite, have been updated with many of the same changes enumerated above, including the flagship “view only” feature.

Some app-exclusive additions are also mentioned. For example, Keynote gets improved Presenter Display layouts and labels, new transitions and builds (Object Revolve, Drift and Scale, and Skid), improved Magic Move, the ability to apply motion blur to animations, PPTX exporting, support for animated GIFs, and more.

Numbers gets new abilities like set margins in print setup, create headers and footers in print setup, drag-and-drop a CSV file directly into a sheet, automatically update an existing table by dragging in a CSV file, as well as improved Instant Alpha image editing, improved Microsoft Excel compatibility, and more.

Many of these changes are also reflected in the iOS counterparts, but there are some specific changes for the mobile versions as well. Pages gets the ability to search documents by name, Keynote gets a new portrait layout option in presenter display, and Numbers offers a progress indicator for calculations.

Mac users can download Pages 5.2, Keynote 6.2 and Numbers 3.2 on any Mavericks computer for $19.99 / €17.99 apiece. On iPhone and iPad, Pages 2.2, Keynote 2.2, and Numbers 2.2 sell for $9.99 / €8.99 each.