All You Need to Know to Put the iPad to Work

"There is no USB port, you can't put a flash drive into an iPad and just move files over," Walt Mossberg on Thursday told FOX Business.  But the Wall Street Journal's Personal Technology Columnist said, that's no reason users can't access or even edit and create documents on the go.

In his weekly All Things Digital segment on FOX Business, Mossberg pointed out a feature he said even many veteran Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL) iPad users don't know about.  Users with more recent versions of iTunes have the ability to use file sharing in the program that allows them to drag and drop files like Word documents, spreadsheets, PowerPoint presentations, and PDFs, among others, right onto their iPad.

However, the user needs to have the right apps on his or her iPad to use these files, he said.  He pointed to Quickoffice as an example, which is available in the Apple App Store for $14.99.

Some of these document-handling apps can access files users have in their Google (NASDAQ:GOOG) Docs account, while some even access files right over the user's home WiFi network, he added.

And setting up these apps isn't too hard, according to Mossberg.  "You have to have the right apps and know how to use them but I don't think it's rocket science."

In Mossberg's Wall Street Journal column he mentioned other examples of apps for creating and editing files.  In addition to Quickoffice, Mossberg mentioned Documents To Go, which ranges from $10 to $17 depending on the version, and Apple's own Pages, Numbers, and Keynote apps, which are $10 each.

Mossberg pointed out these apps can't do what a full-fledged desktop version of Microsoft Office can do, but he found that they worked well.