Do you use a bullet journal? I’ve been using a paper and pencil journal to create a calendar of blog posts. However, I’d like to learn to use my new Apple pencil to create a digital list of posts.
So I tried Apple’s Pages app with my Apple pencil
- Created a Word document on my Windows computer listing the dates and days for the month
- Saved the document to Dropbox
- Switched to my iPad and opened Pages
- Tapped Dropbox in the list of ‘Locations’
- Navigated to the saved file
- Tapped the file to download file to iPad and open it
- Clicked on the EDIT button in the upper right
- Used my Apple pencil to write in the title of a blog post by the date (making sure ‘Scribble’ is turned on in the iPad settings for the pencil)
While the Pages app did exactly what I wanted, it created a copy of my original file but added the .pages extension. Thus, my Dropbox folder now has a file with the .docx extension and one with the .pages extention. That’s two different files working in two different word processors.
So, I could continue using my new Apple Pencil with Pages on my iPad each month and then save the final list as a PDF file OR I could figure this out using Microsoft Word on my iPad.
While the Apple pencil does work with Microsoft Word, it was not intuitive for me! I finally found some directions from Microsoft Insider that helped me figure out how to convert the handwritten text to typed text. The clue is that one is DRAWING and not writing. When I clicked on the DRAW tool and then selected the pencil tip with the A (for Apple Pencil), Word recognized my handwritten text and converted it to typed text.
After closing the Word document on my iPad I was able to open it on my computer and see the changes I had made. Thus, I will try using Microsoft Word on my iPad during July to see how I like the digital format versus my paper and pencil blog calendar.
Thanks for following along on this adventure to learn to use an Apple pencil