View any OS X file on an iPhone

Jul 13, '07 07:30:00AM

Contributed by: g4r2

There is actually an incredibly easy way to save, organize, and view most kinds of files on your iPhone. This includes PDFs, as well as files from Excel, Word, Powerpoint, Pages, Keynote, Safari, and pretty much any other kind of file you can think of. The application that you need to use on your iPhone is neither Mail nor Safari. It is, instead, the Photo application on your iPhone. You will be able to scroll, zoom, and organize the files however you like. They will be stored automatically in a folder in iPhoto with virtually no effort.

The OS X function that allows all of this is the Print function found in most applications. Print has a special item on the PDF button called Save PDF to iPhoto. This will convert whatever you are printing into a PDF file and send it directly to iPhoto. You will organize your documents in iPhoto for syncing using this method. Here are the instructions to do this:

  1. Open the file you want to view on your iPhone in its native app in OS X.
  2. Select Print. In the dialog that appears select the PDF button on the bottom left hand side.
  3. Now scroll down the pop-up list and select Save PDF to iPhoto.
  4. iPhoto will launch, and you will be prompted for an album name to store the new files. Type in the name of the document, or if you prefer just "iPhone Documents" if you'd like to make this album the repository of all your converted documents.
  5. Sync your iPhone. You'll have to go to the Photo page in iTunes to make sure the folder is selected and that the images sync.
  6. On your iPhone, click Photos and you'll see the PDF has been broken down by pages and is viewable, scrollable, and zoomable like any other photo.
If you are printing in either Word or Excel or other supported programs, you can increase the text size of the document and print the file to iPhoto in landscape mode to increase the quality of the image that is created. Unfortunately, it doesn't seem that Preview has this feature. It helps if the document you want to view doesn't have small text. I suspect there must be a way to control the quality of the converted documents somewhere, so if anyone knows how, please post.

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Mac OS X Hints
http://hints.macworld.com/article.php?story=20070706141839286