iosiworkms officepages
Can I use iWork on my iPhone and iPad as a complement to my employer issued Windows PC? I know that iWork boasts some Microsoft Office compatibility but how is it implemented? If office documents are imported and converted to a iWork format and then have to be exported to a Office format on save, isn't there a risk for dataloss?
Ideally iWork would edit actual office documents but I'm not sure if this is the case.
Docs to Go doesn't improve the rendering of the .doc or .ppt in Safari on the iPad, but it does register with the system as a compatible app for the file type. Tapping in the document area reveals an action bar with two buttons: Open in (which depends on the apps you have installed), and an Open in... button, which when tapped, gives you a popover with compatible apps.
See this example:
In my experience, you would be better off using Docs to Go to render the documents in any case, as the fidelity of its Office document rendering is quite good.
Version support is not found in iWork it is actually a part of OSX Lion. There is no version support built into iOS. (yet)
Best Answer
There surely is a risk for data loss, mostly in the formatting of documents. As you suspected, the files are converted when opened (and saved) to the iWork format. Certain features in Office aren't present in iWork, such as SmartArt or VBA applications.
For handling simple letters it could be a compliment, but for business critical documents that shouldn't change their formatting all the time I would stick to one of both. Since your employer decides what you use at work I don't think iWork would be a very good option in this case.