Big organizations interested in using Apple’s iWork as a collaboration tool are in luck. The company updated iWork for iCloud today to support up to 100 collaborators working on one document, along with documents that could be 1 GB or more in size. That’s a significant upgrade from the previous limitations, which limited users to files that were only 200 MB in size, with 50 collaborators.
Users who want to include high-res images in their iWork files will now be able to add images up to 10 MB in size to documents in Apple’s suite as well, double the previous limit of 5 MB per image. All of the size changes are good news for users who rely on iWork to build massive documents, especially large Keynote presentations. The storage isn’t free, though: any files users have stored with iWork for iCloud count against their storage allowance.
The update also added a number of other features to the cloud-based versions of all three apps. Pages, Keynote and Numbers all got support for chart formatting, as well as the ability to create 2D and interactive charts.
In addition, Pages for iCloud got support for exporting documents as ePub files, and Numbers got the ability to export spreadsheets in comma-separated value (CSV) format. Those tools will make it easier for people to get their files out of iWork and into another program without needing a Mac or iOS device.
It’s another move to position iWork against competitors like Office 365 and Google Drive. Over the past year, Apple has worked on improving its productivity suite in order to try and take on the other players in the market, even going so far as to offer it for free to anyone who buys a new Mac or iOS device.
The changes are available for free, and users can get access to iWork for iCloud by visiting iCloud.com.
