Apple Updates iWork With Password Protection

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Conference attendees and workers use iWork software at the Macworld Conference and Expo in San Francisco in 2009.

Image: Paul Sakuma/Associated Press

By Samantha Murphy Kelly2014-01-24 18:34:17 UTC

Apple rolled out on Friday a series of new updates for its iWork platform, including password protection.

iWork — Apple's suite of productivity apps (including Pages, Numbers and presentation program Keynote) — received new features across its OS X, iOS and web-based iCloud versions. Besides adding the ability to protect documents with passwords, the update also makes the apps more compatible with other platforms such as Microsoft Office.

The news comes a few months after Apple detailed changes it wanted to make to iWork.

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Among the new additions is customizable alignment and spacing guides to Pages, allowing you to rotate, resize and mask objects with various-shaped frames. The app Numbers also added column and rows sorting, as well as the ability to switch to vertical view. Meanwhile, Keynote now has a customizable toolbar, the ability to restore old transitions and builds and improvements to AppleScript support.

But perhaps the biggest new addition is that iWork now supports password protection. Even better, the passwords are compatible with Microsoft Office, so a secured iWork document can be opened in Office without reformatting it, letting users share sensitive information between the platforms.

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Topics: apple, Apps and Software, iwork, Tech