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Can I use iPad/iPhone with SharePoint 2010?

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08/26/2011 Update: Here's the official iPad support informarion from SharePoint team - https://sharepoint.microsoft.com/blog/Pages/BlogPost.aspx?pID=960

 

A quick answer to this question is: Yes, but that depends on how you access SharePoint.

To understand the myth, we need to go through some details…

How to access SharePoint content from iPhone/iPad?

Okay, we got two methods apparently.  The first one is to use a browser like Safari on the iPhone/iPad to browse the pages directly, just like how you use that on the desktop. The second one involves Apps.

How about the browser way? Is it supported?

Good news is, it works most of the time. Bad news is, there is something that’s not supported by Mobile Safari currently. Although we do support all mobile browsers, that’s in Mobile View of the pages. Mobile Safari can handle those pages pretty well, but not all the full version of the pages.

What is the problem and why can’t you fix it???!!!

The most obvious problem is that Rich Edit controls won’t work with these iOS devices (current verison: iOS 4.0). If you dig deeper into the issue, you will find that iPhone/iPad actually won’t work with any Rich Edit fields on the internet nowadays. The problem is Mobile Safari does not support enough features as Safari does. It’s a trimmed down version of Safari, one of the attribute it does not support is contentEditable. This attribute is widely used in SharePoint, in Google Docs, in TinyMCE(One of the best WYSIWYG editor)…

So until Apple improve their Webkit code on these devices, the only way to get around of this is to add detection code to remove Rich Edit experience for iOS devices, just like to switch to the Mobile View. There’s no way for the whole internet world to “fix” what Mobile Safari is missing.

In SharePoint, that means things involves editing in a Rich Text way will not work: Office Web Apps Edit Mode, Page Edit Mode, etc. Viewing pages and content are good.

Why does this contentEditable matter?

This attribute is introduced by Internet Explorer 5.5 more than 10 years ago, and is widely supported in all modern browsers like Firefox, Safari, Chrome and Opera. It is a fundamental of creating those rich edit experience within browsers instead of a separate RIA so gradually it’s also accepted in HTML5 standard.

Further reading on HTML5 & contentEditable: https://blog.whatwg.org/the-road-to-html-5-contenteditable

How about the Apps way?

There’re several Apps in App Store currently for SharePoint access. Just search for SharePoint, and you can find them. The experience varies, but in general they do the job. Currently there’s no client from Microsoft does that – if you need, you may want to consider a Windows Phone device.Smile

What’s the conclusion?

If you need to use these iDevices’ browser with SharePoint, you need to test your usage scenario first since Mobile Safari is not in the supported browsers for full page views anyway. You are responsible for the customizations to make unsupported browsers work. Or you can wait until Apple release some fix for their iOS to reduce the problem. No idea if their new 4.2 will do something on that currently. Apps is good to check out, but may not meet all the needs depending on how you want to use it. I don’t have a recommendation here.

Jie.

Comments

  • Anonymous
    September 01, 2010
    Thanks for the official note on iPad/iPhone support. Hope Apple fixes its browsers with contentEditable support soon!

  • Anonymous
    September 03, 2010
    Here are demo videos of SharePoint 2010 on a Mac / iPad / iPhone : http://bit.ly/anQnt2

  • Anonymous
    September 05, 2010
    Which ones have you tried? Have you tried Shareplus?

  • Anonymous
    September 29, 2010
    Check out the youtube video for SharePoint client for iPad, Filamente - www.youtube.com/watch

  • Anonymous
    December 26, 2010
    SharePoint IPhone Access provides an add-on to SharePoint, http://www.sharebyphone.com

  • Anonymous
    February 18, 2011
    I'm using an App called iSMEStorage on the iPad for accessing my hosted SharePoint server. It works really well and it supports NTLM authentication.

  • Anonymous
    March 03, 2011
    We use Moprise to access our SharePoint sites. Free, easy, and great security features.  Just noticed a video of it: www.youtube.com/watch

  • Anonymous
    March 08, 2011
    I just tried Opera for ipod and it does some basic things, not much, but at least more than what Safari does.

  • Anonymous
    April 26, 2011
    I am having trouble to use iPhone to view videos have that been hosted on SP (even with direct URL access).  We have seen some inconsistent behavior (e.g. different libraries with same settings - one of them works while the other one cannot). is there any known issues of iPhone accessing SharePoint videos?

  • Anonymous
    April 26, 2011
    additional information... we are using SharePoint 2010 to host a public website and are trying to host videos on the said website.

  • Anonymous
    May 08, 2011
    Have these restrictions in mobile Safari been addressed in iOS 4.3 which I believe is out now?

  • Anonymous
    June 20, 2011
    Also, Coaxion is an app that gives SharePoint access. It's in the app store on your iPad and iPhone, and it's the latest from Moprise, mentioned below.

  • Anonymous
    January 31, 2012
    The latest version of Filamente has a built-in Rich Edit controls that provides Rich Edit experience for iOS 5 devices. Check it out at itunes.apple.com/.../id390052009

  • Anonymous
    February 17, 2012
    The SharePlus app provides a rich native SharePoint experience on the iPad/iPhone: blogs.infragistics.com/.../enrich-your-mobile-sharepoint-experience-with-shareplus.aspx

  • Anonymous
    May 04, 2012
    You might want to check out Azurati's new SharePoint2Go solution that provides secure access to SharePoint on any smartphone or tablet:  www.azurati.com

  • Anonymous
    September 26, 2012
    I use Colligo Briefcase for accessing SharePoint on my iPad and I'm happy with it. They have a promo of $2.99 for the app until the end of September. You can download it here ... www.colligo.com/.../colligo-briefcase

  • Anonymous
    November 13, 2012
    I use the Sharekami app for accessing SharePoint, which is free: appmersive.com/sharekami.html

  • Anonymous
    March 22, 2013
    Great post thanks!

  • Anonymous
    August 25, 2013
    Sharepoint ios mobile android software site , www.sharepointiosandroid.com