Some documents are not a file. They are a folder: an entry page, dozens or thousands of other pages linking to each other, a stylesheet, a directory of images, sometimes a search index. On a computer you double-click the entry page and everything works.
On an iPhone or an iPad, nothing does. The Files app shows you the folder, opens one page in isolation, and the layout, the images and the links are gone. Here are the documents that arrive in that shape, and the people who are stuck with them.
1. Courses exported from Moodle or Blackboard
Learning platforms let a teacher export a whole course. What comes out is a folder: one page per chapter, the slides, the images, the internal links between lessons. Students download it to revise without a connection, on the train or in a lecture hall where the network has never worked.
Opened page by page, the course loses its table of contents and its navigation. Opened as a folder, it reads like the site it always was.
2. SCORM modules and workplace training
A SCORM package is, technically, an HTML folder with an entry page and a manifest. Onboarding paths, safety training, quality modules ship in this format precisely so they can run anywhere. In practice they usually run inside a learning platform, behind an account.
Someone who received the module as a zip and simply wants to go through it does not need the platform. The folder already contains everything.
3. Ward protocols and medical guidelines
Hospital protocols, best-practice guidelines, continuing education material: large cross-referenced corpora, distributed to be read at the point of care. And a hospital is one of those places where mobile coverage stops the moment you walk into a service.
That is exactly the situation an offline folder is designed for, provided the tablet can open it whole.
4. Automotive service manuals
Workshop documentation almost always arrives as a folder with its own tree: repair procedures, wiring diagrams, tightening torques, parts catalogues, each linked to the others. A mechanic looks up three pages in a row by following those links.
On an iPad propped up on the bench, that only works if the links do.
5. Flight manuals and ship's papers
The iPad has been the reference tool in the cockpit and on the bridge for years now. Manufacturer documentation, checklists, operating manuals: the volumes are considerable, and the network, by definition, is not there.
6. Operating and maintenance manuals
Industrial documentation: operating instructions, maintenance manuals, product sheets, supplier catalogues. Hundreds of pages that reference each other, read on site, in a basement or at a customer's, with no connection.
7. Statutes, standards and case law
Codes, articles of law, collective agreements, ISO standards, case law. These corpora live on their cross-references: an article pointing to another, a note pointing to a ruling. Flatten them into a single file and the cross-references die.
8. Annual reports and board packs
Annual reports, audit reports, minutes exported from an intranet, board packs. They arrive by email or land in a shared drive, and they get read on a tablet in the ten minutes before the meeting.
And a few more
- Family trees. Heredis, Gramps and Ancestry export a genealogy as a website, one page per person.
- Client photo galleries. Lightroom and gallery tools export a folder of HTML you hand to a client.
- Saved web pages. Pages archived with SingleFile or wget, kept to read later.
- Generated documentation. Sphinx, MkDocs, Doxygen, Docusaurus, Jupyter notebooks, test reports.
- Emergency procedures. Standard operating procedures and site plans, where offline is not a comfort but a requirement.
How to read one on iPhone or iPad
Three steps, whichever of these you have:
- Put the folder wherever suits you: the Files app, iCloud Drive, or Pagira's own folder, which shows up in Files.
- Open the folder, or use "Open with Pagira" from the share sheet of any app.
- Read. The layout, the images, the styles and the links between pages all work, and nothing leaves your device.
And if what you have is a single HTML page or a PDF rather than a folder, that works too.
