Store Absolutely Any File in iCloud

The built-in Preview app lets you add images and PDFs to its iCloud store (click File→Open to add files), which are what the app usually displays on most Macs, but that’s not all it’ll accept for upload. It’ll also store (and let you view!) Microsoft Office documents, such as Word, Excel, and PowerPoint files. Strangely, however, it won’t accept more primitive office document formats such as rich-text files (those with an .rtf extension) or comma-separated value spreadsheets (those with a .csv extension).

It’s worth bearing in mind that, just like with Finder windows, you can hold down Option to copy a file to
iCloud, rather than moving it there, which is the default behavior.

Note that the range of image files Preview will accept for upload to iCloud is very broad—you can save Photoshop (.psd) documents there, for example, and view them within Preview.

TextEdit accepts any kind of file for upload to its iCloud storage area—from MP3 files and movies to images—even though it can’t open them (attempting to open, say, a movie will produce a screen full of seemingly random characters, although you can still watch the movie in Quick Look by selecting it in the iCloud listing and hitting Space).

TextEdit’s egalitarian approach to iCloud makes it an ideal way of transferring files from one Mac to another via iCloud, provided they’re both logged in to the same iCloud ID—just drag and drop the file onto the TextEdit window of the first computer, and then drag and drop it from TextEdit’s iCloud listing to a Finder window on the other Mac.