4 ways to transfer files between PC and iPhone

The more integrated smart phones become with our daily lives, the more we tend to store files on them. We store everything, including from pictures, music and movies to documents, PDFs, and a plethora of other contents. It often occurs to me that it is so important and necessary to have a quick way to get a single file stored on my iPhone transferred to my computer, or from my PC transferred to my iPhone.

There are a lot of different ways to transfer files to/from computer to iPhone. Here I summarize 4 simple ways I frequently use:  USB Cable, iTunes, WiFi and Cloud Storage. And it’s all free.

Note: 

1. This guide also works for the iPad, iPod Touch and other iOS devices.
2. If you choose wifi, before we start doing this, we need to first download a third-party app, which will make this whole process much easier. Let’s take Kingsoft Office Free for example.
3. If you choose Cloud Storage, you’d better have a cloud storage account, such as: Google Drive, Box and Dropbox. We will take Google Drive as an example in this tutorial.

How to transfer files between PC and iPhone Over USB cable?

The most direct and simplest way to transfer a file from your PC to iphone is using the USB cable. Most of the phones we bought equip with a compatible cable, so there’s no need for you to buy one.

• Step 1: Just connect your PC and your iPhone using the cable, 
• Step 2: And you will see there’s a message on the phone screen asking what do you want to do.
• Step 3: Choose the option that allows using the phone as a storage device, and you’re good to go.
• Step 4: Transferring file is as simple as copying the file from your PC to a USB drive.

How to transfer files from PC to iPhone over iTunes?

iTunes is one of the most amazing and must-have apps for iOS devices. You can also simply use it to help you out.

• Step 1: Connect your iPhone to your computer via USB cable. iTunes will be launched automatically.
• Step 2: Enter into the device by clicking the iPhone icon in iTunes.
• Step 3: Switch to the Apps tab on the tool bar. Find "Kingsoft Office" in the application list. Tap the Add button in lower right corner as shown in the following picture.

            If Kingsoft Office Free has been added, you only need to click it once.

• Step 4: Select the file (e.g. "friendship.ppt") you want to add in the file list. Tap the Open button.
• Step 5: The file "friendship.ppt" has been added in iTunes.
• Step 6: On the Kingsoft Office Free interface on your iPhone, "friendship.ppt" has been saved under the My Documents catalog.

Note: If you would like to transfer from iPhone to PC via iTunes, it doesn't work.

How to transfer files from PC to iPhone Over WiFi?

Some people may think connecting iPhone to PC with the USB cable is annoying, or using the Cloud Services is not reliable enough, here I will introduce you another method, using WiFi. Most people have WiFi networks at their workplace or home, so it’s really convenient.

• Step 1: Launch Kingsoft Office Free on your iPhone. Turn on “WiFi file transfer" as seen in location 1 in the following picture.

• Step 2: On your PC, enter the URL in a browser displayed on your portable device, which can be seen in location 2 in the above picture.Note: When you enter the URL on your PC browser, please make sure the above page is open on your iPhone at the same time.

• Step 3: Select the document you want to transfer.
• Step 4: Click “Upload".
• Step 5: The file transfer is complete, and the file is now on your portable device.

Note: Make sure your device is connected to the same wireless network as the desktop machine(s) you wish to transfer files to/from.

How to transfer files from PC to iPhone over Cloud Storage?

Cloud storage is famous for online collaboration and easily sharing data across multiple devices, like file servers, desktops and mobile devices. So using cloud storage to transfer files is also a convenient way. Most of the big players, such as Google Drive, Dropbox and SkyDrive, provide free spaces to users, which is big enough to transfer your commonly used files.

• Step 1: At the start, all you have to do is to register a free Cloud Storage account. Let’s take Google Drive for and example
• Step 2: Log into Google Drive on your computer.
• Step 3: Click CREATE to upload the file on your computer to the Google Drive server.

• Step 4: Launch Kingsoft Office Free on your iPhone, and log into Google Drive.
• Step 5: Then you can download the PPT file from the Google Drive server.

The same situation applies to Drop Box, Box and other Cloud Storage services.

Contrast of the Four Ways

The limit of WiFi File Transfer and Cloud Storage is the size of the file, the free version of these apps limit the file size. You can transfer the music, pictures, movies, word document, etc by above two ways. For files with large size, you can use the USB cable or iTunes directly.

If you're using Android phone, please check out here: How to Copy Documents from PC to Android device