Import Export

I find them both to be quite good at it. For example, the worst I've seen is sometimes when exporting from Pages to Word the formatting of some of the headings may ("may") be slightly different. Not always. So it's good to double-check something directly in Word before sending it to someone else who will use Word to look at it. Pages does quite well at opening Word documents (in my experience). Going between Pages and Word, you may find that occasionally the text flows onto an extra page, or fits on one less page than the original document did due to margins or that kind of layout thing. But Pages is nearly perfect with Word documents and cerainly doesn't "mangle" them.

Be aware that with Pages, you can "open" a Word document, but you can't then simply click "save" and save that Word document. You have to "export" it as a Word document. Pages cannot save Word documents natively.

Keynote is such a strong program that I permanently removed PowerPoint from my systems just about as soon as Keynote version 1 came out a few years ago. Some of my Windows-designed PowerPoint presentations needed to be reformatted slightly to go with the Keynote themes (which look better than PowerPoint themes and are far less overused). I would never (ever) use PowerPoint for a presentation again. I've forgotten how to use it and would not want to assault a class or audience with those old themes and tired old graphics. Blech.

P.S. - Nice icon, Chopsuey... 🙂

It depends entirely on your files.

If Mellel and NeoOffice fail opening your files, it is likely that your files contain some unusual formating, and it is likely that Pages will fail as well. Personally I have never had much problems importing and exporting Word documents, but my texts tend to be very simple.

The only way to be sure that your Word documents open 100% correctly is to use the same version of the same word processor on the same version of the same operating system on the same computer as the original was created on. And even then it can fail, if you have happened to remove some fonts or changed printer settings or something like that.

When it comes to Keynote and PowerPoint, I have so far never managed to do a proper conversion of any of my presentations in either direction. I basically have to restart and redesign all the pages from scratch. Other people have had better luck than me.

Magnus,

It seems we have inverse problems.

I have only done a few conversions of PowerPoint to Keynote, but the ones I've done have been flawless! Oh, and the files are so much more manageable than the bloated PP ones! Yuck!

It seems that I have had trouble with 90% of my .doc files not translating while TextEdit has been functioning at 100%. Hmmm, I was hoping to find others that have surmounted this "issue."

I may reinstall to see if it helps. Hopefully, I won't lose the Keynote filters this time around!

CamelMac Mike

Before you buy it, try the month free trial. I have been unable to open .rtf documents in Pages, iwork '05. Luckily, I had the trial version and I don't think I'll be buying this product. It has also failed to open .doc files and .xml files.
Apple claims that the product can open these files flawlessly, but the more I visit discussion boards, it becomes clear that several conditions have to be met before Pages can do its job. The files I have attempted to open are not dimmed, and Pages is supposed to be able to open them but doesn't. I am a fairly recent mac convert and still own and alienware pc which has been saving me whenever I need to open some of these files.

I am interested to hear that people have managed to open Word documents with Pages. I have, as yet, not been able to open a single Word document though I have tried many and have a nifty little manual that says I should be able to do this.

I would love to know what the 'conditions' are that documents have to meet before Pages can open them. And of course why there isn't a nifty little list of these conditions in the nifty little manual.

Flawlessly eh???

Completely agree that the features that are not imported well or at all should be documented.

It is strange that you aren't able to "open" a single Word document. When you say "open", does that mean that you get an error message, that Pages crashes, that nothing happens, or that the file is opened with distorted formating?

How were the Word documents made? Which version of Word? Did they use normal.dot as template, and if so, has it been customized or is it a normal.dot with factory settings?

If you care to work on it, could you try a step by step test? First create a document from scratch in Word using the standard normal.dot template. Add just text - nothing more. See if that opens. It should. Then add features one by one to get to your "standard" Word document, until it breaks Pages.

In case you don't have Word, but you get Word files from other persons, and they all "fail" opening in Pages, my bet would be that they all are built on a template in Word that consists of some fancy formating, that Pages cannot handle. Complicated tables? OLE objects? Twisted Styles? Macros? A corrupted picture?

Well Magnus, I get an extraordinarily helpful message:

The document "name of document" could not be opened.

Perhaps the error message itself has been copied from Word . . . ?

Unfortunately I do not have the time or inclination to check how (?) the documents were made, which version of Word, etc etc.

And no I do not care to work on it!!!

I have been misled by incorrect information published by Apple - I quote:

If you already have a document that you have created in Microsoft Word or Appleworks, you can import it into Pages and continue to work on it.

No you can't!

Skalarock,

sorry, just because it does not work with your Word documents, you can't say it's incorrect information. Maybe you're the exception that proves the rule (though that probably doesn't help you either).

Because you don't care to work on it, we probably can not help you anymore.

skalarocks,

maybe this is an explanation of your problem: Matthias Rempe, "Pages Document no longer opens at all" #9, 06:57am Nov 6, 2005 CDT

I like many features of Pages but one has to be able to convert a doc to Word for the rest of the world. Unfortunately, I get the following error when trying to convert to Word:
The resource \U201CADWPDefaultLayoutStyleDictionary.xml\U201D could not be loaded.
Have no idea how to resolve.

Steve,

I'm usually able to convert a Pages doc to Word (quality is another question).

find / -name '*Dictionary.xml'

in Terminal.app reveals a.o.: /Applications/iWork/Pages.app/Contents/Frameworks/Dennis.framework/Versions/A/R esources/ADWPDefaultLayoutStyleDictionary.xml

Do you get the same result?

When I try to import html files, all i get is the first page.

Plunkitt,

welcome to Pages Discussions.

Do you get always only the first page or with particular files? Is there maybe a box to see with a '+' in a square?

The file I tried it with was mostly text, though with multiple tables, some of them nested.