make word documents automatically open in pages

The open part is easy. Highlight a known Word document in the Finder, highlight it & choose Get Info from the File menu. In the Get Info box, click the triangle next to "Open With." Click on this drop-down menu & choose Pages. If Pages is not a choice, choose "Other" & navigate to the Pages application. Now click the "Change" button under the text that asks if you want to open all documents like this with Pages. You can then double-click the Word documents & they will open in Pages. Note that the icon for the Word files will have a plain, white icon.

When you save the documents, they will be saved as Pages documents unless you choose otherwise. The original Word document will be left untouched so you will have to manually delete it if you are sure you no longer want it.

Since Pages '09 came out I've been using it instead of Word (yeah!!!!) but this was driving me nuts! So thank you for posting your response. And by the way, just finished a 28 page research paper and '09 was great. No more Word quitting unexpectedly while I'm in the middle of a document.

Gratefully,

Jill

You've been fortunate. Make sure you save your work frequently. I've actually found that iWorks 09 (as well as the old 08) crashes just about as much as MS Office for Mac did...especially the more complicated your documents become -- start adding headers, footers, photos, etc and you'll see just as many crashes.

SAVE YOUR WORK.

Well, I had headers and used the Pages-Endnote integration to manage 47 reference - in text citations and a full bibliography, with absolutely not one crash. The software feels very stable to me. I also saved the document as a word doc and used the share function multiple times, again with no problem for me or the Word user on the other end. Multiple windows - Paper, Endnote, Pages, several Safari windows, Mail, TextExpander, and EagleFiler, all open most of the time; Word open sometimes.

Leopard is running 10.5.6 and all my software is up to date. Maybe check for updates? One did come out for iWork on February 2.

Maybe something here will help...

Hi there,

I would like somebody to explain this to me step by step... I also can't open documents on computers at school that I send from pages to open with Word. How do I make it compatible? Its my first time with a Mac.

Hi Emily,

It's good to remember this general idea... Macs and mac software is designed to read, import, or otherwise handle documents created by Microsoft software. But it never goes the other way - Microsoft products won't read mac stuff. An exception is with MS Office 2008 for Mac, the interface with MS Office for PCs is easier there. With iWork software like Pages, it's up to the person on the Mac side to put things in a format Microsoft software can read. Luckily, mac makes that easy.

If you want to open a pages document on a PC with MS Office, you need to save your Pages document in Word format, either using File>save as>save copy as Word doc OR Share>Export>Word. Then, at school open the Word document. If you make changes, just save your document and when you get back on your Mac, Pages will open the Word document (file>open and make sure to choose the .doc file). Save that as a Pages document. You can go back and forth like that easily, just always remember: mac reads microsoft, microsoft doesn't read mac!!! If this is too cumbersome, I suggest buying MS Office 2008 for Mac. There is decent educational pricing on it, and it is a nice product. It will seem familiar if you are used to Word 2007. It's just more expensive and less stable than iWork.

If you want to open all your Word documents automatically in Pages, just follow the instructions given by Peggy earlier in this thread.

I highly recommend the Genius Bar at the Apple store since you are new to Mac. Or sign up for a one on one ($ I think) or free class in the store. It's worth it. But I am confident you will love it. You will probably get to hate the PCs at school so much you'll buy a laptop. 🙂 I refuse to work on a PC now.

Now that not all Macs come with a trial version of Office pre-installed, why is Pages not automatically set to be the default to open MS Word documents, if one orders iWork? It seems like an unnecessary extra step to switch the default from TextEdit, and judging by the number of people who have had trouble figuring out how to do it, the steps in the process are not obvious. Setting Pages as the default would be more in line with Apple's user-friendly reputation.

To Whomever Can Answer This Question:

Hello. I just bought a new MacBook Pro (OS X 10.5.7). I have MicroSoft Word documents saved
as attachments in Hotmail e-mails. When I download one of these MicroSoft Word Documents, it automatically opens in Text Edit.

How can I open these documents with Pages '09, even though I cannot select the documents themselves since they are only saved as attachments in Hotmail e-mail messages? When I click on the attachment, I do not have the option of selecting or highlighting it--the attachment just downloads, and when I click on the icon for a particular downloaded document, it opens in Text Edit.

Do you have any ideas about how to make Pages my default word processor, given that I cannot select the MicroSoft document itself?

--Picaro

Select a Word file in Finder and get Info (cmd I)

Halfway down is +Open with: > browse to locate Pages inside the Applications folder inside the iWork folder+

After that click on the +Change All…+ button.

Peter

It's not that simple for me. Using iWork '09 any of the documents I click "Change All..." to Pages but it reverts back to TextEdit in the Get Info screen. Also when opening Pages documents sent to me via Apple Mail they want to open in TextEdit. How do I change the system-wide preferences to open .pages documents in Pages from Apple Mail and by double-clicking?

I also have not had this problem. I have written a book over 100 pages with no crashes. Might I suggest that the problem in not the software, but the system on which it is running?

Do you save them in word format?

+Menu > Share > Export > Word or RTF+

RTF = Rich Text Format, an open format for transferring styled text.

Peter

metaphorist,

I would try repairing your permissions in Disk Utility if this is not sticking, or letting you change the defaults.

Peter