Pages won't open documents or templates

Sigh. I’m not a total idiot.

Yes, I’ve tried each and every one of the suggestions in the links you posted except opening a new user account and trying to open Pages from that account. Suppose that works, and I can open Pages in the new account. Will I then be able to open Pages in my user account or only in the new account?

If that solution results in Pages only working in the new account, that’s not a viable solution to my problem for obvious reasons.

Thank you for your patience and for trying to help me.

The purpose of trying to open Pages in another account is to establish whether it is a universal problem or a problem with something you have done in your account.

If it works in another account that narrows down the problem and if you eliminate enough suspects may lead to a solution.

In most cases like these it is something the user has done to screw up iWork.

Is it possible that your QS G4 does not meet the minimum requirements for iWork?

Peter

Numbers and Keynote work fine on my QS G4 so it meets the minimum requirements for those. Does Pages have different minimum requirements?

I'll set up another account and see if Pages works there over the Thanksgiving holiday. Thank you for your help.

Same exact problem. Pages will not open any document or template. File > Open generates error "The document "document title" could not be opened." No crashing and the application seems to work fine, except you can't open or start a document.

1) iWork is installed in the proper directory ... no changes made to location or naming.
2) Removed the stated preference files.
3) Removed duplicate/corrupt fonts. (these did exist after the upgrade to 10.6.1)
4) Repaired permissions. Locally and booted off the DVD and repaired.
5) Uninstalled (and removed everything) / Reinstalled iWork. Ran iWork updates.

The only step I have not taken is the New User attempt.
a) I do not want to upgrade the OS just yet and there is that New User bug that delete's data. (somehow I lost data anyway just now... see below.)
b) If the New User does answer the problem, then it will take me HOURS to rebuild a new user profile w/all the preference settings and so on. I HATE when Apple tells you to build a new user profile instead of Apple building a tool to identify a corrupt file.

Anyone w/any luck?

-pr

Side notes: I lost a few .pages documents in that process. Sounds ridiculous but true; at a minimum three .pages letters that were on the desktop are now gone...not in trash. Likely do not yet have a backup of them. They were not manually deleted...something in the above steps deleted them. grrrr

It doesn't look like you've used the combo updater to update Snow Leopard to 10.6.2. That seems to fix a number of font problems & other oddities.

Hello Peggy,

- Booting into Safe mode ... Pages displayed the same problems.
- I went ahead w/all the updates. Currently running 10.6.2 and still having the same issues w/Pages.
- I went ahead and created a test user account. Pages works fine.
sigh So what is the easiest and fastest way to fix this w/o having to rebuild a new user account from scratch?

BTW - I wanted to edit the earlier post to mention that I also removed that one troublesome font some have commented on. There was an edit icon, but after logging in to edit, the function seems to have disappeared.

When it works in a new account something is wrong in the old one. Try first to delete the com.apple.iwork.pages.plist in ~/Library/Preferences folder. The ~ stands for your Home folder.

Does Keynote and Numbers behave as they should?

Yes, tried removing the plist file originally and a few times during the process (see earlier post in thread). I am wondering if there are other plist files that might cause the issue?

Yes, the other apps work fine. (before and after)

Delete the plist file again and
delete Pages from the Application folder
Restart the computer
Install iWork and
Repair Permission just to be safe.

There are other files in the different Libraries but I haven't so far heard that they have posed much problem

Message was edited by: fruhulda

Hmm.. I did all that earlier (though don't remember if there was a restart in that order). I'll try it all over again tonight.

Just deleted EVERYTHING related to iWork (that which I'm familiar), restarted, fixed permissions. Pages still not working. Pages will not work in Safe Mode either. BUT, Pages will work as another user.

PixelRogue wrote:
Just deleted EVERYTHING related to iWork (that which I'm familiar), restarted, fixed permissions. Pages still not working. Pages will not work in Safe Mode either. BUT, Pages will work as another user.

It would be good to be there and check exactly what you have done but we can't.

Do you have access to an Apple Store near you? If you do you could take your Mac into the Genius Bar and have them look at it.

There is only so much that can be done remotely.

Other than that I would seriously think about a wipe and reinstall of your system when it is a good time to do so.

I usually start with a clean slate with new versions of OSX, for example when I switch to Snow Leopard, maybe with v10.6.3.

Peter

Other items tried:
- removing ALL preference files. That reset everything, but same problems persist in Pages.
- deleted all files from System > Library > Application Support > iWork '09 - same problems.


ANSWER:
Delete System > Application Support > iWork

Now pages is working....

Wasn't that one of the previously mentioned steps to take? Delete all iWork files?

Peter

btw It might help if you edited your settings to let us know your set-up.

We are having the exact same problem with our Pages 2.0.2. We are running Snow Leopard on an iMac 5.1. It's always worked before; and it seems to not work now that we've upgraded to Snow Leopard. My son is DYING to use Pages over Microsoft Word -- PLEASE help us!!!

Tanner and Dad