The document could not be opened

1) Look for the file using the Finder. Does the "Kind" column say "Pages Publication"?
2) What are your choices to the message: "the document could not be opened"?
3) Are you able to open other Pages documents?

Does it have the .pages extension to the file name either in the Finder or Get Info? If not, try adding it.

Peggy

Hello Linda,

if the document ending was missing, what is about the file endings of the package contents. If you don't know, Pages documents are no real files, but folders that appear as files.

Click with the left mouse button onto the document icon while holding the control key down (or click only with the right mouse button if you own a multi button mouse) to show the contextual menu. Select the menu item "Show Package Content". Now a new window with the content of the document package folder opens. Look if there is a file named "index" with the endings ".xml.gz". If the file exists without the endings, attach the endings.

Frank.

Linda,

are you sure the name of the file is "index.sml.gz", not "index.xml.gz"? If yes, do a correction and change it to "index.xml.gz". Than try to open the Pages document in Pages.

Frank.

Linda,

it seems to be the index.xml file, that causes the problem, like the error shows. Can you tell me, if an error occured during the last time you saved the document? It can be an error from another program, not only from Pages. Or was there some other strange happaning during the saving of the file?

If the document is not too komplex for recreation, I think it's the best to create a new one. You can reuse the image files inside the package folder if you haven't the originals anymore. In my opinion the only corrupted file is the "index.xml.gz".

But if you think the recreation of the document is too heavy and you are willing to do so, you can send me the entire Pages document in an e-mail and I will have a look into the index.xml file. I will send it back to you as fast as I can. You can see my contact details by clicking on my name in the left column of one of my posts.

Frank.

Linda,

it is not so hard to "look into" as it seems to be, because the error message helps. And if you know a little bit of the xml structure, a good text editor will do the rest. Well, not really, but near the truth 😉

X (<- fingers of both hands ->) X, Frank.

Aha! I had the same problem, and it was killing me to 'just let the file go'. So this is what I did, it may work for you!
Insert your Tiger install DVD
Restart to the DVD
Select English/whatever
Select "Disk Utility" from the drop down menu, i think it's under 'utilities'.
Repair disk permissions and Repair disk.
Restart, and open!

I have several disk permissions that needed repair and it said that my header needed small repairs.
The Disk Utility has to be done from the boot DVD, i tried it in finder and it did not work.
Hope this helps,
Michael

I copied loads of pages files from one server to another and am now unable to open any pages files. All the permissions are set correctly, because all of the word files can be opened no problem. What is the index.xml file and what is it needed for?
I am not going to rebuild thousands of files as suggested to Linda.

xserve G5 and many more Mac OS X (10.4.4)

Hello Gerald,

what kind of file system is the server of? If it is a windows file server, then the Pages document is shown as a folder with several files in it, because a Pages document is a package, not a single file.

The "index.xml" (or if it is packed: "index.xml.gz") file is the main document file, in which all the description of the text and layout is stored. All the other files are images etc. which are inserted into the Pages document. Pages don't store media files as binary descriptions in the text document like a Word file does. A Pages document is (like the ending shows) a XML-description.

See it like a HTML page (if you know this kind of "document"). You have a description how something should look like and where to find media files that should be shown in it. The media files are stored somewhere else, and you can describe the location of this media files in the HTML code. But for better handling, Pages stores all files into a package, which appears in a Mac system like one single file, so the average user has not to worry about where he/she should store all the single objects.

But if you save this very Mac specific file onto other systems, you see an ordinary folder with many files in it. Maybe the copy procedure has corrupted the package information and Pages is no longer able to handle this as a "document". I heavn't tried this by myself with Windows, but with Linux there are no problems with copy to it and back.

Are the ".pages" endings there on the server? if not, add the endings to a folder and try to open this document with Pages. Or copy a Pages document folder back to a Mac and try to open it than.

Frank.

Hi Frank,

thanks for the info. I copied pages files from one server (G4 running server 10.2) to an xserve running 10.4. There seems to be part of the file missing, probably coming from the "index.xml" part. I cant find this file on the old server and if you just copy the files I assume this file "index.xml" is not copied. Even it it were to be copied, I doubt wether the included links would be correct. I imagine this file has to be edited. I cant rewrite thousands of files.
No idea how this is to be done, do you have any ideas?