Today Pages 7.3 on my Mac Book (Mojave 10.14.3) won't open - was using it without problems yesterday. Nothing happens if I click on the app icon. If I click on a Pages Document I'm told that Pages is "not open". When I tried to delete the app in order to re-install it, I'm told that Pages is "open and cannot be moved to the trash." On the App Store the app is shown as 'Open'.
Any advice?
MacBook Pro 13", 10.14
As there are no viruses on the Mac, and as many, many users have reported issues at one time or another with anti-virus (including AVG) on the Mac, it is better to let the built-in security in the operating system do its work without being compromised by anti-virus software. Your performance, and the behavior of other applications will improve too.
Follow the full removal instructions for your anti-virus application, and instead, download and install Malwarebytes, which is not an anti-virus tool, and its sole purpose is to detect and remove malware that can invade your Mac from untrusted sources. Malwarebytes is a 30-day fully functional trial, that you can continue to interactively use after the trial period is over. The "realtime" protection in the trial is an optional purchase. I use Malwarebytes, as well as many of our fellow users, and I recommend it without compensation from the vendor.
Thank you so much for the speedy reply. I tried to Force Quit Pages but it wouldn't quit. I began to feel a bit queasy at that point! Things didn't look right on my desktop, for instance.
So I restarted the Mac, had to do this twice before it worked. And then all was OK - Pages worked again. A bit of investigation suggests that an anti-virus app that I had installed, AVG, had arbitrarily prevented my Mac from opening a suspicious Word document by locking Pages.
Therefore I didn't need to follow any of the other steps you recommended but many, many thanks anyway for your support. When something like this happens you tend to panic!
Bring up the Force Quit panel by pressing option+command+Esc keys. If Pages is on this menu, select it, and press Force Quit. Repeat this to see if Pages is still on the Force Quit panel. If not, just close this Force Quit panel.
Additionally, in System Preferences : Dock panel, select the Show indicators for open applications. This will put a light "dot" beneath any open application in the Dock:
I suggest that you also reboot once in Safe Boot mode, and see if Pages will launch there. Press and hold the shift key when you hear the boot chime — until you see the boot progress bar. A login panel will appear. This particular boot process is slower due to System housekeeping, and there may be some screen antics, and these are normal. When you are signed in, press and hold the shift key while launching Pages. Whether it launched or not, reboot normally. Press and hold the shift key while launching Pages again.
Resolved?
Pages won't open, and I can't re-install it
