file format invalid

Question

Level 1

8 points

file format invalid

I am trying to open a file on my MacBook that I created only last night and now when I go to open it I get a pop up stating "This file format is invalid" so I can't open the file ... what do I do ???

MacBook Pro 15″, macOS 10.15

Posted on Sep 3, 2020 3:38 PM

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Answer 1

jdo_apple

Community Specialist

Sep 4, 2020 2:47 PM in response to clobow1

Hello clobow1,

We understand wanting to be able to get that file that you created to open and will be happy to help.

To start, could you tell us what type of file that it is? Have you tried restarting to see if that persists? If not, try that as shown here: How to turn your Mac on or off

If you still run into that after restarting, try starting up in safe mode. This will guide you: How to use safe mode on your Mac

Let us know how that goes.

Take care!

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Answer 2

VikingOSX

Level 10

123,254 points

Sep 6, 2020 6:25 AM in response to clobow1

Did you originally save this file to Google Drive, Microsoft One Drive, Dropbox, or any other non-Apple cloud service, or was the document saved to either iCloud Drive, or your startup drive?

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Answer 3

clobow1 Author

Level 1

8 points

Sep 6, 2020 2:36 AM in response to jdo_apple

The file is a pages document. I have tried both the safe mode and restart and it is still not opening, and is still just saying that the file format is invalid as you can see on the below image.

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Answer 4

clobow1 Author

Level 1

8 points

Sep 6, 2020 8:25 AM in response to VikingOSX

They were originally on my laptop documents then I have transferred them to my USB.

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Answer 5

VikingOSX

Level 10

123,254 points

Sep 6, 2020 9:32 AM in response to clobow1

And how is that USB drive formatted (HFS+, APFS, exFAT, FAT32, NTFS, EXT3/4, etc.), and how did you transfer the Pages document from your laptop documents folder?

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file format invalid

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