Issues converting Pages document to Word

There is one other thing you might try which is a bit cumbersome but may work for you. Compose your document in Pages as you understandably prefer in the normal way. Download and install Libreoffice as was suggested by another post which is totally free. Libreoffice Writer will generally save Word documents that are much more likely to be compatible with Microsoft Word and display properly in Word than when exported from Pages and is more transparent and reliable on a Mac then is Microsoft Word (plus of course a whole lot cheaper). As a precaution copy your document and put in a folder on your desktop where it will be safe. Then, when you are ready to send the document to a publisher, return to the original document in Pages and export it not as a Word Doc but as a plain text file to your desktop or some folder. Then quit Pages, right click on the exported plain text Doc, click "open with", scroll down to Libreoffice and click it. What you should see when it opens is your document in plain text. Next click "select all" and change to your desired font, font size, sentence line spacing, etc. Then click file "save as"; when a save dialog box appears click the arrow where it says "text" and then click on Word 2007-365 Docx. Ignore any warnings or message that may appear. Then close Libreoffice, then open the Doc in Libreoffice and see if the problem you described is still present. Best of luck to you.

Sorry. Correction to what I posted earlier. Instead of exporting your document from Pages to Plain Text, you should export to RTF then follow the rest of the directions I outlined if you wish. If you export as Plain Text you will lose some formatting and things like bold and italic when you save a plain text doc as a Word Doc no matter what application you use.

When you have embedded objects in your Pages document, and a good example of this is any equation inserted by the equation editor, Pages will create an RTFD file on export to RTF. LibreOffice Writer v7.1.3.2 will not open RTFD files.

It will open that Pages document exported as Word .docx and the equation from Pages is an editable formula in Writer. But this keeps you in the Pages translation loop on export to Word, so it may or may not resolve the original issue of using Pages in stead of MS Word (or LibreOffice).

As I don't have MS Word, I don't know that it can open RTFD documents, and if you have Word 16.31 or later on Windows or Mac, you could export to PDF in Pages, and open that PDF in Word, which would allow you to convert it to a .docx.

As always VikingOSX a very knowledgeable and worthwhile suggestion on your part. The only question I would have is whether or not Rob has Microsoft Office installed on his computer; if he does it is certainly worth trying. If he doesn't have Office then if I were him I would export his Pages document to PDF as you indicated then try uploading his PDF document to Google Drive (if he has gmail), then allow Google Docs to convert it to Google Docs format then download it from Google Drive to his computer as a Word Doc and see if it formats correctly. I have done this myself on occasion with acceptable results, but then, unlike Rob, the stuff I write does not usually contain graphs, tables, equations, etc. Just lots of words.

Absolutely correct VikingOSX about objects in the PDF. Of course, If Rob has Microsoft Office then the question of using Google Docs is moot. Last time I checked the least expensive Office for Mac was a one time payment of $149.99 or an annual subscription of $69.99 per month. For my purposes never saw the point of buying Office when there are reasonable alternatives available. But, for some Mac users, depending on the requirements of their job or situation, the only suitable app for document creation is Word.

Pages isn't a Word clone and is sometimes unsuitable when the audience requires Word format. To avoid the kind of problems you mention, use Word. yourself or a free clone like LibreOffice.

The acid test would be how Google Docs digests the objects in the PDF in its eventual conversion to a Word document and the internal appearances compared to what was in the original PDF.

Big typo in my last post. Office for Mac is 69.99 per year on subscription not per month.