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word file opens in pages, loses data

I received a large file, 120mb, in word format. It opened on my colleague's Mac and PC, but on my two laptops it won't show all the contents, only the first 8 pages. After opening it, I saved it and it is about 4.8mb so it's not all there. The two MBPs are three years apart in age. When I download the file, it's all there. When I open the file, it's not. Any ideas?

MacBook Pro 13″, macOS 11.4

Posted on Sep 21, 2021 6:49 PM

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Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Posted on Sep 22, 2021 5:58 AM

Pages performs a document translation to its own internal Pages document format when opening a Word document. As Pages is not a Word clone, that translation process is not guaranteed by Apple to be accurate, or complete, based on the version of Word that the translator was written to support, unrecognized fonts (not installed on macOS), or Word document layout.


If you are exchanging Word documents of this size, and you want to open them in their native, unchanged document format, then you should be using a current version (16.52+) of Word on the Mac.


Get the current version of LibreOffice and see if you can open this large Word document in it. Is it shown intact? If so, it is because LibreOffice is purposely written as an Office clone. Consider resaving the large .docx as another named .docx, and check if it opens fully in Pages afterward.

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Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Sep 22, 2021 5:58 AM in response to ammethecat

Pages performs a document translation to its own internal Pages document format when opening a Word document. As Pages is not a Word clone, that translation process is not guaranteed by Apple to be accurate, or complete, based on the version of Word that the translator was written to support, unrecognized fonts (not installed on macOS), or Word document layout.


If you are exchanging Word documents of this size, and you want to open them in their native, unchanged document format, then you should be using a current version (16.52+) of Word on the Mac.


Get the current version of LibreOffice and see if you can open this large Word document in it. Is it shown intact? If so, it is because LibreOffice is purposely written as an Office clone. Consider resaving the large .docx as another named .docx, and check if it opens fully in Pages afterward.

word file opens in pages, loses data

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