Cannot share (mail) Pages document in pdf or word format after Ventura

Here is a quicker solution:

Command-P

Command-Control-M

and there you are...

How, do you ask?

There is a little preparation, but nothing too hard. We are just taking advantage of tools that macOS has to offer.

1) In Finder, open two windows.

2) In the first, press Command-Shift-A to open the Applications folder

3) In the second window, press Command-Shift-G and paste

~/Library/PDF Services

4) Command-Option-drag Mail from window 1 to window 2 to make an alias of Mail in the PDF Services folder

5) (optional) rename the "Mail" alias created above as "Mail PDF"

6) Go to System Settings->Keyboard, click Keyboard Shortcuts...

7) Add the Command-Control-M as shortcut to "Mail PDF" (assuming you did step 5)

DONE.

Now you can share any document as a PDF to Mail with two key presses.

Bonus: this is not just for Pages, it works across your mac.

With Pages v12.2.1 on macOS Ventura 13.0.1, Apple removed the application's ability to automatically share (send a copy) of your choice of document format and attach to a Mail compose window. You can still do this for PDF by using File menu > Print > PDF > Send in Mail. However, the ability to do this for Word documents is a manual export, and manual Mail attach process.

Over in the Pages for Mac community, I wrote an Apple Script that prompts for a Pages document if one is not already open; pops a dialog allowing you to choose {Word, PDF, RTF} export formats, and then automatically opens a Mail compose window with that exported document attached. The solution I provided is a macOS Shortcut.

See PAGES: Where did "share as pdf" go? - Apple Community

On the second screen of that thread, I also added some fixes that would allow one to choose a Pages document from the local drive, or one that resides on iCloud Drive > Pages folder.

Bill.W wrote:

Thanks very much Luis. I hope you can come up with something.

Bill

I found this Applescript code in a post on the macrumors site. I am NOT the author of the script.

I tried it and it works on my mac.

You can put inside Automator, in a "Run Applescript" action, and it can be used to convert several Pages documents at once.

on run {input, parameters}
	
	--Select from where you will pick up the pages files
	set theSourceFolder to choose folder with prompt "Select folder with original pages files :"
	--Do it
	tell application "Finder"
		set theNames to name of files of theSourceFolder ¬
			whose name extension is "pages"
	end tell
	
	--Select where the files will go
	set theDestinationFolder to choose folder with prompt "Select folder where files will go :"
	
	-- How many files to export
	set item_count to (get count of items in theNames)
	
	--Get files and export them
	repeat with i from 1 to item_count
		
		set current_file to item i of theNames -- get a file
		set lean_file to text 1 thru -7 of current_file & ".docx" -- change the originalfile (.pages) to a .MS Word name
		set out_file to (theDestinationFolder as Unicode text) & (lean_file) -- get the fully qualified output name
		set in_file to (theSourceFolder as Unicode text) & (current_file) -- get the fully qualified input file name
		
		tell application "Pages"
			set mydoc to open file in_file -- open input file in Pages
			export mydoc to file out_file as Microsoft Word --do the exporting
			close mydoc saving no -- close the original file without saving
		end tell
		
	end repeat
	
	
	display dialog "done" -- Job done
	
	return input
	
end run

Bill.W wrote:

Luis has described an elegant solution, could it be adapted to e-mail documents in Word format?

The specific workflow I described works only with PDF - because anything in your mac that can be printed can be turned into a PDF. In particular, this works for any application that can print, not just Pages. (In other words, my Command-P Command-Control-M works anywhere).

To do a similar sharing but with a Pages document converted to Word (which I think is what you're asking; if not, please clarify), we'd need to take a different approach. "Printing" only works for PDF.

We need to use Pages' capability to save a document in Word format. This looks like a job for Applescript, possibly in conjunction with Automator. I will have to investigate a bit to see if a simple script or quick action can be made to this.

I will report back.

I found a post with a script which could be incorporated into a shortcut to do just that.

Here it is: https://www.icloud.com/shortcuts/3d3fa463b6d045189125ad63ceb33c93

It is really frustrating that this functionality, which is important for anyone working with Pages in a Windows environment, has not been fixed

Now that I look at the Print Dialog submenu, you can dispense with some of the steps. Simplified:

1) Go to System Settings->Keyboard, click Keyboard Shortcuts... Select App Shortcuts. Click +

2) Select "All Applications" and enter Menu Title: Send in Mail and keyboard shortcut: command-control-M

That's it.

Joshadrian wrote:

Hi Thanks,

Ive added mail pdf as an alias, in the pdf services folder, but for some reason I can't add it as a shortcut. Could you explain this more thoroughly?

System Settings->Keyboard, click Keyboard Shortcuts, select App Shortcuts, then select All Applications, click + ... and add the shortcut, as explained above. I don't think that part should be difficult:

Now if you press Command-P to open the Print window, and then press Command-Control-M, you can print to PDF just with the keyboard.

In Big Sur the share menu allowed you to share a document in multiple different formats, I'm looking for .pdf & Word formats mainly. With .pdfs previously I could share a Pages document to my archive (DEVONthink) and It would transfer along with any tags I had added. The print to .pdf function strips out the tags.

Interestingly you can still export in different formats in iOS. If Apple is bringing the platforms closer together it would be good to see that functionality restored to Mac OS.

I have VikingOSX's script in a shortcut and it works very well (I think I have posted my thanks previously).

My issue is that the sharing function should have remained part of the core Apple product (Mind Node appears to have worked round the issues).

I can send Pages documents in various formats viea Mail using the script, but I don't have the skills to adapt it to export a Pages document in another format to an existing folder. There are mechanisms to do that but they have their problems. Print to .pdf strips out any tags I have added, Export to .pdf resets the default filing destination to wherever I have exported the .pdf creating chaos unless I am very careful.

I convert documents to .pdf to archive into DEVONthink (other apps are available!) and would love to be able to use a script to export .pdf or .docx versions of Pages documents as easily as VikingOSX's workaround.

Bill

Luis has described an elegant solution, could it be adapted to e-mail documents in Word format?

I have another issue where I want to save tagged Pages documents to my document storage app. Print to pdf strips out the tags. Exporting to pdf on the desktop & then importing is tedious & it sets the destination for the next Pages document as the desktop which is really frustrating.

I hope Apple will address this in their next update, but if anyone has suggestions to address these issues I would be very grateful.

TimBlake wrote:

That would be great. Will it work with Numbers and Keynote too? The equivalent functions removed in those too. Very frustrating.

Thanks,

Tim

Are you talking about sharing in PDF form? The process I described above works for any application that can print.

Thanks, Luis. Just to clarify the last part, for anyone who might have got lost:

6) Go to System Settings->Keyboard, click Keyboard Shortcuts... Select App Shortcuts. Click +

7) Select "All Applications" and enter Menu Title: Mail PDF and keyboard shortcut: command-control-M

Apple needs to fix this now!! Go back to the way it was before the Ventura operating system. Not everyone has an Apple computer and even those people are having difficulty accessing a Pages document.

Hey Luis,

Thanks for your reply, but you avoided the bigger issue that Venture inserted into their update. Yes, exporting to PDF via email can still be done via the print and it is not that much extra effort BUT the issue is that in the previous version, one could select share and in what format in one simple step. With Ventura, you can only share in Pages format... that is a step back for apple and creates many steps that used to be done in one step.

I am been trying to solve this issue and stumbled onto this thread.

Apple, can you please update Pages (or Ventura) to bring back the format choice in the share command. It should not be hard to do as it already existed.

Thanks!

Hi Luis,

This seems a good workaround to send PDF's from pages. Unfortunately there is no PDF Services in my Library. I did check the root Library (and also the other one).

Any idea how I could still get the same action working?

Thank you!

PS: I can't figure out why they deleted a very good and to me important feature from their software...