The Apple Support Community will permanently close on November 20, 2026. Starting today, the site will no longer accept new posts and is available in a read-only state.

You can continue to find trusted guidance and support on the official Apple Support site.

We want to thank the community members who have contributed their time and expertise to help others with their Apple products.

PJWH43 Author

Level 1

4 points

Pages won't open Word document

I have never had a problem with Pages or Numbers opening Microsoft Word or Excel documents until yesterday. I had just updated my macOS to Monterey 12:6.6. So what gives... and what can I do about it?

Posted on May 23, 2023 7:27 AM

Top-ranking reply

VikingOSX

Level 10

131,888 points

Posted on May 23, 2023 7:48 AM

Pages may not open a Word document because it is too old, or because the Word document has content that Pages cannot translate into Pages internal .pages document format. Sometimes, the Word document is damaged, occasionally, even Word won't open the same document.

I keep a current version of the free LibreOffice Suite on my Mac just for these occasions where I open the reluctant Word document in LibreOffice Writer and then Save it as a different .docx name. Usually, this approach is sufficient for Pages to open that Word document.

If you are on an Apple Silicon Mac, LibreOffice has a macOS (Apple Silicon) choice for the operating system version ot use.

View in context

Pages won't open Word document

Similar questions