Pages crashes with text box or shape tool in older documents

According to your profile, you are using macOS 13.0. If not already, update the operating system to Ventura 13.5.1, and ensure that you have Pages v13.1 installed.

Press and hold the shift key while launching Pages. This will cause it to ignore its last saved application execution state and allow you to start with a clean slate, so to speak.

What do you mean by older documents? Pages '09 or older?

I had this issue as well.

It seems to have something to do with the document "upgrading" from '09 to the current version.

Here's what I did (although I have to say the upgraded Pages is kinda crappy)

1) Open the Original '09 document

2) Click the text box tool which will prompt you to upgrade the doc to the new version.

3) DO NOT click "Upgrade". Instead Click "Edit a Copy" and it will create an upgraded copy that seems to be stable and does not crash.

Upgrading to Ventura as VikingOSX may also solve the problem. Unfortunately Ventura Breaks a number of the command line tools that I need to do my job so I cannot test to see for sure at this point.

Not all of the Pages '09 templates are compatible with Pages versions introduced since Fall 2013 because of the implementation differences and changed document formats. Where those Pages document templates from Pages '09 expect features not implemented in the later Pages versions they get very cranky or simply will not open.

What command line tools were broken by Ventura?

I did an upgrade to Ventura from Monterey several months ago (vs a clean install) and I had a hard time with Homebrew. The real deal breaker (which may be fixed) was ssh and rsync. I remote into a lot of Linux Servers and some of them can no longer be updated (Like CentOS) or not under my control to upgrade. Ventura doesn't support a lot of the older ssh key algorithms and though I can force it to use a specific one and get ssh to connect for a normal terminal session, but then rsync over ssh in Ventura seg-faults. Those are the main things I remember that were buggy.

Hope to do a clean install of Sonoma soon and see if the problems have been corrected or I can work around.

Was that rsync and ssh installed by macOS, or the current rsync and ssh installed via homebrew, the latter which was not regression tested by Apple with the operating system and may bear their teeth on you?

Are you using Apple's ssh-keygen(1) in this manner and putting that key on the Linux side for a secure ssh handshake? It has been ages sent I have used ssh into Linux from macOS, so won't be of much help in that regard.

This was a situation where right before leaving for the day, I saw the upgrade notice, clicked yes then left. Next morning, a bunch of my sync scripts started crashing and out of the first six servers I tried, only one let me in using password auth. I only had a bout an hour to (frantically) troubleshoot before I had to reinstall Monterey to be able to get work done. As I recall, Homebrew Started having weird dependency issues when I tried to use it. And frankly, I have a hard time with the cutesy terminology Homebrew likes to use.

I was using the stock SSH and rsync from Ventura. I modified my ssh config to force Diffie-Hellman and that at least gave me a connection. I don't think (but I'm not sure) that my SSH Keys had changed during the upgrade. I did not generate a new pair. But yes, the rsync scripts rely upon Key Authentication as in the link you posted.

You have given me some ideas. I only use Homebrew to add missing programs, I hadn't thought about seeing if i could replace the Mac SSH and rsync versions with ones from Homebrew.