How do I convert a PDF to Pages Document

A PDF is an endstage document intended for printing or viewing with a PDF reader. Internally, it is not organized like a typical word-processing document and is comprised of compressed text and image objects with random pointers to their internal locations. In short, it is not convertible to Pages, at least not without potential hours fixing up the rubbish that some tools generate. Several tools proclaim to convert PDF to Pages documents and can't recommend any for the extra headache they will produce.

If you have the original document from which the PDF was created, there may be a means available to convert that non-PDF document into a format that Pages can open.

If the PDF is just text, and not permitted against copying, you can copy and paste that PDF text content from a PDF reader into Pages. You will likely have to reformat the Pages content.

If you have access to MS Word v16.31 or later, you can open the PDF with Word and it will automatically convert it to a Word DOCX document. You can then open Word document in Pages.

And, finally, if you have access to Adobe Acrobat Pro (not Reader), it will convert PDFs into MS Word documents. Other paid PDF Editors may also offer this capability.

For those with MS Office 2021 for Mac (and untested with Office 2019), I have an AppleScript that tells MS Word to open and convert a PDF to Word DOCX. It saves that document and then instructs Pages to open that DOCX and then save it as a Pages document.

One copies/paste the following AppleScript into Apple's Script Editor; clicks the hammer icon, and then clicks run. This will open a dialog allowing one to choose the PDF and all else is automatic. The Pages document is written to the same location as the original PDF input.

Code:

-- open PDF in Word, convert to DOCX, and write to same location as PDF.
-- Then, tell Pages to open and convert the DOCX which it then saves as
-- a Pages document.

-- Tested: macOS Sonoma 14.4.1, Word v16.84, and Pages v14.0
-- VikingOSX, 2024-05-11, Apple Support Communities, No warranties expressed or implied.

use scripting additions

set thePDF to (choose file of type "com.adobe.pdf" default location (path to desktop)) as text
-- same document name and location, but different extension
set pathBase to (text 1 thru ((offset of ".pdf" in thePDF) - 1) of thePDF)
set theDOCX to pathBase & ".docx"
set thePages to pathBase & ".pages"

log (pathBase) as text
log (theDOCX) as text
log (thePages) as text

tell application "Microsoft Word"
	activate
	open file thePDF file converter open format xmldocument
	delay 5
	save as active document file format format document file name theDOCX
end tell
delay 2
tell application "Microsoft Word" to if it is running then quit

tell application "Pages"
activate
open theDOCX as alias
delay 5
save front document in file thePages
delay 5
if it is running then quit
end tell
return

This code could be adapted to an Automator or Shortcuts Run AppleScript action.