Pages no longer opens Word (.docx) documents

Ensure that you have updated Pages to v14.2 from the Mac App Store. I have no issue opening a .docx document with Pages v14.2 in the released Sequoia v15.0. I tried several .docx documents spanning several years with no misbehavior from Pages in opening and displaying them. The one exception was a Word .doc from 1995 which is too old for Pages to process and that produced a dialog.

Reboot your Mac. Then, press and hold the shift key when launching Pages. That prevents it from loading its last saved execution state and may allow you to then open a Word document. Is that document on the local drive, on iCloud, or a third-party cloud solution?

Because Pages will be translating that Word document into Pages own internal document format, if there are too many things in that Word document that Pages cannot translate, it may fail to open the document, though you should receive some dialog and not a hang condition.

If you have access to MS Word or the free LibreOffice¹, I would attempt to open that Word .docx document in either of those and then save it again. Historically, I have encountered a few Word documents that Pages (or Word) would not open but opening in LibreOffice Writer and then saving as Word 2010 - 365 resulted in a document that I could open in either MS Word or Pages. You might give that a try.

¹ LibreOffice 24.8.1 and note that if your MacBook Pro is Apple Silicon, the LibreOffice site gives you a choice of macOS (intel), or macOS (Apple Silicon) downloads just above that yellow Download button.

I have the same experience. After upgrading to macOS 15 and Pages 14.2, I'm no longer able to open .docx files in Pages. They seem to no longer be associated with Pages, and show up as "Viber Message Document" in the finder.

If I rename the file to .doc (no "x"), Pages has no problems opening it. So it seems to be related to an interpretation of the file type. I have no idea if it's Pages or macOS that's causing this.

I found the right answer to the problem (at least for me). @tinodj has been right, but no proper execution.

/System/Library/Frameworks/CoreServices.framework/Versions/A/Frameworks/LaunchServices.framework/Versions/A/Support/lsregister -kill -r -domain local -domain system -domain user

sudo /System/Library/Frameworks/CoreServices.framework/Frameworks/LaunchServices.framework/Support/lsregister -kill -seed -lint -r -f -v -dump -domain local -domain system -domain user -domain network

 killall Dock

Everything works pretty fine!

You may have misinterpreted my instructions which have been working for decades. In that Finder Get Info panel (not the Finder secondary menu Open With sub-menu) — click on the application shown in the selector, and pick Pages from its list of applications. Then click the Change All… button which by then will be available:

Once you are done with this, I suggest you reboot your Mac so the Launch Services database can be rebuilt and that will then show Pages on the Finder Open With sub-menu.

One you get past the above, if the File Chooser in Pages shows .docx documents as unselectable, those documents have been corrupted by something, and the next step would be to see if they can be opened in a current version of LibreOffice Writer and then resaved as Word 2010 - 365.docx documents. Those should work in Pages.

You are right about the issue (found it on "Console")

But not the proper way to fix it.

You should try:

/System/Library/Frameworks/CoreServices.framework/Versions/A/Frameworks/LaunchServices.framework/Versions/A/Support/lsregister -kill -r -domain local -domain system -domain user

sudo /System/Library/Frameworks/CoreServices.framework/Frameworks/LaunchServices.framework/Support/lsregister -kill -seed -lint -r -f -v -dump -domain local -domain system -domain user -domain network

 killall Dock

Thank you for a clue

Since two weeks or so I was not longer able to open word files on my iPhone or my iPad. I do not possess a Mac.

Some nice guy called Minute_Path_4458 on reddit wrote that he recommends to delete the app

"Whereby" .

I did so and immediately was able to open MS-Word files again. So many thanks for the hint!

Other users write that deleting "Viber" (which I do not have) did the same for them.

Also heard of deleting "Skype" and some other apps.

The problem came up in the moment my iOS/iPadOS devices installed the last "Pages" update some ten or more days ago. Seems that file associations of at least Word (and Excel through "Numbers") get mixed up to the wrong apps and that has as a consequence not being able to open the according files!

You did not mention rebooting the Mac to reconstruct the Launch Services database. That may play a role here.

I have Pages v14.2 here with Sequoia v15 and have no issues whatsoever opening random Word documents (.doc, .docx) created since 2000+. Get the free LibreOffice 24.8.1 and open one of those .docx in LibreOffice Writer and then turn right around and save it as a Word 2010 - 365 docx. Try that updated .docx in Pages. I cannot offer an explanation why Pages won't open a .docx that when renamed to .doc — it opens.

tinodj wrote:

@VikiingOSX Thank you for trying to help, but the way you are trying - I am wondering if your birth year is after 2000?

No, older than that. It is just that Apple's applications will refuse to open Office documents older than the creation date of the year 2000. I have a Word .doc here that was created by Word 6 on a classic macOS in 1995. Pages tells me the document cannot be opened. Word v16.89.1 won't open it either as it throws a dialog stating the file type cannot be opened in this version. But, LibreOffice opens it.

Opening new document in numbers, putting one letter or keeping it empty, exporting to xlsx, and can not be opened by numbers. It is not the file or content it is extension and data type/Kind that make troubles here.

Boot your Mac in Safe Boot mode, and then reboot normally. Also, with Numbers or Pages, press and hold the shift key to prevent the application from loading its last application execution state. This may enable it to get with the program and open compatible Office documents.

Yup. I have just rebooted and everything works fine.

You found on "Console" a lot of similar issues:

They are all related to com.apple.launchservices

Single-click any .docx file in the Finder and then press option+cmd+i to open the Get Info window. In the Open With section of that document, set the opening document to "Pages" and then click through the Change All… button so the operating system knows to use Pages as the default opening application. This won't help much if the Word document is damaged (see LibreOffice solution above).

Double-click a Word .docx document and see if Pages opens with a translation progress bar for that document.

I had the same @ImAlain.

Do you maybe have iPhone connected on the same iCloud? If so take iPhone and remove apps like viber, skype, Whereby.

This helped me so after reboot all was fine.

I have the same.

After update all files (xlsx, docx, even .eps) were associated with Skype.

By "open with" -> "Always" couldn't get anywhere.

By "right click" -> Get info -> "Change all" I successfully make xlsx and docx to get opened by excel and word. However icon of Excel changed to Adobe, and icon of Word stayed Skype. But opening worked.

Then I tried

/System/Library/Frameworks/CoreServices.framework/Frameworks/LaunchServices.framework/Support/lsregister -kill -r -domain local -domain system -domain user

and then

rm -rf /Library/Caches/com.apple.iconservices.store

and uninstalled Viber and Skype, because at this point I noticed also "Viber Message Document" on my xlsx files.

and then reboot, word got the word icon back and xlsx got white page empty for icon.

Next I tried opening xslsx with Numbers to no avail. No way I can open that excel with Numbers. So there I am stuck.

To me it seems that Viber/Skype messes something up. But also MacOS allows they to mess up.

I would love to reset everything to default, but it seems it is not easily possible or something is messed up.