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How can I convert a Pages file to PDF without losing data?

By mistake I renamed a pages file .pdf, because I thought that it can be converted to a PDF by simply follow that method but regretted it and I'm pretty sure I've just lost all of my data. It is not letting me open it or change the extension back to pages file. Is there any solution to this please? Thanks!





[Re-Titled by Moderator]

MacBook Pro 13″, macOS 15.1

Posted on Nov 8, 2024 8:23 AM

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4 replies

Nov 8, 2024 12:24 PM in response to noluck80

Changing the Pages extension to PDF only renamed the compressed Zip container name, not the contents. Preview cannot open Pages documents on macOS Sequoia by any means and that is why it failed when it found that zip container with a ".pdf" extension.


I just renamed a Word .docx (also a zip container) document on Windows 11 Pro to foo.pdf. The icon remained a Word .docx icon and Adobe Acrobat Reader failed to open it, but did pop a dialog offering to convert it to PDF (which is a paid service).

Nov 8, 2024 10:58 AM in response to IdrisSeabright

the file was originally a pages document which is not a pdf. I wanted to convert this pages document to a PDF extension and decided to that by renaming the file by adding ".pdf" at the end which due to that I thought it will able to convert automatically like it does on Windows software but it failed and now when I'm clicking to open it this message is appearing - "It may be damaged or use a file format that Preview doesn’t recognise."


How can I convert a Pages file to PDF without losing data?

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